The internal comms profession is having a quiet reckoning with itself.

Senior communicators describe their teams as strategically ambitious but operationally stretched, creatively capable but struggling to prove business value. Many of them are carrying those questions largely alone.

This is not a crisis. But it is a crossroads.

• AI has moved from conversation topic to daily operational reality.
• Employee experience is beginning to shift from an HR-only remit to an organization-wide question—where IC is increasingly part of that conversation, but without a clear mandate to lead it. 
• And the pressure to demonstrate business value has moved from background noise to a live performance review.

The communicators who will thrive in this era—and help define it—will be distinguished by how clearly they can articulate what the business needs, and how directly they can connect their work to it. Not by the tools they use or the channels they run.

In this live session—IC at a Crossroads: Career Truths from Those Who Know IC Best—Andrew Harvey, CEO of the VMA Group and Jennifer Sproul, CEO of the IOIC, join Poppulo’s Andrew Hubbard to dissect what they are seeing across the profession, and what it means for the people who have built careers in IC.

Andrew Harvey has extensive Internal Comms recruitment expertise; Jennifer Sproul is at the centre of conversations about the profession in the UK and internationally; and Andrew Hubbard is a highly experienced comms executive with a unique perspective as Director of Communications for the world's leading employee experience platform.

What we’ll cover:

• The Career Picture. An informed exploration of how the IC talent market is shifting—which roles are growing in influence, which are under pressure, and how the skills employers value most have changed in the last two years.
• The AI Reality. Beyond the rhetoric: where AI is genuinely changing the day-to-day work of communicators, where it is creating new leverage, and what it means for the skills that will define IC careers going forward.
• The Business Acumen Question. Why business acumen has become the dividing line between IC teams that are seen as strategic partners and those that are seen as a delivery function—and what closing that gap looks like in practice.
• The EX-Boundary. How the shift toward employee experience is reshaping IC's mandate, its relationships with HR and leadership, and the identity of the function itself.
• The Value Conversation. How the most credible IC leaders are framing and proving their impact in terms that resonate with the C-suite, not just communications metrics.