Meet Your New Chair: Stacey Lee, CP APMP

Erin Smith | Published 10:00 am January 7th, 2025

Happy New Year!

For APMP, entering a new year is about more than just a courageous battle to shake off the fickle grasp of ‘holiday brain’ and the struggle to remember to date documents with ’25 instead of ’24. We have an exciting new slew of goals, a reimagined events calendar and—as of this week—new leadership on the APMP International Board of Directors.

The new Chair of your association for the 2025 term is Stacey Lee, CP APMP, who has freshly taken over the reins from current Past Chair, David Gray. Stacey’s duty for the next year will be to shoulder the primary responsibility for the strategic direction of APMP, working with the Board and her Executive Committee, which includes David and newly-elected Vice Chair, Heather Finch.

As her year at APMP’s helm stretches out in front of her, we took the chance to have a chat with Stacey about her priorities, predictions and plans for 2025.

A bit about Stacey

In her day job, Stacey leads a strategic pursuits team at McElhanney. She’s worked in bids and proposals for over 15 years, but—like many in our profession—her journey into it was unplanned.

“I studied political science, and I wanted to be a diplomat!” Stacey tells us. “For a whole variety of reasons, that did not work out for me, and when I graduated with my master’s degree during the economic downturn in 2009 my priority was just getting a job.”

As so often happens, Stacey wound up in the profession because of her talent for writing, after a friend recommended her for a job writing proposals in their company.

Stacey says: “I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know what that is, but I can just do this until I find a real job’. It was just me working for a few people in this small tech company and so I figured it out on my own by reading books and doing training.”

Stacey is from the US originally, but moved to Canada to live with her now husband, securing a job at a Big Four company where she “actually figured out what [she] was doing and that [she] wasn’t bad at it”.

From there, Stacey moved to McElhanney—an engineering firm in Western Canada—where she’s now worked for around a decade and has built a team of 10 bid and proposal professionals. In the end, it turned out that Bids and Proposals was the “real job” she didn’t know she wanted, but it ended up being the perfect career choice for her.

Serving on the APMP International Board of Directors

“When I joined my current company, I knew about APMP and I had been following the best practices,” Stacey says. “But I didn’t really start getting involved until 2015, when I started going to the conferences and getting certified. Because I had just kind of showed up in this profession and tried to figure it out on my own, it was very helpful to me to have [APMP’s] guidance.”

Initially, becoming a Board member wasn’t something that she had designs on.

“I had ideas, and I’d challenged myself to do some presentations at BPC, which was a big step for me to take,” Stacey explains. “Once I did that, I felt a little more confident to get involved. Every year, I’d see the notices [for board elections] come out and think ‘that’d be cool’, but I couldn’t imagine myself becoming a board member.”

But she tells us that a board notice came out one day that elicited “a gut feeling” that she was ready for more of a leadership role.

“I just threw my name into the ring,” Stacey says. “I didn’t really know that many people or have that many relationships going in—I’m a super introvert who kind of keeps my head down.”

So, she put together a killer presentation in her bid for a board seat—a bid that was ultimately successful.

“I very much sat and watched for the first little while to see what everyone was doing, so I could figure out how I could best contribute,” Stacey tells us. “I learned so much, and then I started to get involved and contribute more.”

The decision to run for Vice Chair was one that “took some thought”, according to Stacey. She tells us that she “really did [her] homework” before standing for election, talking to lots of her peers and researching the requirements of the role before she put her name up for consideration.

Being elected as Vice Chair at APMP means the start of a three-year rotation, during which the successful candidate will rotate through the three named Executive Board roles—serving as Vice Chair their first year, Chair their second year, and Past Chair in their third year.

Stacey describes her year spent as Vice Chair in 2024 “super eye-opening and interesting”, and calls out board members such as Steve Coles (Chair in 2022), Alison Coon (Chair in 2023), and David Gray (Chair in 2024) as “amazing leaders” who have helped her on her journey.

Stacey’s list of accomplishments on the Board of Directors is already bountiful. She has played a critical role in member services, having worked to advance certification, chapter engagement, international expansion, and APMP’s Intentional Career Path (ICP) program.

The latter is a project of which she is particularly proud—a project that aims to raise awareness of the bid and proposal profession among students and young professionals, and to carve out defined pathways between education and the profession to help people build and nurture their careers within it from the beginning.

“The ICP is a passion of mine,” she says. “It’s so important to me that we have a way for people to make this profession a known thing that people can choose to do, and to set them up to be successful professionals.”

Key priorities for 2025

As APMP chair, it is Stacey’s duty to shoulder the primary responsibility for the association’s strategic direction.

Stacey describes her strategic priority going forward as threefold: to help APMP members “be the best that they can be”, to continue building an intentional career path, and to “give people in leadership positions the tools and information to help them really succeed”.

“Certification, education and outreach are critically important,” Stacey explains. “Building on that certification and helping professionals be known as professionals is one of the main things we want to do. We also want to be future forward, and give our members the tools, techniques and information to succeed with the evolving technology that is impacting our industry.”

She adds: “The uncertain times around the world are always a challenge, especially for our membership in their day-to-day lives. Things are going to change, and APMP has the opportunity to help them navigate that in their professional lives.”

When we ask her what’s she’s most excited about for the upcoming year, she tells us: “I’m really stoked for BPC Nashville—I think it’s going to be great! And, honestly, the Board’s doing a lot of really great projects in line with our strategic plan that I’m really excited about.”

When Stacey’s not working

As a self-described introvert, Stacey’s “happy place” is curling up with a book. She says, “I know it’s a little cliché, but I run through up to 50 books a year—I just love reading!”

She’s a dual citizen of the USA and Canada, and lives with her husband, five-year-old son, and six-year-old dog.