Kolleen currently serves full-time as the Founding Director of what was originally called Women’s Business Lunch and is now known as Powerful Women of the Gulf Coast. The organization advocates a culture of confidence building, lifelong learning, collaboration, empowering others and a spirit of charitable giving. The mission of Powerful Women of the Gulf Coast is to promote, advance and improve women in business and the organization accomplishes these in a number of different ways.

–             Monthly networking meetings in Pensacola and Gulf Breeze. These are open to all women and free to attend. We run a structured meeting with open networking, an educational segment, a sponsor presentation, an opportunity to hear about the businesses of all attendees, and a whole lot of fun. We frequently hear from attendees that these meeting are chock full of value and a great way to build new relationships to help support their businesses.

–             Powerful Women of the Gulf Coast Magazine. We are in our third year of production of the magazine and our goal is for this to be a quarterly publication. Each edition features interviewees of local successful leaders in business who share their honest thoughts on leadership, success, obstacles, and inspiration as it relates to women in business. We also include other articles on leadership, networking, and other skill development. It is geared for anyone in business or looking for business motivation and tips.

–             Annual Pursue Your Passion Women’s conference. To help celebrate National Business Women’s Week, we hold a full day conference during the third week of October along with several other events leading up to the conference. We feature a national keynote speaker, several local successful leaders in business, along with Speed Networking, an Experience Hall, structured and unstructured networking exercises and plenty of laughter, relationship building and excitement. Our attendees are not only motivated by the conference but they leave with tangible tips they can take back and implement in their businesses to lead them to success.

–             Power Up Challenge is a 12 week educational series where we hold classes once a week for an hour and a half focused around four main areas of business: Networking, Marketing, Business Efficiency, and Sales Skills. Open to men and women and all classmates (whether they attend in person or not) receive the full audio recording of each class along with class notes, expanded notes, and extra resources. Classes are affordable and attendees are elated with the amount and quality of the information that is shared.

–             Women in Leadership radio podcast show – sponsored by Pensacola Business Radio X. We hold shows twice a month and bring in mostly women but some men for in-depth interviews. Interviewees share their advice on topics such as mentoring, keys to success, time management tools, personal mantras and favorite inspirations, and what men can do to help support women in business.

Membership in Powerful Women of the Gulf Coast is also available. Contact kolleen@powerfulwomengulfcoast.com for more information or visit our website at powerfulwomengulfcoast.com or Facebook at Powerful Women of the Gulf Coast.