Dearest Reader,
The most important things are never the things you planned for.
Last week at 2am on my birthday I woke up to Elvis seizing. I held him all night and canceled everything I had planned. And I wasn't upset about it because there was never a question about what mattered most.
π§ Listen to the podcast version of this letter on Apple or Spotify.
That clarity, knowing without hesitation what deserves your presence is the thing I have been trying to build my entire life. And it's the thing I want to talk to you about today. Because I'm about to invite you into a room with women who have built that clarity into billion-dollar decisions. (keep reading, itβs so good)
I've been reading Gary Zukav's Seat of the Soul and something in it confirmed what I already knew in my body, that every being who enters our life, human or animal, arrives so we can discover something true about ourselves.
My birthday looked nothing like what I planned and it was the most perfect birthday I've had in a long time. And I spent the weekend drinking matcha on your behalf. Thank you. Elvis is doing better and currently trying to lick the breeze on the balcony. πΎ
Life will always be unpredictable. I used to fight that.
What I've learned, slowly, is that when you allow the flow of events to occur as the universe intends, you stop spending your energy on resistance. The stress isn't in the event. The stress is in the fighting of it.
The thing you're trying to control is usually the thing that, if you let it move the way it needs to move, will show you exactly what you needed to see.
Now. I have been teasing this for weeks and I can FINALLY tell you everything.
I am co-hosting Thrive and Lead at AVANCE with the extraordinary Patty Arvielo.
If you don't know Patty, she is the Co-Founder and CEO of New American Funding, the nation's largest Latina and woman-owned mortgage company. She started at 16 in an entry-level clerical role. She helped her mother clean offices on weekends. She built a billion-dollar company with 5,400 employees and 297 locations across the country. She didn't wait for permission. She built her own rules.
And now we are building a room together. ππΌ
βThrive and Lead at AVANCE Global September 14-16, 2026 The Bellagio, Las Vegas
This is a three-day women's leadership experience inside AVANCE Global's Proximo β the largest Latine/a/o business conference in the country. 7,000 professionals.
One room within that room, built specifically for the woman who is done playing small and ready to make her next move.
The agenda moves through five pillars and we're bringing real AF conversations with women who have built multi-million and billion-dollar companies, raised capital, and stepped into rooms that weren't built for them.
Every registered attendee is automatically entered to win an invite to a VIP dinner at the Bellagio β an intimate table with the women who move things forward.
ποΈ Every ticket includes full access to the Proximo conference.
I need you to feel what I'm actually inviting you into before you click anything.
The one thing AI will never replace is the feeling of being in the same room as someone whose energy you can actually feel.
Of looking someone in the eye and knowing, this is the person I needed to meet, this is the conversation that changes something. Those moments can't happen on a webinar. And it does not happen in a course. It happens in a room, in real time, between real people who showed up on purpose.
That is my zone of genius. Curating rooms where that happens. And I am so glad to be alive at a moment when that still matters. When presence is the rarest and most valuable thing we can offer each other.
Come be in the room.
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β Register for Thrive and Lead
As I dive into building Thrive and Lead so that it becomes the place where deals, opportunities, connections and magic flows, The Table will be pausing in June and July. Perhaps even longer.
Thatβs why, the last seat remaining for The Table happening May 21st, needs to be yours. Pull up a chair. (registration closes this week)
Until the next letter.
Vanessa
ππΌ P.S. If your brand or company wants to be part of Thrive and Lead β we are accepting sponsors. This is your first look before we open it publicly. Reply to this email directly and I'll send you all the details.
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