Get What You Need: Power Up Conference 2025 Delivers For Leaders Today and Tomorrow
Participants at the Power Up Conference 2024 during an afternoon panel.
Yes, you can get what you want and also what you need at Take The Lead’s Power Up Conference 2025 on Women’s Equality Day in Washington, D.C. on August 26.
Register here for the Power Up Conference 2025.
Your attendance and participation on the highly interactive day of panels, networking, award-winning speakers, a SHEposium of products and services, book signings by best-selling authors and exercises built into the curriculum to solidify your position as a leader, entrepreneur and expert is both necessary and rewarding.
The theme this year, Courage To Lead, highlights the difficult and divisive times at this moment in history and serves as a solutions-based guidebook for you to learn, grow, and innovate alongside colleagues, globally-recognized experts and founders who are changing the world for the better.
“#PowerUp2025 theme, #CourageToLead, highlights the difficult and divisive times at this moment and serves as a solutions-based guidebook for you to learn, grow, and innovate. @takeleadwomen #leadership ”
See the Courage To Lead agenda here
This is a conference where your contributions are welcome; it will not be a day of c-suite leaders talking down to you or at you. Instead a generous roster of female and male leaders will offer insight and key strategies on networking, authenticity, maintaining ally support, the changing landscape of women and journalism, the latest tools for AI, female-founded businesses, youth mentorship and more.
You are invited to offer your commitments and new ideas for the future, which will be celebrated in lyrics to a song created for this moment by the globally award-winning band of musicians, BETTY.
Read more in Take The Lead on BETTY here
This is an event you cannot miss and a room you need to be in.
“Whether you're leading a team, starting a business, or finding your next step, this is the room that will ignite your passion, fuel your purpose, and connect you with people who get it,” says Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead.
“Whether you’re leading a team, starting a business, or finding your next step, this is the room that will ignite your passion, fuel your purpose, and connect you with people who get it,” says Gloria Feldt, cofounder, pres @takeleadwomen #WomensEqualityDay #leadership #powerup2025”
This Power Up Conference is timed not just for Women’s Equality Day, the mission of Take The Lead to reach gender parity across all avenues of leadership, but it is also timed as millions are dealing with layoffs, burnout and workplace complications played out in a chaotic and difficult time in history.
Read more from Gloria Feldt on Power Up Conference 2025
New research from Modern Health shows an overwhelming 74% of people in the workplace say the global political environment contributes to burnout, and leaders expect everyone to keep working.
Equally disturbing is that 88% of employees say the workplace culture needs to actively support using mental health resources, but many leaders are not supportive. Many workers just keep going and performing in spite of 75 % of employees say they experience low mood, and 40 % have cried at work. But trust is eroded as 58% say mental health support is performative.
Learning new strategies and networking with inspiring leaders in order to cope is a worthwhile self-investment. The conference offers a day celebrating champions and also addressing key, timely concerns and factors that are intersecting and possibly slowing progress in many fields.
The day kicks off with the welcoming wisdom of Dr. Lily McNair, Take The Lead board chair and Power Up Conference chair, who is the former first female president of Tuskegee University.
The first award of the day recognizes Marina Arsenijevic, world-renowned pianist and composer, winning the Wear The Shirt Award, recognizing her steadfast efforts to embark on fulfilling the mission of equity and justice in the world through her captivating music. Arsenijevic will be in conversation on the stage with Feldt, discussing the need to use voice and talent to create action.
Read more in Take The Lead on Marina Arsenijevic here
The Alex Barbanell Leading Man award winners David Smith, PhD, and W. Brad Johnson, PhD, are co-authors, co-founders of Workplace Allies since 2018, have spent their professional lives focusing on gender parity in the workplace.
“W.Brad Johnson and Brad Smith, @workplaceallies and #authors of Good Guys, share insights on workplace #parity essentials. #powerup2025 #leadership”
Read more in Take The Lead on Alex Barbanell
The authors of the 2020 book, Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace, and the 2016, Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women, Smith and Johnson are in conversation with Vada Manager, founder and CEO of Manager Global Holdings, President and CEO of Manager Global Consulting Group, and winner of the 2022 Leading Man Award.
Smith tells Take The Lead of the importance of being an ally to women and to aim for gender parity. “Some companies are helping to fill gaps. People who consider themselves allies have an appreciation and understanding of people’s needs and what helps them to perform.”
Read more in Take The Lead on Johnson and Smith
Manager is a fervent supporter of the Power Up Conference and encourages everyone to attend who is hoping to make a change and understand how they can improve work culture. “Each time I attend a Take The Lead event -– especially the annual Power Up -- I learn how to be more effective within my sphere of influence, what real challenges women face across society and how I can impact the places where I engage. I also annually strengthen relationships – many of the attendees connect with me later on social platforms seeking advice regarding corporate board seats or entrepreneurship.”
As media in the U.S. is experiencing transformations and shifts, it is crucial this year to recognize a stalwart and effective leader in journalism. Christine Brennan, USA Today columnist, contributor to ABC News, CBS, PBS and NPR and author of the best-selling book, On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women Sports, receives the Leading Media Award. Brennan will be in discussion with Kelsey Nicole Nelson, an award-winning sports journalist and host of “Listen In With KNN.”
“Winner of the Leading Media Award @takeleadwomen, Christine Brennan @USAToday and #author of “On Her Game” is honored as a champion for fairness and equity in #sports and #journalism.@cbrennansports”
Brennan founded the Association for Women in Sports Media, where she established a scholarship for young women sports journalists. Named to the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame, the Hall of Achievement for NCAA and the Women’s Sports Foundation, as well as a member of the Northwestern University Board of Trustees, Brennan in her daily work not only champions gender equity, but is a ceiling-breaking pioneer.
As the first women sports reporter at the Miami Herald in 1980, and the first women at the Washington Post to cover the NFL’s Washington Redskins, she has won multiple awards for her journalism and her steadfast support of women in media and sports.
Brennan, who has written extensively about the impact of Title IX on women in the U.S., women’s leadership across all sectors and gender equity, told Take The Lead, “Title IX is a law about producing better citizens. This is not just about sports. It’s a mindset. This is about our cultural, national history,” Brennan says.
Read more in Take The Lead about Christine Brennan
Margery Kraus, founder and executive chairman of APCO Worldwide, receives the Leading Woman Award at Power Up Conference 2025. Kraus says, “You don’t have to be loud to lead. You just have to be clear on your purpose.”
“You don’t have to be loud to lead. You just have to be clear on your purpose,” says Margery Kraus, founder/exec chairman, @APCOWorldwide, who earns Leading Woman Award #PowerUp2025 @takeleadwomen leadership ”
Kraus, who founded the company 40 years ago, that now employs 1,200 in 80 markets around the world, describes the mission: “In a rapidly evolving global context and a time of transformational change, APCO strives to add value to our clients’ enterprises and benefit society. We enable clients to achieve their objectives through insightful counsel, compelling narratives and creative solutions.”
Stacey Engle, CEO of Twin Protocol, founder of Authority Lab, and member of the Take The Lead board of directors will be in conversation with Feldt about AI ethics and the use of digital twins.
Read more in Take The Lead on Stacey Engle
Ten Power Tool champions will speak briefly about their work and missions.
Learn more about all Power Tool Champions here.
Female-funded businesses is the topic of a panel with Kraus; Heather Florio, CEO, Desert Harvest and Suzanne Lerner, Co-Founder/CEO, Michael Stars, with moderator Manager.
This topic is distinctly necessary as Fortune recently reports, “Damion Rallis, cofounder of board data firm Free Float Analytics, combed through information about 61 companies that filed IPO-related documents in the first two weeks of August. He found that nearly 88% of the firms (most of which were in tech) had only one or no women on their board of directors, while 93% had only one or no women in their C-suite. Rallis is now calling this the ‘Bro-PO market.’”
A key mission of Take The Lead is mentoring the next generation of leaders and a panel on youth mentorship features Haley Lickstein, founder of Acting for Access; Allie Actone, co-founder and chief creator officer of Social Currant; Mariana Castro, leader of Trending Up; and Bayly Hoehne, chief of staff at Voters of Tomorrow.
“Bayly Hoehne, chief of staff @VotersTomorrow on a panel of vibrant youth #leadership @takeleadwomen #powerup2025 @WomensEqualityDay”
“The path to equality in leadership is paved by making space for each one of our own stories,” says Feldt, who contends that mentoring other women and girls for action is key.
She writes recently, “How many times even in our adult lives have we failed to realize the power we already had in our hands when we wanted something that seemed out of reach? And how many of us can point to something we learned from a mentor, whether the mentoring relationship was formal or informal, that influenced us for the rest of our lives?”
The Power Up Conference offers myriad opportunities to mentor and be mentored, what so many want and need now.