Morning: Team 1 / Team 2 Thinking & EQ Frameworks

Taught by Steve Daly, CEO, Instructure (Canvas LMS)

Steve Daly opens the day with a framework that reorients how executives think about loyalty, identity, and leadership. The “Team 1” shift — moving primary allegiance from your functional department to the executive committee while still advocating for your team — is one of the most critical and least-discussed transitions in the C-suite. Steve addresses three behaviors that separate executives who thrive from those who don’t: the ability to lower the temperature in moments of turbulence rather than amplify them; the discipline to avoid treating every setback as a code red; and the willingness to be vulnerable, admit mistakes, and ask for help without losing authority. He also offers a practical framework for holding peers accountable constructively — without escalating every disagreement to the CEO.

Afternoon: Emotional Intelligence & the Confidence Calibration Gap

Taught by Kat Kennedy, General Partner, Kickstart Venture Capital | Former President & CXO, Degreed

The afternoon addresses the shift from execution-oriented management to conflict-oriented leadership, getting comfortable making people uncomfortable in service of solving the organization’s most difficult problems. Kat introduces a practical effectiveness metric — how quickly you can identify a constraint, name it, solve it, and move to the next one — and applies it to Utah’s professional landscape, where surface-level niceness can mask where you actually stand.

The session also addresses strategic visibility and sponsorship with candor. Credentials don’t create trust — proximity and advocacy do. Participants work through the confidence calibration gap — research shows women apply when they meet 100% of qualifications while men apply at 25–50% — and leave with a concrete strategy for building the kind of visibility that ensures their name is being spoken in rooms they haven’t entered yet.

Taught by Dr. Chelsea Shields, Global Communication Strategist | Known as ‘The Audience Whisperer’

Research surfaced a persistent double standard: assertive behavior in women is labeled ’emotional’ or ‘abrasive,’ while the same behavior in men is called ‘decisive’ or ‘confident.’ This full-day session is built around expanding range and authentic authority. Participants examine the specific communication dynamics that create this double standard, develop a more intentional and powerful version of their own leadership style, and practice the executive register that commands a room without performing a version of presence designed for someone else.

Morning: The Science of Trust in Organizations

Taught by Kurt Dirks, Dean, David Eccles School of Business | Professor of Leadership, University of Utah

Trust is the operating system of organizational life and the single strongest predictor of team performance. Drawing on research cited more than 30,000 times, this session gives participants a durable framework for how trust is built, broken, and repaired — and how to diagnose the trust dynamics already operating on their teams. Participants leave with a concrete language for conversations they may have been avoiding.

Afternoon: Delegation as an Executive Practice

Taught by Heather Stone, PhD, MBA, Founder & CEO, Practical PhD

Delegation is trust in action — and the place where many high-performing executives stall. This session addresses the executive practice of letting go: building a leadership layer beneath you, operating through others, and creating the conditions for your team to rise. Participants work through the specific mindset and structural shifts that make delegation sustainable, not just aspirational.

Morning: The P&L Ownership Gap

Women are disproportionately funneled into support functions — HR, Marketing, Communications — rather than the revenue-generating roles like Sales, Finance, and Operations that are the primary pipeline to the CEO seat. This conversation is practical and specific. A panel of Utah women who deliberately sought out revenue-generating roles share how they made the move, what it cost, and why it was worth it. Participants leave knowing exactly what moves to make.

Afternoon: Network, Personal Brand & Executive Search

Taught by Jeanette Bennett, President & Executive Managing Director, Colliers Intermountain | Founder, Bennett Communications

60–80% of executive hires come through personal networks — yet most women are not building theirs with the same intentionality that men bring to the practice. This session addresses Utah’s ‘wait and receive’ cultural pattern directly and teaches self-promotion as a learnable skill. Participants work through personal brand positioning, digital presence, and the specific strategies for getting onto the radar of executive search firms before a role opens.

Morning: Communication & Directness

Taught by Adrianne Lee, SVP and CFO, Sally Beauty Holdings

C-suite roles require a specific register of communication: direct, decisive, and solution-oriented — delivered without over-explaining, hedging, or apologizing. This session builds that muscle through the lens of a CFO who has navigated Wall Street earnings calls, company transformations, and high-stakes team leadership. Participants work through the specific behaviors that signal executive readiness, including how to communicate authentically without a script and how to rally a team after a setback.

Afternoon: Negotiation & Personal Financial Literacy

Taught by Jennifer Silvester, CEO & Senior Partner, Silvester & Company

Only 9% of female executives feel confident in their negotiating skills — yet 64% of CEOs say they have never eliminated a candidate over negotiation. This session covers the interpersonal skills and financial literacy required to negotiate with confidence. Taught by an executive search professional who sits on both sides of the table daily, participants learn what the market actually looks like, how to make the ask, and what negotiation behavior signals to the people watching.

Morning: Framework Session

Taught by Franklin Covey, Global Leadership Development Organization | Utah Headquarters

Franklin Covey’s ‘What Your CEO Wants You to Know’ framework gives participants the financial and strategic fluency that distinguishes executives who think like owners. The session covers five essential elements of business — how cash is generated, what drives margin and profitability, how velocity and capital turn, what creates sustainable growth, and why customers choose one company over another. Participants also learn to navigate an annual report and connect strategic initiatives to financial outcomes.

Afternoon: Utah CEO Panel

Utah CEOs speak candidly about what they look for in candidates and executive team members, what they wish more women understood about the hiring process, and what they see holding talented leaders back. The panel draws from the CEOs of participating companies, ensuring the conversation is grounded in the specific organizations and industries represented in the room.

Morning: Board Dynamics & Governance

Taught by Peggy Larsen, Former Senior Vice President, WCF Insurance | Former President, WCF Foundation

50% of female executives fear their lack of board skills will limit their advancement. This session covers how boards actually function, what they want from the executives they oversee, and how to build credibility with directors over time. The session closes with dedicated mock board interview preparation — what to expect, how to tell your story under pressure, and how to handle the investment question.

Afternoon: Stakeholder & Narrative Management

Taught by Sharlene Wells, Chief Public Affairs Officer, Mountain America Credit Union | Former Director of Communications, U.S. Department of Defense

The executive’s stakeholder ecosystem — boards, media, regulators, employees, and community — requires a different approach for each audience. This session addresses the executive’s role in shaping company narrative as a distinct and learnable capability: how to build credibility with external constituencies, how to manage a communications crisis before it escalates, and how to ensure the story being told about your organization is the one you intended.

Morning: Organizational Subcultures & Political Fluency

Taught by Aimee Daily, PhD, President & CEO, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals

Every organization has two operating systems — the official one on the org chart, and the informal one that actually determines who rises. In this session, Aimee Daily gives participants a framework for reading the second one: the subcultures, unwritten rules, and power dynamics that shape decisions in environments where women are often absent. Participants leave with the language and tools to navigate those dynamics without abandoning who they are.

Afternoon: Organizational Agility in Practice

Taught by Leslie Snavely, President & CEO, CHG Healthcare

Organizational agility — the ability to move fluidly across functions, relationships, and contexts — is a learnable executive skill, not a personality trait. In this session, Leslie Snavely addresses what it actually takes to build credibility in unfamiliar territory, earn trust across an organization’s informal power structures, and advance your career through channels you may not have been using. Taught by a CEO whose own trajectory moved from finance to marketing to sales to digital transformation to the top seat within a single company, the afternoon turns framework into practice.

Morning: Building Influence

Taught by Sara Jones, Founder & CEO, NetWorkPlay | Executive Strategist & Coach

C-suite leaders don’t begin influencing like executives when they get the title. They started long before — or they didn’t, and they felt it. The Influence Audit™ opens the final session with a self-assessment workshop that helps participants identify where they are misallocating influence and redirect it where they have the most leverage. Working through four levers — Time, Clarity, Credibility, and Relationships — each participant leaves the morning with a concrete Influence Growth Plan tied to a specific strategic priority she is currently navigating. 

Afternoon: Personal Board of Directors & Graduation

The afternoon turns inward: the personal board of directors exercise gives each participant a map of the relationships she needs to build, deepen, or activate to execute that plan. The cohort shares individual commitments before graduation. C-Suite Fluent alumni are invited to mentor future cohorts and participate in ongoing alumni events.

Peer Taught, TBD

Operating a business unit with P&L accountability; making resource allocation decisions; connecting financial outcomes to strategic choices; what changes when you own the number. Participants leave able to engage as full partners in financial discussions — informed, confident, and unintimidated.

Peer Taught, TBD

How value gets created and delivered; connecting strategy to execution; operational metrics and trade-offs; what the CEO needs from operations that most functional leaders don’t see.

Peer Taught, TBD

How the company makes money; sales cycles, pricing strategy, and market positioning; the relationship between revenue strategy and company strategy; what CEOs mean when they talk about growth.

Peer Taught, TBD

How executives build, structure, and sustain high-performing organizations; talent acquisition and retention at the leadership level; organizational design and reporting structures; what C-suite leaders do — beyond HR policy — to shape who gets hired, who gets developed, and who gets promoted.

Peer Taught, TBD

How to lead an organization through transformation while maintaining trust and momentum; the specific role of the executive during change versus the role of managers; how to communicate through uncertainty; how to recognize and address resistance; common failure modes in organizational change and how to avoid them.

Peer Taught, TBD

How companies make big bets and allocate limited resources across competing priorities; portfolio thinking and the discipline of saying no; how to evaluate strategic options against financial and organizational constraints; how boards and CEOs assess strategic proposals. Participants work through a capital allocation exercise — modeling trade-off decisions under resource constraints — so the mechanics of corporate strategy become concrete, not theoretical.

Peer Taught, TBD

How legal exposure shapes strategic decisions; how to work effectively with legal counsel; risk management frameworks; how legal risk and business risk interact. Includes practical document literacy: what to look for in contracts, how NDAs and IP protections function, and how to evaluate deal terms well enough to ask the right questions and recognize risk — without replacing counsel.

Peer Taught, TBD

AI strategy at the executive level — how AI is reshaping business models, workforce, and competitive dynamics; how to lead AI initiatives with confidence; governance and risk.

Peer Taught, TBD

This module covers two of the highest-stakes communication challenges executives face and rarely get formal training in. The first half addresses regulatory affairs: how to communicate with and through regulators, and what executives in regulated industries need to know about government relations strategy. The second half walks through a real-time crisis communication scenario, giving participants practice in the timing, tone, and stakeholder sequencing a crisis demands before they’re operating under real pressure.

Peer Taught, TBD

How communication shifts when the audience is a board or executive team; structuring recommendations for high-stakes settings; the executive summary as a leadership skill; presenting with confidence under pressure and adversarial questioning.