Over the past 35 years in the workforce, leadership norms didn’t evolve in ways that welcomed women; they evolved through the pressure, presence and persistence of women willing to push them forward.
In the meetings industry, success often meant reading the room and reshaping yourself accordingly: neutral enough to belong, polished enough to be taken seriously, ambitious enough to compete...never so human that it disrupted the system.
Looking back on my career, I can see how each era demanded a different version of professionalism and how often women carried the responsibility for making real progress.
[Related: Courtney Stanley Explores Women’s Issues in the Meetings and Events Industry]
Dress for Success?
It fits like a glove; my navy-blue suit with a pale blue pinstripe, tailor-made in Vietnam for a fraction of the cost in a retail store. I’d landed my first big event position managing internal events for a telecommunications company in Sydney in the late 1990s and this suit was my armor.
It was still the era of masculine dominance in the workforce. Leadership norms were defined almost entirely by masculine-coded values and my peers and I all knew the M.O.
For the last decade, being androgynous was my goal; draw no attention to my figure or my looks. Ignore the sexist comments from bosses, clients and peers. Ignore the bikini beach babe calendars on desks and the misogyny in Monday-morning stories from weekend escapades. Success required assimilation. I saw how the women in leadership roles made it by adapting to these norms, sometimes at the cost of relational or emotional expression.
[Related Podcast: Courtney Stanley on Women's Empowerment in the Meetings Industry]
By the time I immigrated to Las Vegas in 2009 it was the “Lean In” era. I started my own event management agency and gave birth to my first (and only) child. I was determined to “have it all,” and conducted client site visits in heels and an eight-month baby bump! I did my best to keep my home office a secret and hired an in-home nanny so I would be professional during the 9-5 business hours.
And my fashion? It was a joy to dress up more feminine in dresses, jackets and heels. It was empowering for some and exhausting for others. The system itself remained largely unchanged; while women were encouraged to stretch further into it. Ambition was validated, but still measured by masculine standards. One client openly questioned whether I would be capable of doing both his event and raising a newborn.
Badassery Arrives
You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero was on everyone’s lips in the mid-2010s. GirlBoss is a cultural moment that blended feminism, entrepreneurship and personal branding. I surrounded myself with accomplished businesswomen and enjoyed the hard work and glamour of our industry.
While energizing, it often glorified overwork in business, motherhood and marriage. Many women later recognized that the aesthetic of empowerment masked the same productivity pressures—in more attractive packaging.
By the late 2010s and into the early 2020s women began rejecting constant striving and performative confidence. There was growing skepticism toward any model that required self-erasure, overextension or endless optimization—I call it the Backlash era.
[Related: Two Trailblazers Spark a Movement to Address and Combat Sexual Harassment in the Meetings Industry]
These black Sketchers were so comfortable and stylish, I’d been running errands in them all week. Could I? Dare I? Yes!
I wore sneakers for the first time ever to a conference and it felt liberating to merge my home style at work. My desire to execute on the same client projects felt depleting. I was homesick for Australia. I was fatigued from the performative empowerment of “having it all.”
Anxiety reared its head—demanding change.
COVID Calls
And then the pandemic hit and the world closed down. What began as personal resistance became collective reckoning almost overnight.
The Las Vegas Strip was closed for almost three months. I still remember how eerie it was riding my bike past all the boarded-up casinos. Our entire industry collapsed or pivoted…and we all wore pajamas.
[Related: A Multi-Generational Look at Women’s Leadership Journeys in the Meetings and Events Industry]
My husband returned home from his London office and I started homeschooling and hiking daily with my 9-year-old son. For the first time I felt this incredible inner freedom of no FOMO and no doing…just being.
This leads us to today, where leadership is defined by emotional intelligence, integrated wellness and presence. It’s my long exhale. There is no shame in being a mother working at home, makeup free and sharing on Zoom that you forgot some terminology because of menopause.
Or openly taking calls while cooking family dinner because to acknowledge that we work globally is also to acknowledge that we have care-taking lives.
Feminine leadership isn’t the final chapter; it’s simply the next one before the next. I’m deeply proud of how far we’ve come and of the ways women have expanded the definition of leadership through courage, creativity and care.
But just like fashion, leadership will continue to evolve. What fits today may not fit tomorrow, and that’s not a failure; it’s a sign of growth. The work isn’t to perfect the model, but to stay conscious, adaptive and brave enough to keep redesigning what power looks like as we move forward.
