Conference Theme
What’s Won and Lost for Companies and Salespeople in Our Semi-Hybrid, increasingly AI-Driven World?
Join us LIVE at the 2023 Women in Sales Elevation Conference for an exciting, valuable, content-rich event bringing women sales leaders, executives, and allies together for an exceptional day of learning, career growth, business development, and networking.
Connect with more than 300 Women in Sales professionals from companies including Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Cvent, RedHat, SAP, IBM, and dozens of other leading sales organizations.
We will be delving into the impact of the hybrid workplace—personally and professionally—for women and employers, as we discuss topics critical to career growth and nurturing empowered sales teams.
- Is the flexibility of hybrid worth the loss of camaraderie and community we get from being in the office?
- Are women losing valuable “visibility” by being remote?
- Is our hybrid world keeping pandemic disconnectedness alive and leading to greater burnout?
- How can sales organizations regain the strength of the collective spirit to reignite their sales teams?
Come and be part of these important discussions with leaders in the field of remote work, team building, post-pandemic culture shock, the loss of soft skills in a virtual world, and so much more.
It’s a day you can’t afford to miss!
A Day Dedicated to Supporting the Ambitions and Career Growth of Women in Sales!
Join Employers, Women in Sales Leaders and Their Allies From Top Companies
Agenda
October 11, 2023 Welcome Reception
October 12, 2023 Conference/Full Day
Katie Cook, Senior Director, Sales Strategy at Salesforce nd WISL Forum Grad!
“Recently, I had the amazing opportunity to be a participant in the IES Women in Sales Leadership Forum led by the incomparable Gina Stracuzzi. This program not only focuses on developing leadership skills, but it provides ways to tackle unique issues facing women in sales everyday. The insight I gained from listening to amazing speakers like Tamara Greenspan, Gigi Schumm, Queirra Fenderson, PCC, Kyla O’Connell, and Anita Nielsen taught me so much about myself and how I lead others in the sales environment. I cannot recommend this program enough! HUGE thank you to Rob Stein for being an amazing ally to women in sales and advocating for Salesforce’s participation with this forum. ”
THE WISL ELEVATION CONFERENCE!
Celebrating the
Power of WISL!
After three years of isolation, career doubts and sometimes derailment it is time to come back together and celebrate our strength, our resilience, and our absolute love of selling!
October 11 & 12 will be days dedicated to getting our groove back, reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones, and considering how we move forward in ways that work for us in the aftermath of the pandemic. Don’t let these days happen without you!
Join us for the celebration!
WISL Elevation Conference Speakers
Opening Keynote: The Hybrid Work Paradox: What Sales Leaders and Employers Need to Know – Sarah Olin from LUMO Leadership
The Pandemic took a massive toll on working women. According to the White House, almost 2 million women left the workforce. We are still in the impact of the radical changes companies had to make in order to survive. This talk by women’s leadership trainer, Sarah Olin focuses on reinvention and how to create a future where you can win as a woman in sales inside of the current hybrid work paradox.
Sarah Olin is the leading voice in professional coaching and organizational transformation for working parents. A true “leader of leaders,” Sarah has an innate ability to see powerful potential in people and a laser-like ability to cut through the messiness of life to get to the heart of a problem — and deliver mind-blowing, life-changing solutions.
With years of hands-on experience and a soul-level understanding of what parents need to thrive professionally, Sarah co-founded LUMO as the first and only of its kind: a partner to help progressive organizations support their employees in the transition to working parenthood, designed and led by true experts in leadership, professional development, and employee retention.
Trained by world-renowned leaders including Dr. Brené Brown and Mark Hunter, MCC, Sarah has over 10,000 hours of coaching and facilitation experience, is credentialed by the International Coach Federation (ICF), and is certified by Accomplishment Coaching. Her professional competence, proven leadership, and dedication to her craft have led her to serve as a senior advisor to top executives and an expert consultant in the professional services sector. She has coached leaders with the United Nations, Verizon, the NBA, Google, Duke Energy, Calvin Klein, and Bloomberg, among others. She’s been featured as a keynote speaker at Amazon’s first-ever International Working Moms’ Day, the NAPABA Convention, and SHiFT Charlotte.
Regardless of the stage or space, Sarah pours love and humor into her work, helping individuals live their lives on purpose and teaching organizations how to show up for their people. Sarah is more than a leader — she’s a connector, a champion, and the mother of all motivators.
Second Keynote: What the data is saying about the impact of the hybrid workplace for women and employers – Co-CEO at Mediafly
As Mediafly’s co-CEO, Mary oversees the go-to-market team, using her expertise to implement strategies that will ensure consistent growth. Prior to joining Mediafly, Mary was the Chief Evangelist at Outreach, a Principal Analyst at Forrester covering sales tech and the future of buying and selling, an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and a Chief Revenue Officer at various global technology companies. Mary is a well-known DEI and B2B industry thought leader, keynote speaker, podcast host, author, and advisor to many leading B2B brands.
Morning Breakout Session, Decision Makers Track. Panel Discussion: Decision Makers Track: Panel Discussion. Building a Thriving Corporate Culture When the Office is Half-Empty – Nicole Chamblin
Nicole is an engaging speaker with 12+ years of experience as a coach and group facilitator. Nicole works with individuals and organizations to connect with their vision, communicate with confidence and collaborate productively. Leaders and their teams learn to move beyond surviving to thriving–without burning out. Nicole shares practical strategies that deliver immediate results. Nicole is also the host of the reChargd Roundtable for introverted women leaders.
Morning Breakout Session, General Track: How to Embrace Your Ambition and Put it to Work for You! – Queirra Fenderson, Professional Certified Coach and CEO of the Ambition Studio
About Queirra Fenderson, CEO of The Ambition Studio and ICF Professional Certified Coach
For more than a decade Queirra Fenderson worked in the marketing industry, helping Fortune 500 companies, industry nonprofits and SaaS start-ups reach their often seemingly impossible goals by empowering teams to push the envelope and hit their goal in strides.
Despite her successes, Queirra’s unstoppable attitude led not to fulfillment, but burnout. After much soul searching and reexamination of her goals, Queirra realized that things didn’t turn out as she imagined because she ignored her intuition and pushed ahead regardless. It was a hard lesson, but one that ultimately lead to greater success.
As founder of The Ambition Studio, Queirra helps individuals become better leaders by tapping into and trusting their intuition. Her passion is helping professionals build their personal leadership style and hit their highest level of performance, without burnout! A Professional Certified Coach, Facilitator and Speaker, Queirra inspires professional audiences with her dynamic keynotes, TED-style talks and interactive workshops to embrace a new style of leadership.
The Ambition Studio is a boutique coaching and leadership firm that helps successful leaders reinvent their relationship to their ambition in the workplace. We offer credentialed expertise in several areas including; executive coaching, leadership development, keynote speaking, and facilitation. Adhering to the philosophy that we are the leaders of our lives, The Ambition Studio strives to improve communication, shift relationship dynamics and ignite the ambitious drive within staff and leadership teams. Looking to activate your staff’s intuitive leadership? Contact the Founder, Queirra Fenderson, PCC at queirra@theambitionstudio.com, for your next professional development training or corporate retreat!
Afternoon Sessions, Decision Makers Track: Workshop: Have Your Sellers Lost Their Edge? Using EQ and Empathy to Help Your Sellers Revive or Elevate that Selling Feeling! – Kyla O’Connell, Founder and Lead Facilitator at WIN WIN – Empathy Driven Sales Training.
Kyla boasts more than two decades of remarkable experience as a sales professional and sales leader. With a strong trajectory in sales and sales management, she cultivated her expertise within the realms of golf course management, IT, resorts and private business clubs. In 2006, Kyla founded a boutique marketing agency called DRIVEN, later merging it with her largest customer, ASHER, a prominent sales training company headquartered in Washington, D.C.
During her tenure as a vested partner at ASHER, Kyla played a pivotal role in the training and mentorship of sales personnel nationwide and globally including engagements spanning Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Canada, and China. Her focus centered on imparting a repeatable sales process and elevating customers’ emotional intelligence to close new business opportunities. Kyla launched four new revenue streams for the company during her 15 year tenure at ASHER.
In 2021, her coaching client extended an invitation to Kyla to join their sales leadership team in a full-time capacity. Kyla’s tenure as the Director of Sales Enablement at Bay Cities witnessed several of her direct reports achieving exponential growth, even doubling their sales revenue goals and progressing to the next echelon of their sales career. Kyla also embarked on a mission to foster emotional intelligence development across various departments within Bay Cities. Her comprehensive approach contributed to a more cohesive and empathic work environment.
A realization dawned upon Kyla that her true passion lay in consulting and training diverse teams. Consequently, in the summer of 2023, she inaugurated a fresh chapter by founding WIN WIN, a sales training firm. Under the new company, WIN WIN, Kyla imparts empathy-driven selling skills and techniques in conjunction with exemplary strategies rooted in emotional intelligence. The new venture is poised to catalyze the success of sales professionals driven to achieve the next level in their careers.
Afternoon Sessions: General Track, Workshop: Go from Crazy Busy to Calm Productive Living with Science-Backed Strategies. – Megan Miller, TEDX + Global Speaker, International Best-Selling Author of Voices of the 21st Century: Women Transforming the World.
Over the past 15 years, her laser focus was on climbing up the corporate ladder which resulted in a successful career as a Sales Executive in the Hospitality industry, managing a portfolio of 150 domestically based hotels producing $1B in managed revenues. Raised by a single mother in rural Pennsylvania, inflicted with a speech impediment and feeling like she had to fight for my seat at the table, Megan clawed her way to the corner office and landed her dream job. Despite being recognized for my accomplishments, her felt empty and unfulfilled. She found herself disconnected from life, $20k in debt, in a loveless relationship, and binge drinking to numb the pain. Megan’s wakeup call came when she was gifted a Tony Robbins box cd set and soaked up the words like it was water on a hot summer day. After realizing that she was living in a lonely, dark world focused on hustle and achievement, she made a choice to be brave and get still, and start using power of using intention to live a more inspired life. Megan is dedicated to offering high performing go-getting professional women simple, daily micro-steps for putting attention to intention so they can stop sleepwalking through life and start living with inspiration and fulfillment. When she’s delivering her message of intentional living, she can be found with her husband Michael in their New Jersey home that they share with their 13-year-old beagle rescue and actively sweating it out with her Peloton community.
Afternoon Sessions, Decision Makers Track: Building Stronger Sales Teams in the Face of Uncertainty by Leading with Intention. – Kim Napolitano, Executive Director, Industry Relations & Intermediary Group Sales at Hilton
Kim Napolitano oversees the HWS Industry Relations and Intermediary Group Sales team, leading seven sales professionals focused on being the most sought-after sales partner in hospitality while ensuring Hilton remains a trusted advisor to our clients worldwide. She is responsible for department revenue generation to the Hilton Enterprise and developing, optimizing, and controlling Hilton’s group preferred partnership agreements, department operating budget, and the annual business plan. She is passionate about filling the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality as she builds tomorrow’s leaders today. She is a graduate of Radford University, is married to her college sweetheart, Michael, and has three children in their 20’s. She loves her Peloton, and during the height of the pandemic, she became a Master Practitioner of Energetic Medicine.
Gina Stracuzzi, Conference Chairperson, CoFounder & Director, IES Women in Sales Leadership Forum
Gina Stracuzzi has been in sales or business development her entire career, which started with selling commodity futures to cattlemen in Texas! For the last 25+ years, Gina has honed her skills as a sales and business development strategist, working primarily with women-owned or led companies in the U.S. and Europe to help them drive revenue growth and develop successful sales strategies.
Throughout her career, Gina has been inspired by the belief that when women thrive, business thrives. This driving passion has allowed her to empower countless women and help them understand and leverage their innate strengths, enabling them to reach the highest levels in their careers and businesses.
It is that same passion that led Gina to co-found and develop the IES Women in Sales Leadership (WISL) Center, a platform that fosters growth, collaboration, and mentorship for women in sales. The WISL Center comprises the WISL Forum, Jr Forum, and WISL Alumni Experience, path-changing programs designed to ensure more women are elevated into sales leadership; the IES Premier Women in Sales Employer (PWISE) Certification for outstanding companies for women in sales; the annual WISL Elevation Conference; and a variety of in-house professional development offerings.
For her leadership, Gina was named one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Sales by the DemandBase and the Women in Sales Club, for two consecutive years.
On a personal note, Gina has a daughter in college, two amazing adult stepchildren, and now, one very handsome grandson! She and her husband are enjoying the proverbial empty nest with their two Soft-Coated Wheaten Terriers in Richmond, VA.
