For eight years, Vermont Womenpreneurs gathered women and gender-expansive entrepreneurs across this state, creating space to convene, connect, collaborate, celebrate, and care for one another. The VTW Summit was the crown jewel of that work. The 2026 Summit marked our eleventh production with something that honored everything we had learned about what this community actually needs: not a room full of strangers exchanging business cards, but a genuine gathering of people who wanted to know and be known. In past Summits, we curated a stage of women business owners sharing their journeys with the room. Those evenings were powerful. This year, we turned the model inside out. Every person in the room became part of the program.

Inspired by the intimacy of a Regency-era ball, the 2026 VTW Summit was designed as an evening of guided conversation and sincere connection. There was no stage. There was no audience. There was only a room full of people who were somewhere on the entrepreneurial journey, ready to meet others who got it.

We paused this beloved tradition to return to our roots in smaller, monthly community gatherings.

The Four Seasons of Business

The Summit space was organized around four seasonal stations, each representing a stage of the entrepreneurial journey. Attendees spent 20 minutes at each station, with a short transition between rounds.

🌱 Spring — The Gestation Season Ideas were percolating. Things were forming beneath the surface. This was the season of possibility and uncertainty, of dreaming and not yet knowing what the seeds would become.

☀️ Summer — The Building Season The idea had taken root and the labor began. Showing up consistently, doing the unglamorous work, and channeling energy wisely to turn vision into reality.

🍎 Fall — The Harvest Season The work was paying off. A launch, a new client, a program going live, or seeds finally resulting in real revenue. One final surge of energy to bring things to fruition.

❄️ Winter — The Rest and Reflect Season The harvest was done. Then came the integration: reflecting, releasing, and allowing stillness before what came next took shape.

Wherever attendees were in their business that evening, there was a table for them and a group of people who understood that season from the inside.

Our Connection Hosts

At the heart of each seasonal station was a Connection Host: a woman or gender-expansive entrepreneur who had lived through multiple seasons of business and was ready to hold space for honest, generous conversation.

Connection Hosts were not moderators or speakers. They were community members, just like the attendees, who said yes to creating a welcoming table where everyone in the group felt comfortable enough to show up as they actually were, not as they thought they should be.

Each Connection Host was selected for their warmth, their experience cycling through the seasons of business, and their commitment to the kind of sincere connection that Vermont Womenpreneurs has always stood for.