Earlier this year, we kicked off our ChiefX 2025 summits with stops in Atlanta, Dallas, and Boston, bringing Chief Members together to invest in themselves and each other.
On the agenda? Unfiltered conversations with women rewriting the rules of leadership.
Former Dallas Maverick CEO Cynt Marshall shared stories from her boundary-breaking career. Slutty Vegan Founder and CEO Pinky Cole offered hard-won lessons on resilience. Supermodel and entrepreneur Ashley Graham talked confidence, leadership, and carving your own path. Experts led science-backed workshops on happiness and connection. And much more.
All of the programming was designed to Chief Members together and support their whole selves as leaders — and there’s much more to come when ChiefX returns this fall.
Before we kick off in Chicago in September, we’re revisiting some of our spring speakers’ most powerful insights.
On protecting your time and energy
“You need to understand what’s crystal and what’s rubber in your professional and personal life. What are things that will shatter and what will bounce back? Most things in life are rubber. Very few things are crystal. Master the ability to determine the difference.”
— Cynt Marshall, President and CEO, Marshalling Resources Consulting; Former CEO, Dallas Mavericks
On trusting in your teams
“Where I come from, we look out for each other. We need everybody. I’ve never operated in a space where I feel I need to do things by myself. You need to be able to count on people and they need to be able to count on you.”
— Cynt Marshall
“Delegation means you’re a better leader, because what we want to do is build great leaders around us, so they can help us grow even higher, so we all grow together.”
— Ashley Graham, supermodel and entrepreneur
On rethinking the keys to happiness
“As leaders, we believe that if we do XYZ, we will be happy — but research shows that we have it backwards. When we are happy, we become more creative, we become more resilient, and our relationships become more fulfilling. When our thoughts are focused on something that makes us feel good, our biochemistry changes.”
— Mary Cahilly, mental health & wellness therapist, Canyon Ranch
On finding strength in vulnerability
“There is power in building a community. There is power in asking for help. There is power in saying, ‘I don’t know how to do this, can you do this?’”
— Ashley Graham
“It starts by assuming that people like you. We’re all afraid of rejection, but sometimes a tiny act of saying hello can change your life.”
— Marisa G. Franco, New York Times best-selling author and psychologist
On building resilience through adversity
“My company went through a global restructure, and I lost my business, and it took me 43 days to get it back… to lose everything — it taught me a lot about resilience. It taught me how to bounce back when there is no spring. And it also taught me that things are going to happen in business, like, the economy is going to change, your business will change. You will experience the ebbs and flows of business. But as long as you have the right mindset and attitude, you will come out stronger, wiser, and better.”
— Pinky Cole, Founder and CEO, Slutty Vegan
ChiefX summits return this fall in Chicago, Miami, New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Learn more at chief.com/ChiefX-2025.
