What 350 Ambitious Women in One Room Actually Feels Like

This week, I stood in a room with 350 women who have spent the last 16 months in the trenches together. Many of us had only been in the same physical space two or three times before. Some of us had never been in the same room at all. And yet when we found each other in that hotel lobby, it was screaming hugs and jumping up and down and the kind of joy that doesn't pretend.

Eight of those women took the big stage in front of 500 people. Two of them are dear friends of mine.

One of them is Karen Lynn Kaplan, who walked us through surviving the 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Center and left the audience with an image none of us will forget: a small patch of blue sky overhead, representing clarity in the middle of chaos. She left her heart on that stage. And for hours afterward, all anyone could talk about was that patch of blue.

The day before the main event, I took a smaller stage alongside several of my friends. We had a few minutes each to share new material with 150 women, including event planners. Different stage. Different stakes. Same pressure.

Here is something I have learned about speaking to women who know you: it is harder, not easier. These were not strangers we could impress with credentials and a clean delivery. These were friends. Practitioners. Experts in our own craft who would catch every miss. None of us wanted to disappoint the people who had walked the road with us. None of us wanted anyone in that room to wonder if we had earned our place on the stage.

And still, if I had to describe the entire week in one word, it would be Lovefest.

From the emcees, to the founder, to the eleven-time Olympian Allyson Felix who stood patiently with every woman who wanted a picture or a question answered. The energy in that room was not competition. It was not posturing. It was ambition and laughter and feedback and encouragement, all moving in the same direction.

I am still exhausted. This newsletter is late because of it. And I do not regret a single hour.

Here is what I keep coming back to. Hard-charging, high-achieving, ambitious women are a beautiful group of people. And when they make the conscious decision to lean forward into each other's spaces, to provide real support and real feedback and real encouragement, they create rooms that can literally take your breath away. Rooms that leave you reaching for words that do not exist, because no language could hold what just happened.

I feel called to create more rooms like this.

That is why Women of Altitude exists. A free, curated community for accomplished women who are tired of carrying their ambition alone and ready to be in real conversation with women who can keep up. 

If that sounds like the room you have been looking for, you can apply to join us here: 

[Apply to Women of Altitude →]

Email me if you want to learn more.

🤏TINY TWEEK Challenge

Name one ambitious woman in your life this week. Not in your head. Out loud, to her. 

Tell her specifically what you see her building, and what it makes possible for the rest of us. 

Watch what happens in the room when ambition gets celebrated instead of softened.

That is how these rooms get built. One named woman at a time.