PULL UP A CHAIR, The My First CEO Leadership Symposium

About This Event

The Weight You Don't Put Down 

You've built the career. You've earned the seat. And still — some nights the hardest part of leading isn't the decisions, it's the distance. The distance between who you have to be in the room and who you actually are. Between the leader everyone needs you to be and the person who's tired of performing a certainty she doesn't always feel.

Nobody warned you that the higher you climb, the fewer people pull up a chair and ask how you're really doing.

What It Costs You 

It shows up as the guilt of missing the school pickup for a meeting that could have waited. The quiet loneliness of being the one everyone else leans on. The second-guessing after every hard call, even the right ones. The grief of setting parts of yourself aside because “professional” so rarely leaves room for soft, or scared, or still learning.

This is the part of leadership no one puts in a slide deck. But it's real — and it's why so many capable leaders feel like they're leading on empty.

You Already Have a First CEO 

Long before your first job title, someone was already training you to lead — around a dinner table, in the quiet accountability of a family, in the way she listened, set boundaries, and let you fail safely enough to grow. Dr. Alisa J. Henley calls her the original CEO: her mother.

In her forthcoming book, My First CEO: A Mother's Leadership Legacy, Dr. Henley uncovers a leadership model that was hiding in plain sight all along — built on deep listening, boundaries rooted in love, accountability without shame, and the freedom to lead as yourself instead of a performance of yourself. It's not a new leadership theory. It's the one you already lived.

This symposium takes that model off the page and into conversation.

Who Should Attend

Emerging leaders finding their footing. Seasoned executives quietly running on empty. Students trying to figure out what leadership even looks like up close. Anyone who has ever led a team, a classroom, a household, or a life — and wondered if there was a version of leadership that didn't require losing themselves to do it well.

**Lunch will be served.     **You will receive a copy of My First CEO and the companion workbook.