Kitchen’s Ink is a publication for association management professionals — the directors, communicators, and executive-track leaders doing organizational work that rarely gets named correctly.
I’m Curtis Kitchen, CAE. I’ve spent twelve years in director-level association management — six as Director of Communications at the National Auctioneers Association, where I served as Staff No. 2 under ASAE Fellow Hannes Combest, FASAE, CAE, and attended every board meeting as a designated staff ambassador. Since 2019, I’ve been Director of Marketing at the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, a 5,300-member international organization, where I’ve built the brand infrastructure, submitted the business plan, and watched membership grow 32% over a seven-year tenure.
I hold the CAE credential and served as President of the Kansas City Society of Association Executives in 2021–22, leading a volunteer board through the second year of COVID-19 governance decisions. I’ve presented at ASAE Annual and the EMS Association Summit on lean MarComm operations, and I served on ASAE’s AI Ethics Working Group.
This blog covers three things: association marketing and communications from a practitioner’s perspective, the organizational leadership work that happens inside non-executive roles, and AI as a real working tool — not a concept. The posts are written from inside the work, not above it.
I’m also working on a book. More on that below.
I also write children’s books. The Amera Can series — six stories about a bald eagle named Amera that explore character, courage, and doing the right thing — is complete and available on Substack at curtiskitchenbooks.substack.com.
What You’ll Find Here
Posts in the Marketing & Communications category are the active publication — new content five days a week. The Crypto & Blockchain and Kansas State/Big 12 categories are legacy archives from earlier phases of this blog; they’re still here but no longer active.
About the Book
I’m developing a manuscript built on the thesis that the work of building a high-performing association doesn’t belong to any single title. It belongs to the professionals who understand the full picture — governance, infrastructure, communications, technology — and do that work deliberately. The blog is the raw material. The book follows.
If you want to be notified when it’s available, send me a note at kitchenski@gmail.com with “Book” in the subject line.
Connect
kitchenski@gmail.com | LinkedIn | curtiskitchen.com
Kitchen's Ink 