What Forté’s Women Business Leaders Conference got right
By the time the first panelist spoke, the room was already full, with people sitting along the edges. The discussion that followed was built around candid accounts of how the speakers had navigated career changes, pressure, and uncertainty. The reception then picked up that thread, giving attendees space to talk through their own situations with others facing similar questions. That handoff between stage and room is what made the evening click for Divya Gundlapalli.
Why the panel mattered
Divya Gundlapalli, a product marketing manager at Meta and an MBA alum of IESE, was also one of the panelists. Her view of the evening came from both sides of the room.
What distinguished the discussion was not the resumes on stage but the level of specificity in how the panelists talked about their choices.
One panelist spoke openly about building a mental-health-focused startup after burning out in her prior role. The business succeeded and then failed. The value was not the outcome. It was the clarity about what pressure does to people and what it forces them to reconsider. Another panelist, an HR leader, described a structured annual review of life domains, including career, family, and faith, among others, to decide what to keep, what to change, and what to drop. That framing forced trade-offs into the open instead of treating career planning as a single-axis problem.
The panel brought together women from technology, HR, finance, and entrepreneurship at different stages of their careers. That range made it possible to see how the same trade-offs play out differently depending on role, industry, and point in a career.
Why the reception worked
What followed was not incidental.
Divya observed that most people in the room were either in the middle of a transition, just out of one, or anticipating one. The panel created what she described as “pre-alignment.” Attendees now had shared language for discussing uncertainty, including pivots, trade-offs, small tests, and the difference between moving away from something and moving toward something.
That changed how people talked to one another. They did not have to justify why they were questioning their next step. They could start by asking how someone else had handled it.
This matters because most professional spaces reward certainty and discourage ambiguity. This one allowed uncertainty to be a valid starting point.
most professional spaces reward certainty and discourage ambiguity. This one allowed uncertainty to be a valid starting point."
Why the MBA context changed the quality of connection
The women in the room were not only professionals. They were MBA alumni, current students, and prospective students. That created what Divya described as shorthand. People entered with mutual assumptions about ambition, exposure to multiple disciplines, and the experience of hitting ceilings inside organizations. Less time was spent establishing credibility. More time was spent examining constraints and opportunities.
That shifted the power dynamics in conversation. Instead of introducing themselves through titles and resumes, attendees compared how their roles and organizations shaped what was possible.
Divya also noted that alumni from different MBA programs and graduation years were present. That range added depth to the conversations because it made visible how decisions play out over time and where people wish they had acted sooner. It also showed that career questioning is not confined to a single life stage, geography, or industry. It recurs as roles, constraints, and ambitions change.
Why the MBA has long-term value
One risk of the MBA narrative is that it becomes time-bound, a two-year experience whose value fades as careers progress. This event contradicted that.
Divya described how a career storytelling exercise from her MBA later became the tool she used to move out of product management and into product marketing. It did not tell her which role to choose. It taught her to connect strengths, constraints, and motivation into a story she could test against the market.
That is the durable value of the MBA. Not a specific job outcome, but a framework for making decisions under uncertainty. Events like this extend that value by putting those frameworks back into circulation among people who are actively using them.
That is the durable value of the MBA. Not a specific job outcome, but a framework for making decisions under uncertainty."
Why people should go
Divya was direct about this. Skipping these events means losing access to a part of professional life that does not happen online. Informal access to people you would not otherwise meet at moments when they are willing to talk honestly about the career decisions they are weighing.
The barrier is rarely time. It is the discomfort of showing up without a defined purpose. This conference reduced that cost by giving people a clear frame for why they were there, which was to think through what comes next.
Why this kind of event is worth your time
This evening worked because three elements were in place:
The panel gave people a shared starting point.
The reception gave them a place to speak for themselves.
The MBA context created enough familiarity to move past surface-level talk.
That combination produced a clear result. People left with better information about what they were dealing with and better access to others who could help them think it through.
If you are deciding whether to attend a future Forté event, that is the standard to use. Not whether it simply sounds inspiring, but whether it will change the quality of the conversations you can have.
