Redefining Power, Together: Our 6 Top Takeaways From ChiefX NYC

Wealth and power used to mean one thing for women leaders: a higher title, more money, and a corporate seat we waited our turn to reach. We’re outgrowing that model, with multihyphenate careers replacing the rung-by-rung ladder.

This shift gives women leaders a real opportunity to decide, together, what wealth and power mean for how we lead today.

At ChiefX NYC 2026, Chief Members and experts came together to build that collective power, with conversations spanning everything from how economists define a rich life, to the phrase that can change any negotiation, to why early-stage investing is still out of reach for the busy women who are best-positioned to spot what’s next.

Here are six of our top takeaways from the main stage.

Measure Wealth in Utility, Not Just Dollars

“Our job is not our purpose in life. Earning more money, being successful, that is not our objective in life. What is that bigger picture of true wealth? That's what economists call your utility function. I find utility to be such a useful word because it's richer than happiness. It's the sum total of your joy, fulfillment, and contentment over a lifetime. It's serving your deepest values, and only you know what those are. It also lets us see we can't compare ourselves to other people, because no one is maximizing the same utility function that we are.”

“We only get one life, and if you are meeting everybody else's needs with nothing left over for yourself, then something has to change. Because life needs to be filled with joy, with utility — not just building human and financial capital for some hypothetical future, but with the things you enjoy right now. That is how we can be richer.”

— Dr. Corinne Low, Associate Professor, The Wharton School, and Author, Having It All

Say ‘Help Me Understand’

“In negotiation, 80% of it is psychology, 20% is tactics. The psychology aspect of it is: If you walk into a negotiation, and you're not feeling good about it, and you're not confident, you don't feel you have power. Guess what? You're not going to have power. If you go in there and you feel like, I already got the worse deal, you're going to get the worse deal.

“In every negotiation, you have more power than you think. Because their pressures are your power. In a collaborative negotiation, you use their pressures to build new value. Competitive negotiators will use it and leverage it to put them in a place of weakness. We don’t need to do that.”

“The words ‘help me understand’ will change your life. Because now you're getting information. Information is your greatest source of power in any negotiation. Without information, you can't move. With information, you can move, you can influence, you can shift power.”

— Dr. Yasmin Davidds, Founder & CEO, Dr. Yasmin Davidds Leadership Institute & Women's Institute of Negotiation

Take It Personally

“How many times have you been told, ‘Don't take it personally’? Now, to be fair, if taking it personally means you're going to be paralyzed with emotion and become unproductive, don't do that. But if you can harness your personal feeling, how much you care about something, I have found time and time again that that's how you tap into your superpower. That's how you give yourself the edge in a fight.”

“Every superhero has an origin story. Oftentimes, we're told, especially as women, to leave the things that really personally matter to us at home, lean into the work. But those are the things that give us our fire. Your origin story, everything that makes you who you are — from where you grew up, how you grew up, where you live now, the things that keep you up at night — that's all your origin story.”

— Jessica O. Matthews, Founder & CEO, Lived Labs

Make Investing Access Real, Not Just Available

“If you're an accredited investor, you probably have a demanding job. You probably have a family that needs you. You probably have hobbies. You have a fully articulated adult life, so you can say the access is there, but unless it fits into the nooks and crannies of while you're waiting in the seat ready to board your flight, or waiting in the pickup line to get a kid, or scrolling social media at night in bed, unless it fits into those nooks and crannies, the access still isn't there. Because the minute it becomes a homework project, it stacks up below everything else.”

— Heather Hartnett, CEO & General Partner, Human Ventures

Turn Early Adoption Into Equity

“Women specifically are culture curators. You use products before everybody else, you know things that are going to be hot before everybody else. Why does Wall Street get to capitalize on that and you don't?”

— Heather Hartnett

Know What You’re Really Risking

“What's the worst thing that can happen if you make an investment in a startup? It goes to zero. What financial return are you going to get when you write a $10,000 check to the charity gala at your private high school? What kind of financial return am I going to get on these very cute shoes? It will be zero. What are we putting at risk if your best friend gets gynecological cancer, and there's no way to detect it easily? What kind of risk are we getting if crops are dying because no one's got the clean fertilizer microbiome that keeps them alive as the amount of pests and fungi change as the temperature warms?

“We are not talking about throwing your whole core portfolio into early-stage private market investments. But when we have enough, let's change the conversation about risk.”

— Cheryl Kellond, Founder, Play Money