EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
Summit
You have a STRATEGY for 2027.
Are you ready to LEAD it?
AI is changing our work. Budgets are getting tighter. Your team needs more from you than answers.
You've spent hours planning what the business needs. Spend two mornings with other executives working through the leadership challenges that don't get solved in your strategic plan.
Understand what drives how you lead, recognize the patterns that can get in your way, and build a clear approach for how you want to lead the people, decisions and change ahead.
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT
Join real conversations about leading RIGHT NOW.
Executive Leadership Summit
November 12–13, 2026
8:30 AM–12:00 PM, both days
7005 Oxford St, St Louis Park, MN 55426 (MATTER HQ)
✓ Here’s what you’ll take with you:
You’ll leave the Summit with FOUR things that are uniquely yours:
1
What You Stand For: A clear articulation of what you want your leadership to make possible.
2
What Happens To You Under Pressure: The patterns, assumptions, and stories most likely to hijack your leadership when stakes rise.
3
How You Naturally Create Impact: The strength you instinctively bring, and how that same strength can become a liability when overused.
4
What People Can Expect From You: Your personal leadership contract: a clear commitment to how you intend to show up in 2027 and beyond.
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.
2027 will ask something different from you.
Imagine what could change.
✧ Imagine entering a difficult conversation and noticing your assumption before it shapes your response.
✧ Imagine asking the question that develops someone else's thinking instead of automatically providing the answer.
✧ Imagine recognizing when one of your greatest strengths is starting to work against you.
✧ Imagine your team knowing more clearly what they can count on from you when pressure rises.
This is what more intentional leadership can make possible.
What will 2027 require from you as a leader?
Questions no strategic plan can answer for you:
What happens to your leadership when pressure rises?
Where might your strengths be unintentionally getting in your team’s way?
Are you developing capability around you, or creating dependence on you?
When AI takes work off your team's plate, will you know how to lead what's left?
What does your team experience from you when you don’t have the answers?
Who will you need to become to successfully lead what comes next?
A company can only go as far as the people leading it.
Most companies don’t have a talent problem. They have a problem unlocking the talent they already have.
Your people are busy. They're being bombarded with more demands, just like you. And many of them are running at a fraction of what they're capable of.
AI is about to give your team time back. What they do with it depends on how you lead.
Your leadership influences how people make decisions, take ownership, navigate change, solve problems, and grow.
The question isn’t whether you are a good leader. It’s whether the way you lead today is ready for what comes next.
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 on creating other leaders with greater intention. Twenty executives. A range of experiences. Decades of unique experiences.
Let’s explore together:
Awareness | Choice | Influence
Understand what drives how you lead, including the judgments, stories, and beliefs shaping how you interpret people and situations, so you can recognize when your own patterns are shaping what you see.
Recognize what happens to your leadership when pressure rises. Practice creating space between what happens and how you respond, so your next move is intentional instead of automatic.
Evaluate how people experience your leadership, where your strengths create impact and where they can get in your way, so you can be more deliberate about what your leadership makes possible for others.
What Leaders Are Saying
"Sitting in a group of my peers who were willing to ask themselves hard questions, and share hard truths with each other, was so good! Once we disclosed our own truths, we found ourselves in great company."
— Chris Key"This is not just a sit-and-feel-good workshop. Laura will challenge your beliefs, your (outdated) ways of thinking, and how you show up to not just impact your own life and career but the ripple effect you have on those around you."
— Grant Hultgren"Laura embodies a safe place to show up authentically, while asking you the hard questions that challenge and hold you accountable in ways you never knew you needed."
— Shannon CaswellTwo perspectives.
One shared belief about leadership.
Laura sees across organizations. Andrea leads from inside one.
Laura and Andrea come to this work from different experiences but share a belief that meaningful leadership development starts with understanding yourself and becomes visible in how you lead others.
After decades of conversations with professionals and leaders, Laura brings an outside perspective on ambition, purpose, performance, and the patterns people often struggle to see in themselves. She’s worked with organizations such as Target, Thomson Reuters, Best Buy, Health Partners, and American Express through coaching, consulting, and talent placement.
As a practicing executive for more than 15 years, Andrea brings the inside perspective of leading growth, people, change, and performance while the business keeps moving. She’s sparked growth in public and private organizations, from emerging leaders to boardrooms to athletes.
One sees the patterns across hundreds of companies. One lives them every day inside one.
Together, they bring the perspectives of coach, strategist, and placing executives in the room.
Meet Your Summit Facilitators
Laura King
Laura King is the author of “Shine Brighter” and a trained facilitator and certified high-performance coach.
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, and has placed hundreds of professionals into new careers.
Laura was the fastest associate in company history to bill $1M, a five-time President’s Club winner, an eight-time #1 Quarterly Biller, and, in 2017, qualified for the elite Pinnacle Society (the top 80 recruiters in North America).
A recognized voice in the Twin Cities community, Laura has been featured in local and national publications, including Twin Cities Business and Minnesota Business, and regularly speaks on panels and at industry events.
As a Certified High Performance Coach™, Laura is trained in a research-backed methodology focused on six areas proven to support sustained high performance: Clarity. Energy. Necessity. Productivity. Influence. Courage.
Andrea Ponto
Andrea Ponto has spent her career 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 draws on Positive Intelligence (PQ) coaching, Harvard's Science of Happiness and Wellbeing courses, Patrick Lencioni's leadership work, and her own experience leading teams of five to 35 people.
Her experience has shaped a curriculum and framework on 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.
This experience is designed for executives already in the CHAIR.
➢ You’ve built strategies.
➢ You’ve delivered results.
➢ You’ve made hard decisions and led people through change.
➢ You’re not looking for Leadership 101.
➢ You know the next level of growth will ask something different of you.
Give your leadership the same intention you give your strategy.
You've spent significant time thinking about what your business needs to accomplish in the year ahead.
We're inviting you to spend two mornings thinking just as intentionally about how you want to lead through the growth, change, decisions, and people development that will come with it.
The plan matters. So does how you LEAD it.
What will 2027 require from you as a leader?
Executive Leadership Summit
November 12–13, 2026
8:30 AM–12:00 PM, both days
7005 Oxford St, St Louis Park, MN 55426 (MATTER HQ)
Registration $1245
Want this experience for your whole leadership team?
Contact Laura at laura@lauraeking.com
FAQS
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Executives at the VP level and above who lead teams and want those teams owning more of the work in 2027.
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It's a working session: leaders together in one room, working on their own leadership in facilitated sessions with Laura and Andrea.
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Nothing. Just show up ready to be honest about how you lead.
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Yes. [Request an invoice] and we'll send it to whoever approves it.
laura@lauraeking.com
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You can transfer your spot to someone else or request a full refund at least 3 days before the event.
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What’s said in the room stays in the room
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We are meeting at MATTER located at 7005 Oxford Street St. Louis Park MN 55426 - plenty of parking options available