The Future of Women’s Business Events, Conferences, and Festivals
Four women. Three distinctly different event models. One fascinating look at how female founders are reimagining the rooms where women come to build businesses, expand their influence, make connections, and decide what comes next. Four Founder Changing The Landscape.
The women’s business conference is having a makeover.
What was once largely a landscape of hotel ballrooms, keynote speakers, networking breaks, and motivational panels is becoming something far more experiential - and far more reflective of the women actually attending.
She might be a founder, a content creator, an executive, or building a personal brand. A coach launching a podcast. A speaker writing a book. A corporate leader contemplating her entrepreneurial era. An influencer building an actual company behind her following. Or a solopreneur attempting to look (and operate) like a much larger brand.
Today’s women’s conference attendee wants strategy, but she also wants inspiration. She wants the right introduction, the candid conversation, the platform training she didn’t know she needed. And preferably all in a very experiential way.
Increasingly, the people creating these events are the very people the events are created for. They are the ones who see the gap on both sides of the fence and create an experiential solution to it.
We’re taking a look at four female founders and three distinctly different event concepts that offer an intriguing case study in where this new women’s business-event landscape may be headed.
Ati Grinspun of Be You Brand Live, Jaclyn Johnson and Marina Middleton of Create & Cultivate, and Priscilla Nakane of She Speaks CEO National Women in Leadership Conference. Their approaches are decidedly different, and perhaps that’s exactly the point. Women don’t need another conference built around a cookie-cutter conference format. We need events built around who we already are: modern, multi-layered, and future-forward.
BE YOU BRAND’S ATI GRINSPUN: BUILD THE WOMAN. THEN BUILD THE BRAND
At the center of the Be You Brand Live experience is a philosophy inseparable from its founder: there is tremendous power in becoming unapologetically yourself.
Ati Grinspun has turned that belief into both a business and a movement. Originally from Argentina, Grinspun built her entrepreneurial career by just going for it, with no second-guessing herself. Four years later, she’s turned her fearless approach into personal branding, coaching, speaking, and authorship. Her own evolution informs much of what she now teaches other women: visibility isn’t simply about marketing yourself. First, you have to be willing to be seen. Grinspun brings her unmistakable energy to helping women get past that hesitation. Be You Brand Live is a women’s business event that emphasizes boldness, manifestation, personal brand, confidence, and the willingness to pursue what you want—even when the path to getting there looks nothing like the traditional business playbook.
JACLYN JOHNSON + MARINA MIDDLETON:
TURN BUSINESS INTO A FESTIVAL
Then there is Create & Cultivate, where business meets Millennial and Gen Z pop culture and apparently decides they should have been hanging out all along.
Founder Jaclyn Johnson launched Create & Cultivate in 2012 and grew it into one of the most recognizable platforms in women’s entrepreneurship. After selling a majority stake in the business in 2021, Johnson ultimately returned to the company, buying back majority ownership alongside entrepreneur and executive Marina Middleton in 2023. Middleton’s relationship with the brand adds another dimension to the story: she first experienced Create & Cultivate as an attendee—before eventually becoming its CEO and partner.
Together, Johnson and Middleton have continued evolving the idea of what a women’s business event can look and feel like.
And “feel” may be the operative word.
Create & Cultivate doesn’t ask women to choose between serious business education and the energy of a culturally relevant festival.
It deliberately combines them.
Programming stretches from CEOs and business leaders to creators and cultural personalities, while the physical experience includes workshops, musical performances, immersive brand activations, a small-business marketplace, and tech-enabled networking. This is festivalization 101 applied directly to how the on-trend generation is doing business.
Create & Cultivate recognized early that professional development doesn’t have to look corporate to create serious business value. Women can want strategy and entertainment.
Capital and culture. A valuable introduction and a photograph worth posting afterward.
None of those things diminishes the others.
The result is something that feels part conference, part marketplace, part networking engine, and part cultural event.
And with this year’s festival projected to have 4,000+ attendees, Create & Cultivate demonstrates just how significant the appetite has become for a business experience.
SHE SPEAKS CEO
PRISCILLA NAKANE: DON’T JUST BUILD THE EVENT. BUILD THE INFRASTRUCTURE. THEN LAUNCH THE ECOSYSTEM.
Former executive leadership and brand strategist turned founder Priscilla Nakane approached the women’s conference landscape from another direction entirely.
She started with the gaps. After over two decades spent in corporate, across B2B, marketing, public relations, media, event production, and government, Nakane watched women repeatedly encounter the same problem: plenty of inspirational conferences, not enough with relevant leadership development for modern women leaders.
No modern professional development for women navigating AI, the future of work, or rapidly changing expectations of leadership. No conferences that provided women with intentional education to develop executive presence, influence, or visibility. And no solution for continuing the professional development beyond the conference. So she created a national women in leadership conference to address those gaps, then designed a complete ecosystem to further the support. She Speaks CEO now provides continued access to leadership development via a membership network, regional activations, delegation houses alongside major world events, and online as well as corporate training, in addition to its conference.
Four fearless female founders. Three disruptive event models. And one increasingly important realization:
THE FUTURE OF WOMEN’S BUSINESS EVENTS DOESN’T NEED JUST ONE MODEL: IT NEEDS MORE FEARLESS WOMEN CREATING ROOMS WORTH WALKING INTO.
