AAPEX Announces Coach Mike Krzyzewski As 2026 Keynote Breakfast Speaker
The Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo (AAPEX) announced today that Coach Mike Krzyzewski will be the headline speaker at the AAPEX 2026 Keynote Breakfast. His talk will center on “Victory through Teamwork and Leadership,” followed by a live audience question-and-answer session.
Coach K, as he’s often called, is best known for his storied career as a basketball coach. His leadership and skills for fostering teamwork helped the Duke Blue Devils win five NCAA championship games, and the U.S. Olympic Basketball Team win three gold medals.
He has also written New York Times best-selling books based on his experience, including Beyond Basketball: Coach K’s Keywords for Success, Leading with the Heart: Coach K's Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life, and more recently, The Gold Standard: Building a World-Class Team.
“Coaching is really about teaching a course on teamwork and leadership every day,” Coach K told LEADERS magazine in a 2023 interview. “For me, even though I have retired from coaching, I have not retired from the study of leadership and teamwork.”
Indeed, he’s the co-founder of the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke University—and continues to study the topic as a Professor of Practice Leadership at the Fuqua School of Business. In those roles, Krzyzewski has contributed to the leadership development of more than 6,500 MBA students since 2024.
Like the aftermarket, Coach K is no stranger to adversity
While many public accounts focus on his successes, Coach K is no stranger to adversity. For example, Krzyzewski openly discussed the adversity he faced as a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point—and later as a commissioned U.S. Army officer in public interviews and appearances.
His career as a basketball coach wasn’t devoid of challenges either, according to a 2022 account by the Raleigh News & Observer. By the end of his third year at Duke, the Blue Devils suffered an NCAA tournament loss to Virginia and finished the season with 38 wins and 47 losses. The public backlash was brutal, with many calls for his firing.
Yet, Duke recognized the potential of a largely freshman team and the then still fairly new head coach. They stuck with him, and history shows they were handsomely rewarded for their patience. In the ensuing decades, Coach K would lead the Blue Devils to 13 NCAA Final Fours, winning five, and racked up a record 1,202 victories.
Parallels to overcoming change and uncertainty
The constant change and uncertainty he faced as a coach are some of the most notable parallels between Krzyzewski’s career and the automotive aftermarket. “It is called Duke basketball, but the team changes each year, and with the rapidity of players leaving over the last decade, it really became a different team each year,” he said in the aforementioned magazine interview. “You have to adapt to change, and things are always changing.”
Similarly, the $2.3 trillion-dollar global automotive aftermarket has faced down a seemingly unending barrage of uncertainty: technological innovation, volatile trade policy, the stutter steps with respect to electric vehicles, the REPAIR Act, and the shortage of skilled labor from manufacturing facilities to auto repair technicians, among many others.
A March 2026 AAPEX survey of 448 U.S.-based aftermarket professionals found “uncertainty” is the top challenge currently facing the industry. One of the clearest places this shows up is in the supply chain: Seven in 10 respondents (70%) have supplier diversification initiatives in some way, shape or form – including 46% who are actively working to diversify suppliers.
“Supply chain uncertainty is perhaps one of the most complex issues that directly affects an industry that accounts for 2.5% of the U.S. GDP and impacts every consumer that owns a vehicle,” said Emily Poladian, president, MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers, which co-produces AAPEX with its partner, the Auto Care Association. “Coach K’s experiences are especially well-suited to deliver the right message at the right time at AAPEX 2026.”
“Coach K served as a basketball coach for 42 seasons—that’s 42 times he had to lead raw, young talent and forged them into a cohesive team that dominated college-level basketball for decades,” said Auto Care Association President and CEO Bill Hanvey. “There’s an amazing similarity to that legacy and what the thousands of aftermarket businesses are facing right now with the skilled labor shortage.”
Show and keynote ticket information
With a reputation for a place where business gets done, AAPEX is one of the fastest-growing trade shows in the world. It attracts thousands of exhibitors and tens of thousands of attendees from more than 120 countries annually.
AAPEX 2026 will be held at the Venetian Expo and AAPEX Forum in Las Vegas from Nov. 3-5, 2026. The keynote breakfast is a ticketed event and will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, from 6:30 a.m. until 8:45 a.m., at The Venetian Hotel, Palazzo Ballroom.