Block #4: Living Your Best Life
Session 1
Building & Managing Wealth With Intention at Every Career Stage
Career success creates opportunity, but wealth-building requires intention.
This session will explore financial management and investment strategies that will help you make the most of the money you earn. Financial advisors and wealth managers will discuss various investment and financial management strategies and how to build a strategy that is best for you and your goals. They’ll discuss the financial moves every individual should be making at each career stage and how to build and work with a team that can help you achieve your goals. Advisors will also answer attendees' money and investing questions.
You’ll leave with:
A framework for building (or refining) your personal financial strategy
Clarity on the most important financial decisions to make at your career and earning stage
Practical steps to accelerate long-term wealth creation and avoid common mistakes
Justin Lacey
Senior Vice President, Merrill
Yetunde Ekunwe
Managing Director, Bank of America
Paulo Seabra
SVP, Private Client Manager, Bank of America
Session 2
Parenting, Caregiving, and Career: Navigating the Sandwich Generation
Often, just as careers are growing more complex and demanding, so are family responsibilities. Many leaders today are simultaneously raising children, supporting aging parents, and managing demanding roles, often without a clear roadmap.
In this candid, practical session, experienced leaders share how they’ve navigated competing priorities while building successful careers and strong families. You’ll gain a playbook for balancing life and work, setting the next generation up for success, caring for loved-ones, and sustaining yourself.
You’ll leave with:
Practical approaches to balancing career growth and caregiving responsibilities for children, parents, and other loved-ones
Guidance on preparing children of all ages for long-term educational and career success
Insight from peers managing similar life-stage transitions
Cristal Baron
Chief Advancement Officer, MLT
Caroline Dokun
VP, GTM Ops at LinkedIn
Karesha McGee
Author & CEO, The Family Healthcare Playbook, MLT Alum
Session 3
Balancing Work, Life, Relationships, and Self for Sustainability
The most important priorities in your life should drive your decisions. But when everything is a priority, then nothing really is. Attempting to devote equal energy and resources to every single aspect of your life at the same time inevitably leads to one place – burnout. This session, led by Shannon Reinard Demko, MLT Managing Director and Founder of MindfulMBA, will guide you through the process of identifying your current personal core values to enhance prioritization and decision-making. Through both mindful self-reflection and collaborative peer engagement, you will gain clarity on your key values and develop action statements that serve as a filters for your daily choices and major life pivots.
You’ll leave with:
A short list of the core values that most align with your priorities at this moment in your life and career
Clarity on how these specific values can be actualized and relied upon to support your decisions about how to use your time, energy, and resources moving forward
Enhanced capacity for discernment among competing priorities, increasing overall well-being and reducing burnout
Shannon Reinard Demko
Managing Director, Graduate Programs, MLT
Session 4
Building a Career to Enhance Your Life Goals
Not every leadership path looks the same, and advancing doesn’t always mean moving up in the traditional sense. For many professionals, the real question isn’t “How do I do whatever it takes to get to the top?” It’s “How do I build a career that supports the life I want to live?”
This session explores how leaders make intentional career choices and build careers around their life goals, priorities, and overall happiness. We’ll hear from leaders who have done this themselves and advise others on setting up careers to enhance their lives. Whether you value flexibility, autonomy, being an individual contributor or leader of people, coach, advisor, or simply not answering to a boss, this session will provide practical steps you can take to start designing a career path that centers your life goals.
You’ll leave with:
Examples of alternative leadership and advancement pathways beyond traditional promotion tracks
Strategies for maintaining fulfillment and earning potential while pursuing flexibility or autonomy
Practical next steps for designing a career aligned with your priorities and long-term goals, including how to navigate conversations with current and potential employers and how to take steps towards becoming your own boss
Robert H Johnson Jr.
Founder, Managing Director, RHJ Consulting Group, LLC
Logan P. Gaskill
Founder & CEO, Unlocked Achievement
Tia Price
VP & Chief People Officer, MLT
Session 5
Navigating the Entrepreneurship Journey: Lessons On Starting and Growing a Business
Starting a venture requires vision, risk, flexibility, and great execution. Experienced entrepreneurs will share lessons from their entrepreneurial journeys that will inform and inspire others who want to capture ownership upside. They’ll share candid experiences and advice about how they navigated the personal, professional, and financial risks, tradeoffs, and opportunities they faced and how they managed the unexpected (or expected) challenges along the way.
You’ll leave with:
An understanding of how entrepreneurs managed the risks, tradeoffs, opportunities, and challenges associated with entrepreneurship
Practical advice for making the leap to an entrepreneurial endeavor
Ray Chery
President & CEO, Monsam Portable Sinks
Laneisha Roberts
CEO, ReviewTailor
David R. Jones
Founder and CEO, CastleOak Securities
Brandon Williams Jones
Founder & CEO, Gravy Wealth