Become a Connection Host at the VTW Summit

Each station is anchored in a season, not just as metaphor, but as lived experience. Here's what each one represents:

🌱 Spring — The Gestation Season Seeds are planted. Ideas are percolating. There's enormous mental energy being expended: dreaming, researching, making connections. So much is still forming beneath the surface. This is the season of so much possibility, and also of sitting with uncertainty. Things aren't ready yet, and that's not a problem. That's the process.

☀️ Summer — The Building Season The idea has taken root, and now comes the labor. Showing up consistently, deepening relationships, strengthening offers, and doing the sometimes unglamorous work of turning a concept into a reality. This is the season of focused effort, creative constraint, and channeling high energy wisely without burning out.

🍎 Fall — The Harvest Season The work is paying off. A launch, a new client, a program going live. Or more quietly, the seeds you've planted finally resulting in inquiries, proposals, and real revenue. This season asks for one final surge of energy to bring things to fruition, while simultaneously tending to what comes next.

❄️ Winter — The Rest and Reflect Season The harvest is done. Now comes integration: reflecting on what it took, what you learned, what you'd do again, and what you'd release. This is the season the entrepreneurial world rarely honors but that is quietly essential. Space. Stillness. Letting the next thing take shape before forcing it forward.

• Welcome and orient each new group of attendees as they rotate to your station

• Facilitate brief introductions so everyone in the group knows who's in the room

• Guide the conversation using seasonal prompts provided during your pre-Summit training, drawing on your own lived experience in that business stage

• Hold space for honesty, vulnerability, and genuine connection without letting any one voice dominate the room

• Repeat for up to four conversation rounds during the 6:00 to 8:00pm programming block, with 5-minute transitions between groups

You'll be stationed at your table for the evening's conversation programming, roughly two hours. This is a role that calls for stamina, sincerity, and a generous spirit.

Connection Hosts will be prepared and supported by Mellisa Cain of Iceberg Consulting, a Burlington-based facilitator and community connector whose work helps people see the big picture, literally.

Mellisa will lead a pre-Summit training to prepare you for your role. She will also be capturing the themes, patterns, and collective wisdom that surface across all four seasonal stations throughout the evening, producing a graphic recording summary after the Summit. These hand-drawn visual maps make complex conversations easier to understand, support memory and recall, and create a lasting artifact that carries the group's thinking well beyond the event itself. It's a portrait of what this community knows, drawn from one remarkable evening together.

You might be a great fit if:

• You're a woman or gender-expansive entrepreneur who has cycled through multiple seasons of business and can speak to that experience with honesty and warmth

• You're comfortable holding space in a group setting, not dominating it, but guiding it

• You genuinely love connecting people and watching them light up when they realize someone else gets it

• You can show up energized for a full evening of meaningful conversation

• You've been part of the VTW community and understand what sincere connection looks and feels like in practice

Prior formal facilitation experience is welcome but not required. Mellisa will make sure you feel fully prepared.

As a thank-you for your time and presence, Connection Hosts choose one of the following:

🌿 A complimentary ticket to the Summit ($60 value) plus a short business bio featured in our Summit program, in the hands of up to 200 attendees.

🌿 A 10% discount on any VTW Summit sponsorship tier, from Convener ($175) to SHERO ($1,625), including advertising, digital promotion, and swag bag inclusion.