Program Roster

"Can you describe The Missing 33%® of a woman's professional background that keeps her from reaching the top?

As women move up, we get to a point where future opportunities rest on our perceived potential for leading the business, not just leading the people. When determining whether a woman can lead the business, executives look for business, strategic and financial acumen. This is what I call The Missing 33%® of the career success equation for women — not because women don't or can't have business, strategic and financial acumen, but because very few women are clearly told how essential these skills are for reaching the top."

Much of career progress is based on how well we project our presence and self-confidence to others – our teams, our peers, our superiors. Confidence ‒ the ability to project trust in one’s self, authority, belief, and authenticity ‒ determines how we interact with others, how we promote ourselves, how we negotiate (if at all), and how much we impact our zone of influence. Lack of self-confidence can be a deal-breaker in moving ahead, even when we have the knowledge and skills to move up. We need competency and confidence to be successful!

Although most aspiring leaders know they need a confident presence, honing confidence requires more than fake it ‘til you make it platitudes. Confidence is a state of mind that can be learned and maintained by positive thinking and practice. This session, based on Selena’s guidebook, Quick Confidence: Be Authentic, Boost Connections, and Make Bold Bets on Yourself, helps ambitious professionals summon their personal power by addressing three key confidence filters—mindset shifts, body language habits, and interpersonal techniques. Whether you’re dealing with intimidating people, hoping to pitch a fresh idea or better connect with others, participants will walk away ready to show up and speak up—and help others do the same.

Middle-level leaders form the backbone of organizations as the critical link between first-level leaders and executives/officers. Middle managers transmit information up, down and across organizations, and wield enormous influence on the success or failure of organization-wide initiatives and operations. However, top-level leaders demonstrate a distinct set of capabilities, mindsets, and behaviors that differentiate them from middle-management – where most women get stuck. Leading NOW’s research identified nine (9) critical differentiators between higher-level leaders and middle managers the latter must master to move into executive and senior roles. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn what these are and through their own Leadership Readiness Assessment identify the gaps in their development.

In the post-COVID 19 era the world has changed, and the leadership landscape has changed with it. Although the need for capable leaders never changes, the specific leadership skills essential for greatest success may fluctuate with the unique demands of the times. The time-honored hard and soft skills that traditional C-Suite executives must possess have been augmented by a new set of skills that all executives are now required to demonstrate. This interactive session will probe the leadership traits that have emerged as must-haves to successfully lead today.

According to Forbes, “Executive [P]resence is about your ability to inspire confidence ‒ …in your subordinates that you’re the leader they want to follow, …among peers that you’re capable and reliable and, most importantly, …among senior leaders that you have the potential for great achievements.” Leading NOW’s research shows that to inspire confidence, you must have the ability to command the attention of leaders when presenting thoughts, plans, and ideas for your organization. In this interactive session participants will explore the critical factors necessary to demonstrate the skill of Executive Presence.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, every CEO is challenged with driving the right strategies and behaviors, tracking the right results, and making the right adjustments at the right time to grow outcomes and results. As the highest-ranking executive, CEOs use vital measurements and indicators to make informed high-level strategic decisions that determine the course of their organizations. This interactive session will examine the four (4) key business outcomes that executives monitor to measure their business performance and the relationship between participants’ work and these outcomes. Participants will also learn the importance of aligning their work to achieving these key outcomes for their organizations, and how their contributions to successful results can distinguish them from other candidates for advancement.

Change is hard, and seemingly more prevalent than ever. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, companies throughout the world have shifted the way they work, and millions of individuals have changed jobs. On the home front, transitions in relationship status, friendships, and living situations happen multiple times throughout our lives. Each transition—even the best kind—creates stress and instability that threatens wellbeing. Moving forward requires identifying the habits that hold us back and employing skills to get where we want in life. This action-oriented presentation on The Bold Move™ empowers audience members to overcome the one common obstacle preventing them from reaching their goals so they can move boldly through change, discomfort, and stress.

This keynote address is ideal for individuals, leaders, and teams that are:

• Struggling to be their best at work and at home.
• Passionate about achieving their goals, but feel stuck, drained, and stressed.
• Searching for proven skills to navigate change.

By popular demand FWLE has convened a group of diverse women Presidents and CEOs from a variety of industries to discuss their values, visions, career preparation, and experiences. This is a unique opportunity to hear valuable insights and guidance from women at the top of their organizations who have achieved success goals very few have! 

Confirmed Participants

• Sue Bhatia - Chairwoman & Founder, Rose International, Inc.
• Melonie Johnson - President & COO, MGM National Harbor
• Orsze Hodi - President, Dole Packaged Foods USA
• Genea Wilson - CEO, East Bay Ambulatory Market at Sutter Health

Moderated by Anne Leets

As one commentator put it, “[t]oday’s CEOs are not just captains steering the ship – they are navigators in uncharted waters.” Many CEO appointees are not prepared for the complexity of the challenges or the multi-faceted approaches imperative for tackling them. Even if you are not the CEO, if you serve on the CEO’s executive team, you must understand the business challenges the CEO faces daily. In this interactive session participants will examine the realities of five key challenges confronting today’s CEOs and strategies for overcoming them: Leadership as Performance Art, Going with Your Gut, Knowing When to Step Back, Managing in a State of Flux, and Navigating Geopolitics and Political Uncertainty.

To position yourself for success early in your career, it is critical to develop strong workplace relationships with your teammates, your department, your manager, and others within your organization. Successful leaders use healthy workplace relationships to work with others and cultivate trust that influences others to achieve common goals and a shared vision and mission. Building productive workplace relationships will also support your career goals and your achievements in each role along the way. Participants in this interactive session will learn the critical skill of engaging others, how to develop and maintain symbiotic relationships with your peers and your manager, and how to support strong interpersonal relationships at work.

There are now five (5) generations in American workforces simultaneously. Having age-diverse work teams can yield tremendous benefits for organizations, such as increased knowledge, skills, experience, and productivity. Yet, as with other types of diversity, many workplaces are ignoring generational diversity and failing to equip their leaders to engage effectively across generations. Through thought-provoking discussions and strategic exercises, participants in this interactive Learning Lab will probe the nuances of leading across generations to unlock hidden potential and drive innovation. With a spotlight on leveraging generational diversity as a catalyst for strategic advantage, participants will develop actionable strategies for aligning diverse values, perspectives, and communication styles across age-diverse team members to maximize performance and organizational outcomes.

Navigating our careers requires that we understand the springboards that will facilitate and the impediments that will derail our career progression. Prescriptions for leadership success often focus on what to do but neglect what not to do. Many people on the road to success are tripped up by mistakes, weaknesses, or more subtle roadblocks. This interactive session will highlight common dysfunctions to avoid and teach ways to keep your career on track.

While it is critical to understand the business of your business, it is even more critical to demonstrate your knowledge by utilizing the language of business in your communications. This requires thinking about communication differently, making a subtle shift from communicating about what you do to why the organization invests in your position and quickly connecting your work to the strategy of the organization. In this interactive session, participants will learn the key characteristics of speaking the language of organizational outcomes, providing the key skills necessary to communicate effectively with executives, senior leaders, and board members.

Participants will learn the difference between CAKE (Supportive) and PIE (Strategic) mentoring and why successful women and men leaders receive and give PIE mentoring. Participants will leave this interactive session with practical tools for future discussions and experiences that will ensure they seek and make the most of PIE mentoring relationships and techniques to earn sponsorship.

Women have a bad rap for not being good negotiators – they are traditionally portrayed as having less confidence and undermining themselves by thinking they’re “not good at it.” This stereotype is based on an outmoded view of negotiations as dominating, being right, and winning at all costs. The paradigm for successful negotiations has shifted to active listening, building collaboration and rapport, and seeking smart, win-win tradeoffs. The reality is, most people engage in negotiation virtually every day, either at work, at home, and/or in general daily commerce. This interactive session will probe how women and men can develop successful negotiation skills with preparation and confidence-building in your day-to-day life.

Trust creates the foundation for employees and their organizations to excel, adapt, and thrive at all times in their journey through continuous change. Trust is a critical leadership competency that differentiates exceptional leaders from average, low-trust ones, and great companies from those that struggle to create positive, people-based cultures and perform successfully. As leaders our ability to build trust is how we earn credibility and respect, create experiences that engage and empower our teams, and keep our people committed to our mission and continuous success, especially during crisis. This interactive program will challenge what every leader already knows about trust and make us think differently about how we intentionally build trust with others. A workplace of trust and belonging should not be the exception. It should be the standard. The best leaders make the first move. This address is the roadmap to how to make it happen.