2026 Women's Connected Leadership Summit

Description

2026 Women’s Connected Leadership Summit

Lead with courage. Connect with purpose. Grow together.

Leadership doesn’t happen in isolation; it grows through connection, shared experience, and showing up fully. The Women’s Connected Leadership Summit brings together women from Southern California for two days of learning, reflection, and connection.

Through keynotes, panels, and immersive experiences, you’ll explore how to lead authentically, balance life’s demands, and cultivate relationships that strengthen your impact. This is a space to pause, reflect, and recharge your leadership, while building a community of women who inspire and support one another.

 

What You’ll Experience:

The Courage to Live and Lead Out Loud

Discover how authenticity, connection, and wholeness can amplify your leadership. Kathleen Fariss shares stories and lessons to inspire women to find their voice and step boldly into impact.

Beyond the Title: The Many Dimensions of a Woman’s Life

Explore the full spectrum of your roles as leader, mentor, partner, and community-builder and learn how embracing wholeness creates space for others to rise alongside you.

Leading Without Losing Yourself
Learn how to lead from a place of clarity and alignment rather than performance, so you can make decisions with confidence while staying grounded in your values.

We Are Not Meant to Climb Alone
Experience the power of connection through Katie’s story of friendship, courage, and climbing to Everest Base Camp, discovering what it means to stop climbing alone.

Creating a Reflective Relationship with Your World
Through guided, reflective practice, capture what you want to carry forward, release what no longer serves you, and gain new perspective on your next steps as a leader.

Letting Go and Leading Forward
Release old expectations and limiting beliefs to move forward with clarity, purpose, and confidence.

The Power of Your Circle: Building Your Personal Board of Directors
Identify and cultivate the relationships that support your growth, challenge your thinking, and help you maximize your impact.

Join us in Claremont for two transformative days of leadership, connection, and growth. Spaces are limited, register today to secure your spot!
 

Day 1 Agenda

Women’s Connected Leadership Summit

7:30 – 8:30 AM
Check-In & Continental Breakfast
Arrive, settle in, and begin the day in conversation with fellow leaders over a light breakfast.

8:30 – 9:30 AM
The Courage to Live and Lead Out Loud
Opening Keynote & Activity | Kathleen
Leadership begins with the courage to show up fully. In this opening keynote, participants will be invited into a powerful reflection on authenticity, voice, and the courage required to lead with conviction in every space we occupy.

 

9:30 – 10:30 AM
Beyond the Title: The Many Dimensions of a Woman’s Life
Interactive Panel | Elisabeth, Vanessa, Sabeth
Women often carry many roles beyond a single title. In this engaging panel and interactive conversation, speakers explore how identity, responsibility, and leadership intersect—and how embracing the full spectrum of who we are strengthens the way we lead.

10:30 – 10:45 AM
Break

10:45 AM – 12:00 PM
Leading Without Losing Yourself
Guided Experience | Tracy
Leadership can demand much of us. This grounding session invites participants to reconnect with their values, center their leadership in self-awareness, and explore practices that help leaders remain whole while leading others well.

12:00 – 1:00 PM
Lunch

1:00 – 4:00 PM
We Are Not Meant to Climb Alone
Community Experiential Activity | Katie
Leadership is strengthened through connection. This immersive afternoon experience invites participants into collaborative activities designed to build trust, deepen relationships, and remind us that leadership journeys are best navigated together.

4:00 – 5:30 PM
Networking Reception
Hosted at a local Chamber Member location. Continue the conversations from the day and build meaningful connections with fellow leaders.

5:30 PM
Dinner on Your Own

Day 2 Agenda

Women’s Connected Leadership Summit

7:30 – 8:30 AM
Continental Breakfast
Start the morning reconnecting with fellow participants over breakfast and prepare for another day of learning, reflection, connection.

8:30 – 8:45 AM
Welcome & Day 2 Overview | Kathleen
A brief welcome to ground the day ahead, revisit key insights from Day 1, and set the intention for the conversations and experiences to come.

8:45 – 11:45 AM
Creating a Reflective Relationship with Your World: Balancing Continuity and Change
Storytelling & Owning Your Voice | Kristine

Stories shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us. In this engaging session, participants will explore the power of storytelling as a leadership tool—learning how to own their voice, reflect on their experiences, and navigate change while staying grounded in who they are.

10:15 – 10:30 AM
Break

11:45 AM – 12:45 PM
Lunch

12:45 – 2:45 PM
Letting Go and Leading Forward
Immersive Leadership Activities | Katie, Tracy, Elisabeth

Leadership often requires releasing what no longer serves us so we can step forward with clarity and purpose. Through guided and experiential activities, participants will reflect on what they are holding onto, practice letting go, and explore how to move forward with renewed confidence and vision.

2:45 – 3:00 PM
Break

3:00 – 4:00 PM
The Power of Your Circle: Building Your Personal Board of Directors
Interactive Session | Kathleen & Julia

No leader thrives alone. In this session, participants will explore how to intentionally cultivate a circle of trusted advisors, mentors, and supporters—a personal board of directors that strengthens leadership, decision-making, and resilience.

4:00 – 4:15 PM
Closing Reflections | Kathleen
We conclude the summit by reflecting on the insights, connections, and commitments participants will carry forward as they continue their leadership journeys.

 

Conference Sessions:

The Courage to Live and Lead Out Loud

What becomes possible when women lead from a place of authenticity, connection, and wholeness?

In this opening keynote, Kathleen Fariss shares lessons from decades of leadership, community building, and guiding others to find and use their voice. Through personal reflection and lived experience, she invites participants to consider the impact they are uniquely positioned to make in their organizations, communities, and lives—and the courage it takes to step fully into that calling.

Beyond the Title: The Many Dimensions of a Woman’s Life

Women often carry many roles beyond a single title leader, mentor, caregiver, partner, community builder, and more.

This conversation explores how these dimensions shape the way we lead and influence the world around us. Panelists will share insights from their own journeys, reflecting on identity, responsibility, and the power of embracing the fullness of who we are.

This session is an invitation to lead with courage, live with intention, and recognize that when women lead from a place of wholeness and community, they not only transform their own path they create space for others to rise alongside them.

Leading Without Losing Yourself

Leadership can demand a great deal of our energy, attention, and identity. But sustainable leadership requires more than performance; it requires grounding.

Through guided reflection and discussion, participants will explore the difference between performance-based leadership and grounded leadership, where clarity, self-trust, and alignment shape how decisions are made and how leaders show up for others.

This session invites women to reconnect with their values, recognize patterns that pull them away from themselves, and cultivate practices that allow them to lead with both strength and wholeness.

We Are Not Meant to Climb Alone

Katie shares the story of a friendship that began with curiosity and ultimately led to a trek to Everest Base Camp. What unfolded was far more than a mountain adventure. It became a season of deep identity work, releasing inherited stories, and redefining what strength and sisterhood truly look like.

Through this powerful narrative, participants will reflect on the relationships that support their leadership journeys and consider the importance of walking alongside others who challenge, encourage, and uplift them.

Participants will leave with a renewed understanding of who is walking beside them—and the courage to stop climbing alone.

Creating a Reflective Relationship with Your World Balancing Continuity and Change

Leadership and life both require the ability to navigate seasons of change while staying grounded in who we are.

In this reflective and experiential session, participants will explore the practice of creating a thoughtful relationship with the world around them. Through a guided outdoor activity, attendees will use photography and observation to capture images that represent where they are today, what they want to carry forward and what they are ready to release.

Through guided questions and small-group reflection, participants will explore themes such as identity, continuity, growth, and possibility. This creative exercise invites women to slow down, observe their inner landscape, and gain a new perspective on how they want to move forward in their leadership and lives.

Participants will leave with a meaningful visual representation of their reflections and insights from the experience.

Letting Go and Leading Forward

Leadership often requires the courage to release what no longer serves us old expectations, inherited narratives, limiting beliefs, or roles we have outgrown.

In this immersive session, participants will engage in guided activities designed to help them identify what they may be holding onto and explore what becomes possible when they create space for something new.

Through reflection, conversation, and shared experience, women will consider how letting go can be a powerful leadership act, one that allows them to move forward with greater clarity, purpose, and confidence.

The Power of Your Circle: Building Your Personal Board of Directors

The most effective leaders intentionally surround themselves with people who challenge their thinking, offer wisdom, open doors, and provide honest support along the way.

In this interactive session, participants will explore the concept of a Personal Board of Directors—a trusted circle of advisors, mentors, peers, and champions who help shape decisions, expand perspective, and support growth.

Through guided reflection and conversation, attendees will identify the voices they need around them in this season of leadership and life. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how to cultivate relationships that strengthen their leadership, deepen community, and support the impact they are called to make.

 

Conference Speakers:

Kristine Bio: 

Dr. Kristine Marin Kawamura is the Founder and CEO of Yoomi Consulting, working with boards and senior leaders on stewardship and governance when responsibility exceeds existing structures, helping institutions carry long-term responsibility, legitimacy, and care for human consequence deliberately under conditions of complexity. A Clinical Full Professor of Management and the Director of Societal & Global Impact at the Drucker School of Management, Claremont, CA, her work explores the intersection of human-centered leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship, and societal impact.

Vanessa Bio: 

Vanessa Van Holland is the co-owner of Restoration 1 of Rancho Cucamonga, a 24/7 emergency restoration company serving homes and businesses across Southern California. With a background in economics and a natural strength in building relationships, Vanessa and her husband Kenny have grown a trusted restoration business in one of the most competitive markets in the country. Known for her hands-on leadership and calm, reassuring presence during stressful property loss situations, Vanessa is deeply committed to serving homeowners with clarity and care. She is also an active community leader involved in BNI and local chambers of commerce, where she champions connection and collaboration. When she’s not working, Vanessa’s favorite role is being a mom to her two young boys and spending time with her family.

Sabeth Bio: 

 

Sabeth Kapahu inspires enthusiasm in others and is dedicated to elevating the potential of every leader. As CEO of Invited Back LLC, a team member at WiLD Leaders Inc., and a devoted mom of four, she’s passionate about building bridges across cultures through coaching, connection, and story. Raised in Olympia, WA, Sabeth’s journey has taken her around the world for mission work, education, and leadership development.  Now rooted on Hawaiʻi Island with her husband William, she leads with a heart shaped by faith, a global perspective, and a calling to empower leaders across generations.

 

Katie Bio:

 

Katie Rucker is a second generation family business leader, strategic foresight practitioner, and endlessly curious question asker who co leads MacKenzie with her twin sister, evolving the insights and foresight consulting firm their father founded more than 40 years ago. Her work sits at the intersection of human insight, future thinking, and generational leadership. As a speaker and facilitator, Katie is known for creating spaces where honest conversations unfold, perspectives expand, and leaders remember they were never meant to navigate growth and change alone. 

 

Julia Bio: 

 

Julia is a Strategic Career Consultant at Ride the Tide Collective with over 14 years of experience helping ambitious professionals control their careers. She guides individuals through career exploration, management, and advancement. Julia has been featured in top media outlets like Forbes, Newsweek, and Fortune, and she’s the host of the Control Your Career podcast. Her direct, results-driven approach has empowered thousands to align their careers with their values and goals.

 

Kathleen Bio: 

 

Kathleen Fariss is an ICF-certified executive coach, seasoned change agent, and CEO of the Claremont Chamber of Commerce. With over 30 years of experience, she has led organizational growth across higher education, local government, and nonprofits. Kathleen is the founder of Fariss Coaching & Consulting and a certified WILD facilitator, passionate about empowering leaders to grow with authenticity and impact. She holds an M.S. in Leadership and Management and a B.S. in Organizational Management from the University of La Verne. Deeply rooted in Claremont, she fosters strategic partnerships that strengthen communities and elevate the people within them.

 

Elisabeth Bio:  

Elisabeth Armijo is the founder of Meraki Now, Inc, an educator, speaker, and organizational leader with over 20 years of experience in education, nonprofit leadership, and staff development. She partners with schools, agencies, and organizations to strengthen how teams support students and clients, especially those with exceptional needs. With a Master’s in Education from Pepperdine University, Elisabeth specializes in trauma-informed practices, behavior intervention, and strengths-based instruction. Certified in CPI, TBRI, and Human Resource Management, she is known for delivering practical, human-centered training that helps professionals support neurodiverse individuals and build more inclusive environments.

 

2026 Women’s Connected Leadership Summit – FAQs

Where and when is the Connected Leadership Summit?
The Summit takes place May 4–5, 2026 at the Peter F Drucker School of Management Claremont Graduate University 

Address: 1021 N Dartmouth Ave, Claremont, CA 91711

Day 1 runs 7:30 AM – 5:30 PM,

Day 2 runs 7:30 AM – 4:15 PM. 

Check-in and continental breakfast begin at 7:30 AM both days.

What is included in my registration?
Your registration includes:

• Access to all keynote sessions, panels, interactive workshops, and immersive activities over both days
• Continental breakfast and lunch each day
• Networking reception on Day 1
• Summit materials and resources for reflection and follow-up
   

What should I wear?
Business casual attire is recommended. Dress comfortably for movement during experiential activities and small group sessions. Bring a sweater or layer for indoor air conditioning.

Who should attend?
The Summit is ideal for women who are:

• Career professionals, business owners, caregivers, volunteers, or community leaders
• ​Interested in developing leadership, building community, and strengthening self-awareness
• Based in Claremont and Southern California, though all local and regional women are welcome

Are children allowed?
This event is designed for adult participants. Children are not permitted.

Will I receive a Certificate of Completion?
Yes. Attendees will receive a Certificate of Completion following the Summit.

How will I receive information about the Summit after registering?
All registered attendees will receive email updates with:

• Event details and schedule
• ​Location, parking, and accessibility information
• Pre-Summit resources and materials

I registered for the event on behalf of someone else. How do I update the ticket?
Contact the event team via the registration platform or email to update attendee information. Make sure to provide the correct name and email for the ticket holder.

Do I need a physical copy of the ticket when registering on-site?
No, a digital ticket on your phone is sufficient for check-in.

I registered, but I am no longer able to attend. Can I get a refund?
Refunds or ticket transfers are subject to the event’s policy. Please contact the event team as soon as possible. Transfers to another attendee may be permitted.

I need a copy of my order receipt. How can I obtain this?
Receipts can be downloaded from your registration confirmation email or requested from the event support team.

Can I pay for my ticket via check, purchase order, or ACH transfer?
Yes. Please contact the event team directly to arrange alternative payment methods.

I registered for a group of tickets now in my name. How can I update this for each team member separately?
Contact the registration team to update individual attendee details for each ticket in your group