Women's Leadership Summit

Morning Sweatworking - Yoga

Breakfast

General Session

Summit Opener

The Truth Is in the Trigger: Protect Your A-Game

You already know the difference between the decisions you make on your best days and the ones you make when you're running on pressure. You've felt that gap. What you may not have is a name for it — or a system for closing it. The greatest leadership risk today isn't uncertainty. It's compromised judgment under pressure. Triggers drive behavior, behavior drives decisions, and decisions drive outcomes. In the current environment — where the pace is relentless, and the margin for misalignment is shrinking — that risk is showing up in your boardrooms, your team dynamics, and your own decision quality every week. This session is a working conversation. You'll name the gap, locate where it lives in your leadership right now, and leave with a clear understanding of what protects your judgment and what undermines it. You'll leave with tools you can return to when the pressure hits.

Demystify the Boardroom with Jocelyn Mangan

Are you interested in joining a corporate board? Join Jocelyn Mangan, CEO & Founder, illumyn Impact (formerly Him For Her) & illumyn, for an engaging, 1-hour interactive session designed to help you navigate the path to your first board seat and understand what it's like to serve on a board. In this session, you'll learn how to activate your network to open doors, reframe your operational expertise through the lens of board governance, and gain a deeper understanding of the responsibilities and dynamics of board service.

Distinction by Design: How Image Drives Impact

Lunch

Workshops Round 1

1A: AI: Show Me How You Did That. Cut the AI Hype, Show the Work

Everyone's heard the AI concept pitch. What's actually harder to find is a room full of people willing to say "here's the specific tool my marketing team is using, here's what it does, and here's what it actually delivered." This session is squarely focused on AI-powered marketing platforms: think repurposing existing video assets into social content, stretching production budgets, and scaling what lean teams can actually execute. Come ready to share the tools you've found, the ones that disappointed, and what you wish someone had told you sooner.

1B: Staying True to Yourself Without Torching Your Career

The line between adapting to your environment and losing yourself in it is rarely obvious until you've already crossed it. This session gets into the mechanics of that line: how to read an organization's tolerance for authenticity, how to push back without burning bridges, and how to make the call when the cost of staying true is higher than you expected. Peer conversation surfaces the real strategies, the ones that actually work when the pressure is on and the stakes are real.

1C: From Doer to Leader (and Back Again)

The advice is consistent and well-intentioned: get out of the weeds, delegate, clear the runway. But as companies bring more capabilities in-house and push teams to do more with less, women who've been told to "lead, not do" are suddenly being asked to do both anyway. This session gets into what the micro-movements of that transition actually look like in practice, and how other organizations have navigated it without the scars. Peer conversation surfaces the real mechanics: how you build trust in your team fast enough to let go, how you protect your leadership identity when the work keeps pulling you back in, and where others have drawn the line.

1D: Leading Through the Sandwich Generation

Aging parents on one side, kids on the other, a full leadership role in the middle, and the expectation that you show up fully for all of it. For a growing number of women in this room, this isn't a future concern, it's the current reality. This session is a candid peer exchange on how to manage the logistics, the emotional weight, and the professional impact without burning out or checking out. The conversation focuses on what's actually working: how women are setting boundaries, communicating needs at work, and building support systems that hold up under real pressure.

1E: She Works Hard for the Money

More women in senior marketing roles are the primary earner in their household than the culture around them tends to acknowledge, and the identity questions that come with it rarely get airtime. This session creates space for the real conversation: how you carry the financial weight without letting it redefine your relationships, your sense of self, or the kind of partner and parent you want to be. Less about logistics, more about the internal negotiation of holding power at work and balance at home, and how other women are navigating it without losing either.

1F: Finding Mentors, Being One

The higher you climb, the fewer people are left to guide you, and the more people are looking to you to guide them. This session takes mentorship from both directions. First, finding mentors for yourself: how senior women build a personal advisory board, find sponsors, and keep learning once the formal guidance has dried up. Second, mentoring others: how to develop and champion the next generation, especially junior women, at a moment when both the talent pipeline and DEI support are shrinking. Expect a candid exchange on who actually helped, what real sponsorship looks like versus mentorship, and how to keep showing up for others without a roadmap of your own.

1G: This is My Voice Now

The things that made us shrink didn't always happen at work. For a lot of women, the story starts earlier, quieter, and darker than a bad performance review. This conversation is for the whole woman, not just her title. We'll talk honestly about what we've carried, what we've overcome, and how we're using this moment to finally stop editing ourselves. You'll leave with perspective, solidarity, and a clearer sense of what reclaiming your voice looks like from here.

1H: Putting Yourself Out There, On Your Own Terms

Plenty of accomplished women are nearly invisible outside their own company, not for lack of substance but because putting yourself out there feels uncomfortable, self-serving, or like a game nobody taught them to play. This session is for anyone who knows they should be building a public profile but freezes at the blank LinkedIn box. We will get honest about what visibility actually takes, how to promote your work and your name without performing a version of yourself you don't recognize, and what has and hasn't worked for women who finally started showing up.

Transition Break

Workshops Round 2

2A: AI: Show Me How You Did That

Everyone's heard the AI concept pitch. What's actually harder to find is a room full of people willing to say "here's the specific tool my marketing team is using, here's what it does, and here's what it actually delivered." This session is squarely focused on AI-powered marketing platforms: think repurposing existing video assets into social content, stretching production budgets, and scaling what lean teams can actually execute. Come ready to share the tools you've found, the ones that disappointed, and what you wish someone had told you sooner.

2B: Staying True to Yourself Without Torching Your Career

The line between adapting to your environment and losing yourself in it is rarely obvious until you've already crossed it. This session gets into the mechanics of that line: how to read an organization's tolerance for authenticity, how to push back without burning bridges, and how to make the call when the cost of staying true is higher than you expected. Peer conversation surfaces the real strategies, the ones that actually work when the pressure is on and the stakes are real.

2C: From Doer to Leader (and Back Again)

The advice is consistent and well-intentioned: get out of the weeds, delegate, clear the runway. But as companies bring more capabilities in-house and push teams to do more with less, women who've been told to "lead, not do" are suddenly being asked to do both anyway. This session gets into what the micro-movements of that transition actually look like in practice, and how other organizations have navigated it without the scars. Peer conversation surfaces the real mechanics: how you build trust in your team fast enough to let go, how you protect your leadership identity when the work keeps pulling you back in, and where others have drawn the line.

2D: Leading Through the Sandwich Generation

Aging parents on one side, kids on the other, a full leadership role in the middle, and the expectation that you show up fully for all of it. For a growing number of women in this room, this isn't a future concern, it's the current reality. This session is a candid peer exchange on how to manage the logistics, the emotional weight, and the professional impact without burning out or checking out. The conversation focuses on what's actually working: how women are setting boundaries, communicating needs at work, and building support systems that hold up under real pressure.

2E: She Works Hard for the Money

More women in senior marketing roles are the primary earner in their household than the culture around them tends to acknowledge, and the identity questions that come with it rarely get airtime. This session creates space for the real conversation: how you carry the financial weight without letting it redefine your relationships, your sense of self, or the kind of partner and parent you want to be. Less about logistics, more about the internal negotiation of holding power at work and balance at home, and how other women are navigating it without losing either.

2F: The Agency Is Changing. Let's Build What's Next,

The work is changing fast, and so is what a great agency looks like. Instead of asking whether agencies survive, this session asks the more useful question: what should we build now? There is real opportunity here for holding companies and independents alike, as AI clears away the rote work and frees teams to focus on what clients actually value. Led by an agency executive, this is a forward-looking exchange on how we adapt, how we build teams and structures matched to the businesses worth building, and where the next generation of agency talent and leadership comes from.

2G: Navigating Macroeconomic Instability

Planning horizons that used to stretch quarters out are now measured in weeks, and the ripple effects of tariffs, supply chain disruption, and CPM volatility are hitting brand and agency budgets from every direction at once. This session gets into how marketers are actually managing through it: the internal conversations happening with CFOs and procurement, how media investment decisions are being made when the ground keeps shifting, and what it looks like to protect long-term brand health when short-term pressures are relentless. Expect a candid exchange of what's working, what's not, and how to keep moving when stability isn't coming back anytime soon.

2H: Putting Yourself Out There, On Your Own Terms

Plenty of accomplished women are nearly invisible outside their own company, not for lack of substance but because putting yourself out there feels uncomfortable, self-serving, or like a game nobody taught them to play. This session is for anyone who knows they should be building a public profile but freezes at the blank LinkedIn box. We will get honest about what visibility actually takes, how to promote your work and your name without performing a version of yourself you don't recognize, and what has and hasn't worked for women who finally started showing up.

Networking Activity

Dinner

Late-Night Spot (Optional)

At attendee's discretion.

Morning Sweatworking - Restorative Coastal Walk

Breakfast

Shipping Desk

Workshops Round 3

3A: Training the Next Generation (Without Losing Your Mind)

The osmosis learning that used to happen just by being in a room, overhearing a client call, sitting in on a strategy session, absorbing how senior people think, evaporated with remote work, and nobody has fully replaced it. This generation isn't the problem; the systems that were supposed to train them are. Add AI to the mix and the gap gets sharper: "just use it" isn't a training strategy, prompt engineering is a real and teachable skill, and most organizations are leaving people to figure it out alone while the tools change underneath them. This session is a practical exchange on what leaders are actually doing to close both gaps, how to build the foundational training that got lost, and how to get ahead of AI skill development before it becomes an organizational liability.

3B: It's a Lot. For Everyone. Including You

The world has been loud, and it's landing on you before it ever reaches your team. For senior women leaders, there's a specific pressure: you're processing your own response to what's happening culturally and politically while being the person your team looks to for steadiness. We'll trade real approaches for staying grounded when the noise is relentless, supporting younger colleagues who are more visibly affected, and building cultures where people feel less alone without it becoming a group processing session.

3C: Redefining What the Top Looks Like

For a lot of women in this room, the path to the top is visible but the life at the top is not one they want, and that tension is quietly reshaping how they think about ambition. This session is about whether a different deal is actually possible: how women are reengineering senior roles to work on their own terms, what you have to give up to get there, and how to stop using someone else's definition of success as the benchmark.

3D: Coaching a Team Through AI Without Losing the Craft

AI is splitting teams. Some people race ahead, others freeze, and a surprising number of junior employees lean on it so hard they skip the part where they learn to think. Leaders in this room are watching the old hierarchy flip, with seasoned people adopting faster than the ones they are training. This conversation gets into the real coaching mechanics: how to push adoption without rewarding shortcuts, how to teach people to question what AI hands back, and how to keep the craft alive while the tools do more of the work.

3E: You Can't Outsource Your Village

This session explores community as a deliberate leadership practice, not the incidental byproduct of proximity or tenure. We'll get into how senior women are intentionally building and sustaining community across career moves, city changes, and the kind of political and cultural noise that makes isolation feel like the safer option.

3F: Stop Leaving It on the Table

The gap isn't information, it's empower. Senior women who know exactly what they're worth are still walking into negotiations underselling themselves, talking themselves out of the ask, or not making it at all. This session is about changing that: getting clear on your actual worth, building the information and community that makes self-advocacy possible, and learning to ask for what you deserve without apologizing for it. We'll trade real experiences and the kind of honest peer intelligence that turns "I didn't know I could ask for that" into "I would never settle for less."

3G: Finding Mentors, Being One

The higher you climb, the fewer people are left to guide you, and the more people are looking to you to guide them. This session takes mentorship from both directions. First, finding mentors for yourself: how senior women build a personal advisory board, find sponsors, and keep learning once the formal guidance has dried up. Second, mentoring others: how to develop and champion the next generation, especially junior women, at a moment when both the talent pipeline and DEI support are shrinking. Expect a candid exchange on who actually helped, what real sponsorship looks like versus mentorship, and how to keep showing up for others without a roadmap of your own.

Networking Break

Workshops Round 4

4A: Training the Next Generation (Without Losing Your Mind)

The osmosis learning that used to happen just by being in a room, overhearing a client call, sitting in on a strategy session, absorbing how senior people think, evaporated with remote work, and nobody has fully replaced it. This generation isn't the problem; the systems that were supposed to train them are. Add AI to the mix and the gap gets sharper: "just use it" isn't a training strategy, prompt engineering is a real and teachable skill, and most organizations are leaving people to figure it out alone while the tools change underneath them. This session is a practical exchange on what leaders are actually doing to close both gaps, how to build the foundational training that got lost, and how to get ahead of AI skill development before it becomes an organizational liability.

4B: It's a Lot. For Everyone. Including You

The world has been loud, and it's landing on you before it ever reaches your team. For senior women leaders, there's a specific pressure: you're processing your own response to what's happening culturally and politically while being the person your team looks to for steadiness. We'll trade real approaches for staying grounded when the noise is relentless, supporting younger colleagues who are more visibly affected, and building cultures where people feel less alone without it becoming a group processing session.

4C: Redefining What the Top Looks Like

For a lot of women in this room, the path to the top is visible but the life at the top is not one they want, and that tension is quietly reshaping how they think about ambition. This session is about whether a different deal is actually possible: how women are reengineering senior roles to work on their own terms, what you have to give up to get there, and how to stop using someone else's definition of success as the benchmark.

4D: Coaching a Team Through AI Without Losing the Craft

AI is splitting teams. Some people race ahead, others freeze, and a surprising number of junior employees lean on it so hard they skip the part where they learn to think. Leaders in this room are watching the old hierarchy flip, with seasoned people adopting faster than the ones they are training. This conversation gets into the real coaching mechanics: how to push adoption without rewarding shortcuts, how to teach people to question what AI hands back, and how to keep the craft alive while the tools do more of the work.

Lunch & The Last Conversation

One final meal together followed by a thoughtful and honest conversation that shapes what comes next.