For most of my career, attending one of my principal’s sales meetings or other rep-focused events meant that I was the only woman in the room. Later in my career, I began The Business Women’s Circle^®, a collaborative peer business networking group with only women in the room.

Attendees at the WomenReps 2024 Conference closing dinner (left to right): Lani Basa, Julie Defee, Michelle Jobst, Charles Cohon, Karen Jefferson, and Tricia Murty.

But if you drew Venn diagrams of those groups’ attendees, I was the only union. So, I decided to launch a meeting where the Venn diagrams would overlap 100 percent, a rep-focused event with only women in the room.

With Jerry Leth’s help, MANA’s “A League of Their Own” (ALOTO) was created to bring women reps together virtually, and it continues to let women reps meet virtually for discussion and support.

Virtually continues to work well, but there are some topics that are best discussed face-to-face. So, I launched WomenReps in 2017 to build that space. March 2018 was my first rep-focused women-only event. As I work on planning WomenReps 2025, I’m building on our successes from past gatherings, like WomenReps 2024, which merged activities in Savannah, Georgia and Hilton Head, South Carolina.

At each successive WomenReps event, we learned new ways to help women reps build connection, networking, and solid content at an in-person forum with curated content, speakers, relationship building, collaboration and sharing best practices. And, as is often the case, we bring fresh ideas back to our agencies from the gathering.

WomenReps 2024 focused on rep firm law, practical aspects of buying and selling an agency, strategic advertising, financial literacy, using outsourced service providers, ChatGPT and fostering multigenerational teams in an independently owned sales agency. And, as is often the case, informal discussions, networking, and after-sessions sometimes eclipsed even the important topics on our agenda.

MANA supported our event by sending former President and CEO Charles Cohon to meet with our attendees for our closing dinner.

New topics, an agenda, a new venue, and special guests for WomenReps 2025 are still being finalized. Although MANA has always helped us alert its members to our events, you can be sure to be the first to get the details of WomenReps 2025 by emailing me at [email protected].