The inaugural Workflow Watchlist class has been named. The Class of 2026 recognizes 11 practitioners whose work changed how their organizations, clients or teams get things done.

Presented by the Work Management Institute, the Workflow Watchlist is an annual recognition program for the people who design, run and improve the way work gets done. Those people are usually invisible. When they do their job well, nothing breaks, so nobody notices.

This year's class is a chance to notice. Below are the honorees, followed by what their work can teach the rest of us.

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Meet the Class of 2026

Honorees are listed alphabetically within each category. Full profiles are on the Class of 2026 page.

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Workflow Consultants

Jay Adewole, CEO and Managing Partner, Point of View Consulting.

Jay replaced fragmented intake and manual follow-up with CRM-centered workflows built on defined stages and documented logic.

Kaitlyn Spinney, Fraction COO and Founder of Dynamically Done .

Kaitlyn builds the operating structure that lets owner-led businesses run without everything depending on the founder.

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Workflow Architects to Watch

Ethan Castillo, Webcast Marketing Manager | Enterprise Marketing Programs & Operations

Ethan turned a fragmented enterprise webcast program into one operating model in ClickUp, covering intake, ownership, handoffs, SLAs and reporting.

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Chris Fuchs, Founder, Graversal.io.

Chris created Reactive Graph Sequencing, which keeps workflow logic visible and auditable instead of buried in code.

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Work Management Leaders

Muhammad Rafay Ikram, Senior Engineering Project Manager, The Hershey Company. Rafay rebuilt project readiness for complex manufacturing initiatives around shared owners, decision rights and evidence-based gates.

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Workflow Automation Innovators

James Anson, AI Automation Engineer, IT Consultants PLC.

James built a multimodal AI concierge in n8n that answers from a verified knowledge base and hands off to a human when it should.

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Parker Fawcett, AI Skills Engineer, CHG Healthcare.

Parker turned scattered lead-generation scripts into an orchestrated n8n workflow and built shared AI-agent skills that teams reuse.

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Hannah Gabiana, Founder, Get the Hi.

Hannah designed seven scheduled AI agents that each own a full workflow for her agency.

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Haseeb Nawaz, Agentic AI Engineer, Independent.

Haseeb builds multi-agent systems and n8n and Make workflows that automate client follow-ups and document generation.

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Marija Peršić, Founder, LEVIQ.

Marija built a platform that helps accounting offices generate compliant employment documents and track contract deadlines automatically.

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Swapneswar Sundar Ray, Assistant Vice President, U.S. Bank.

Swapneswar designed an AI-powered API sandbox platform where AI generates and deterministic controls govern.

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Four Lessons From This Year's Class

Read the profiles side by side and a few patterns show up. Each one is useful whether you run a five-person team or a global program.

1. Structure comes before tools

The class works across ClickUp, n8n, Make, Jira, Primavera P6 and platforms they built themselves. No single tool explains their results. What they share is the structure underneath: who owns each step, how work enters, where it changes hands and what counts as done. The tool only carried out a structure they had already designed.

2. The real target is dependence on memory

Almost every honoree started from the same problem. Work moved only because someone remembered a rule, a deadline or the next step. Rafay's readiness gates, Ethan's operating model and Marija's deadline tracking all replace memory with a system. If your process works only when one person is in the room, that's the place to start.

3. Good automation keeps a human in the right place

The strongest automation work in the class doesn't remove people. It decides where they belong. James's concierge escalates to a human when the knowledge base runs out. Swapneswar's platform lets AI generate but keeps governance deterministic. Christoph's approach keeps every decision visible in the graph. As AI takes on more execution, that design choice matters more, not less.

4. Scale changes, the discipline doesn't

A solo agency owner and a Fortune 500 manufacturer solved versions of the same problem. Hannah's seven agents and Hershey's cross-functional gates sit at very different scales, but the work is the same: making work predictable, visible and owned. That's what makes work management a discipline rather than a set of tool skills.

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About the Workflow Watchlist

The Workflow Watchlist recognizes practitioners across four categories: Workflow Consultants, Workflow Architects to Watch, Work Management Leaders and Workflow Automation Innovators.

Two rules keep it credible. There is no fee to nominate, be considered or be selected. And no sponsor, partner or software vendor has any role in who is named.

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Looking Ahead to the Class of 2027

This is year one. The Class of 2026 sets the first public record of what excellent workflow practice looks like, and every class after it will add to that record.

If someone came to mind while reading these profiles, a colleague, a consultant you've hired or the person on your team who makes work flow, keep them in mind for 2027. Follow workflowwatchlist.com for the next nomination window.

Congratulations to the inaugural Class of 2026.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who is in the Workflow Watchlist Class of 2026? The inaugural class includes 11 practitioners across four categories, from The Hershey Company, U.S. Bank and Grant Thornton to independent consultants and founders. The full list is on the Class of 2026 page.

Who presents the Workflow Watchlist? The Workflow Watchlist is presented by the Work Management Institute, a vendor-neutral standards body for the work management discipline.

Do honorees pay to be listed? No. Nominating, being considered and being selected are all free.

Is the list a ranking? No. Honorees are listed alphabetically within each category. Being named to the class is the recognition.

When is the next class? The Watchlist names a new class every year. Nomination details for the Class of 2027 will be posted at workflowwatchlist.com.