Women in CPG Summit + the Step-Up Happy Hour
Thank you to Naturally Network for hosting the 2022 Women in CPG Summit. The 3-day event was filled with virtual education, conversation, national networking, and in-person connection, all hosted by our network of Affiliate Cities: Austin, Bay Area, Boulder, Chicago, North Bay, San Diego, Los Angeles, and New York.
All of the content was illuminating and we have gotten exceptional feedback from attendees about the level of learning and connection they felt through even the virtual sessions.
There were 688 total attendees across 11 virtual sessions. The most popular sessions were:
Keynote: Managing the Relationship between Founders and CEOs
Women Investing in Women: A Chat with Founders + VCs
The Path to Power: A Journey tothe C-Suite
Women on Boards: What the Numbers Don't Tell You
If you are interested in learning more about the Summit, Naturally Network Executive Director, Sharon Reddehase, shared her thoughts here.
Step-Up Happy Hour
To foster further connection, Naturally Austin hosted an in-person happy hour on March 23rd at Gathered Foods. The energy was amazing as we celebrated women and non-binary founders while sharing passed plant-based hours d’oeuvres and delicious beverages from Beatbox, Luna Bay Booch, and Ounce Water. The goal of the evening was to create space for women and non-binary founders to mingle and also have an opportunity to request and support fellow founders in a quick-fire support-a-thon.
To make this happen, we asked founders to take the stage, introduce themselves and their companies, and illicit support and the crowd. This new format was a hit and enabled our founders to drive support for their brands, ask specifically for help and engage the crowd.
Thank you to the founders and companies for taking the stage, we appreciate you Christine Mei from Gathered Foods, Sara Shah from Journ Beauty, Fran Harris from Electra, Kate Morton from Funk it Wellness, Meghan Rossi from Ounce Water, Anita Desai from TikTok, Ilene Chen from Power Up Foods, Caitlin Cash from Kinship Milk Tea and Lydia Suazo from Fona.
A huge thank you to our incredible partners who made this event possible:
One of our key priorities as an organization is to support and advocate for the success of diverse-owned businesses and we are excited to continue to host events that make this possible. This was the first time we tried the Step-Up Happy Hour format, allowing founders to seek support directly from the crowd - and it was a huge success with overwhelmingly positive feedback. We are happy to announce that Step-Up Happy Hours will become a series of events - and we’ll share more information soon about the next one.
Interested in attending or support a Naturally Austin event? Learn more here: