Breakfast, coffee & tea, mimosas & bloody mary bar

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Unleashing Giants: The Blueprint to a Transformative Banking Revolution

Step into the exhilarating odyssey designed to ignite a revolution that transcends the ordinary, transforming banking professionals into extraordinary masters of change.

This is more than a call to action—it’s a call to revolution, charging forth into a brave new world where transactional banking relationships make way for extraordinary value creation and profound customer impact. We must rise above the rhetoric when we declare ourselves as “Trusted Advisors.”

Discover how you can be the very nucleus of transformative banking—rewriting the rules—molding the future of banking not as a mere profession—but as a catalyst for a seismic change in every customer encounter.

In this dynamic opening keynote, you’ll also learn ways you can:

• Catapult your revenue and profits—regardless of the economy.
• Create winning positioning that attracts more high-profit customers and high-potential members.
• Understand why almost every business is 'dead wrong' when it comes to their sales and marketing strategies.
• Create an environment where people thrive and work with enthusiasm that breathes new life into your business' bottom line.
• Explore why many well-meaning management practices actually sabotage results.
• Understand how to attract and motivate top performers.
• Find out how to do more with less and better than ever by outsmarting your competition.

Brought to you by the New York Times bestselling author of “Thank God It’s Monday!” and “The Breakthrough Banking Blueprint,” join Roxanne Emmerich, a distinguished member of the Speaker Hall of Fame, in discovering why she and her committed team are driving the most radical performance transformations in banking.  

What does the rise of AI mean for the lending industry and especially for women in lending? How will roles adapt, what will new machine performance mean for how lending is done, and what advantages are waiting for early adopters? Celligence has been creating AI systems for lending for several years, and its platform is fully powering Sun West Mortgage. Angelynne Elliott, director of organizational development at Celligence, will give us a deep-dive into this cutting edge issue for everyone in the industry.

There is nothing like the power of possibility that women bring to an organization.  We’re bringing together executives from several community banking institutions to discuss their career experiences and share their wisdom on how to be a leader for change and empowerment at your bank.

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Panelists include Lizette Nigro, SVP of Digital Engagement at Liberty Bank; Anne Tangen, CEO and President of BankFive; and Claude Rousseau, SMD Human Resources at Webster Bank.

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Join us for this special awards luncheon honoring women who’ve made an exceptional mark on the region’s banking industry.

In 2018, Natalie Bartholomew — at the time chief marketing officer and vice president of Grand Savings Bank in Rogers, Ark. – started a blog, The Girl Banker, along with its Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. She wanted to start a conversation among women in banking and women who might be part of banking’s future. The Girl Banker features a “Girl Banker of the Week,” which highlights significant women in the banking industry, their stories and their motivations.

She told Bank Beat that “she began crafting her brand after attending a few industry meetings populated by men. ‘I call them OWDs, without any disrespect, but old white dudes,’ Bartholomew said. ‘I just got so tired of seeing them day in and day out, and I wondered where all the women in leadership are, and why are they not here?’”

As Bartholomew spoke to high school and college-aged girls, the question continued to taunt her when she realized how few of them were considering careers in finance. “There’s some kind of barrier that’s keeping women from considering banking as a career,” Bartholomew said, “and obviously someone needs to get out and advocate for it.”

Bartholomew, now Northwest Arkansas president for First Community Bank, said that sharing the stories of women bankers — young and old, novice or practiced — can shed light on the abundance of opportunities there are for women in the industry. “If no one’s out there telling anyone about [these stories,]” she asked, “how are we ever going to attract top talent for the industry going forward?”

In 2007, six-year-old Jazz Jennings went on national television to tell Barbara Walters the same thing she’d been telling her parents, siblings and anyone else who would listen: She was, despite her birth certificate’s insistence otherwise, a girl.

In a recent article on her in Variety, the writer note, “Shy and sweet, Jennings answered Walters’ probing questions with the clarity and patience of someone used to explaining herself over and over again. “She was so charismatic, so charming and so clearly herself,” Laverne Cox says of first seeing that “20/20” interview. “Her humanity was so on display that you couldn’t deny she had the right to be who she was.” It was a watershed moment for transgender visibility in media, not least because it made Jennings one of the youngest documented trans people to speak her truth for millions of viewers to hear.”

Since then, Jennings has starred in 8 seasons of the TLC reality show, “I Am Jazz,” documenting her fight to become the woman she always knew she was. She wrote a bestselling children’s book, and has enrolled at Harvard, where she is currently a student.

Being transgender is not easy. But it has gone from being difficult to possibly deadly in the past year, as large swaths of the country have taken aim at transgender people, aiming to eradicate this population.

Jennings has weathered a lot. It’s not easy for a child to know they are in the wrong body. It’s not easy to navigate school and life. A TV show helps bring a story to life, but it also attracts unwanted aggression. And all of this is on top of the traditional angst and issues that plague any teenager. Jazz has struggled with gender acceptance, her safety, her weight and her academic future. Now she’s struggling to understand how a nation built on liberty can be so consumed with denying it to vulnerable people.

The New England Women in Banking conference proudly welcomes Jazz Jennings, and her outlook on why we are all better off when we extend a hand of acceptance and grace to everyone.

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Thank you to all of our attendees, speakers and sponsors.