EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
Summit
You have a STRATEGIC PLAN for 2027.
BUT
Are you ready to LEAD it?
➢ MERCHOLOGY: PLYMOTH, MINNESOTA
Executive Leadership Summit
📆 November 12–13, 2026
🕗 8:30 AM–12:00 PM, both days
An intimate experience for executive LEADERS
Can I guess something?
I bet by November, you’ve likely spent hours planning for the year ahead.
The growth you want to create.
The changes you need to make.
The people you need to develop.
The challenges you can anticipate.
The opportunities you want to pursue.
But how much time have you spent thinking about the leader this requires YOU to be?
As executives, we invest deeply in business strategy. But did you know, it’s just as important to invest in the person responsible for leading that strategy?
➢ During two half-day sessions, we’re bringing together a small group of executives to step outside the day-to-day, look honestly at HOW we lead, learn from one another, and become more intentional about the impact we want to create.
Not because something is wrong with your leadership. Because, like the businesses we lead, we should NEVER stop developing either.
What does your leadership make possible for others?
As executives, we’re expected to make decisions, navigate uncertainty, develop people, drive change, and deliver results.
But leadership isn’t only about what we know or what we accomplish…
It’s about the IMPACT we create AROUND US.
➢ This summit creates the space to understand our impact more clearly and practice leading with greater intention.
Let’s explore together:
Awareness | Choice | Influence
AWARENESS
We’ll look at what drives the way you lead, including your purpose, the judgments you make, the stories you tell yourself, and the beliefs underneath them.
CHOICE
We’ll explore what happens when pressure rises. And practice creating more space between what happens and how you respond.
INFLUENCE
We’ll look at your strengths and how you uniquely create impact. Your strengths can be a hindrance and an asset. Let’s dive deeper to create greater influence..
✓ What you’ll take with you
You’ll leave the Summit with FOUR things that are uniquely yours:
Your Leadership Purpose: What you want to create through your leadership.
Your Judgment Pattern: The story you’re most likely to tell yourself when pressure or uncertainty shows up.
Your Personal Verb and Leadership Shadow: How you naturally create impact and what can happen when that strength gets overused.
Your Personal Leadership Contract: A commitment to how you want to lead and what the people around you can count on from you.
You’ll also practice simple tools you can use when the conversation gets difficult, the plan changes, you don’t have the answer, or you catch yourself falling into an old pattern.
You will build your ideal leadership experience.
The Executive Leadership Summit isn’t just another conference.
✧ Imagine sharing the space with a smaller cohort of 20 like-minded executives.
✧ Imagine being in a room where no one needs YOU to have ALL the answers.
✧ Imagine that moment when you discover that the thing you’ve been wrestling with, is the SAME thing other successful leaders wrestle with too.
✓ Come curious. ✓Come willing to contribute.
✓ Come ready to look at your leadership with the same intention you bring to your business.
This experience is designed for executives already in the chair.
➢ You’ve built strategies.
➢ You know how to deliver results.
➢ You’ve made hard decisions and led people through change.
✗ You’re not looking for Leadership 101.
✓ You’re willing to ask harder questions…
What am I not seeing about myself?
What happens to my leadership when pressure rises?
Where do my strengths also get in my way?
Am I building capability in others or dependence on me?
Who do I need to BECOME to lead what’s ahead?
Did those questions pique your curiosity? If so, then you are EXACTLY who we want at the Summit.
➢ MERCHOLOGY: PLYMOTH, MINNESOTA
Executive Leadership Summit
📆 November 12–13, 2026
🕗 8:30 AM–12:00 PM, both days
An intimate experience for executive LEADERS
Meet Your Summit Facilitators
Laura King
Laura King is the author of “Shine Brighter” and a keynote speaker on purpose-driven performance.
Across two decades as an award-winning executive recruiter, Laura conducted more than 30,000 interviews with professionals at every level, likely more career conversations than anyone in her field. What she witnessed, again and again, was the gap between external achievement and internal fulfillment, even among the most successful people.
Today, Laura helps organizations unlock the power of their people to grow revenue, build legacy, and develop the heart-centered leaders our time demands. Laura guides individuals and organizations to transform from the inside out, grounded in the belief that personal transformation creates organizational transformation.
A natural connector who sees potential in people before they see it in themselves, Laura delivers her work through keynotes, coaching, and workshops. She lives in Woodbury, MN, with her husband and their four boys, where she brings the same heart-forward presence to her community as she does to national stages.
Andrea Ponto has spent more than 20 years building businesses and teams, but the thing she has become most curious about is “what builds people?”
Today, as Vice President of Marketing & Product Strategy at Merchology, Andrea continues to lead at the executive level while living a broader purpose: helping people see what’s possible in themselves and build the confidence to act on it. Across her career, she has held CMO and VP roles leading growth, transformation, and high-performing teams, while also coaching athletes and developing emerging leaders.
Andrea has a gift for helping people recognize strengths they may not yet see in themselves and translating those insights into something they can use. She helps people get clear on what they uniquely bring, how to leverage it, and build the confidence to live it.
Her experience has shaped a deep curiosity about what separates authority from true influence. Andrea believes the most effective leaders understand what drives them, recognize what can get in their way, and make intentional choices about what their leadership makes possible for others.
Andrea Ponto
What will 2027 require from you as a leader?
Give us just 2 half-days and you will leave forever changed.
You’ve already spent time pontificating and planning about what you want your business to accomplish in the year ahead.
Now, we’re inviting you to spend time with us, intentionally crafting HOW you want to lead through the:
✓ growth
✓ change
✓ decisions
✓ development
Let’s build your personal leadership contract. TOGETHER.
➢ MERCHOLOGY: PLYMOTH, MINNESOTA
Executive Leadership Summit
📆 November 12–13, 2026
🕗 8:30 AM–12:00 PM, both days