Female Executives Bond at Montauk Beach Club

Female executives are finding that some of the most effective dealmaking happens away from the boardroom. Stacy Berns, the CEO of Berns Communications Group, recently brought together roughly 60 founders, investors, and brand leaders for an invite-only retreat at The DealmakeHers Beach Club in Montauk, New York. The event featured the CEO of Hello Sunshine, the global CMO of Gap, two-time World Cup champion Ashlyn Harris, and other high-profile attendees. According to research from the events firm Freeman, there is a growing desire for networking gatherings that focus on experiences rather than traditional session rooms.

Senior executives don’t give up three days easily. In a space saturated with panels and step-and-repeats, a gathering has to offer something valuable in return. Berns’ wager is that the thing worth their time isn’t content, but trust, and trust is what moves deals.

“We’re incredibly intentional about who’s in the room,” she told me. “We keep every gathering under 75 people — consumer brand leaders, investors, board members of publicly traded companies. There are no seat fillers, no strangers padding a panel.”

In turn, everyone there was a principal who had deal approval power or could jumpstart the deal without handling the many middle internal corporate layers. Mindy Grossman, the former CEO of HSN and now partner and vice chair at the advisory firm Consello, has been part of this community since Berns launched it about a decade ago. The draw is the curation — women from their 30s to their 60s, across finance and retail, deliberately mixed rather than sorted by sector or stage.

“Deals are not about selling,” she said. “They are about building relationships and identifying where one plus one can equal ten.”

The Power of Informal Spaces

While there were a few conversations with experts on topics like longevity, wellness, and a Q&A with former soccer player Ashlyn Harris, they were limited. Instead, there was plenty of downtime between activities for shared experiences — facials, celebrity-led workouts, sound baths, shopping, and a game of mahjong.

“We intentionally skip the panel format because we believe the best deals happen between people who already like and trust each other,” Berns said.

This distinction is felt keenly by those in the room. Rebecca Minkoff, who built her namesake brand into a global label, has attended several of these gatherings. She put it plainly: “You never know when the deal is going to happen, but what’s nice about Stacy and the team is they make it so it’s not icky to just talk business and do a deal.”

The informality of the retreat is partly why it works so well. “We’re by the ocean, we’re in athletic wear, and we can be our authentic selves,” said Michelle Cordeiro Grant, founder of the energy-drink brand GORGIE, who sold her previous company, LIVELY, for $105 million.

It’s rare to see the “invisible armor” high-achieving women carry into rooms where they are often the only one come off as fully as it did during those few days. That ability to lean into moments of vulnerability and even pleasure is the exact condition under which people do deals they trust.

This approach has already produced results. Berns points to a connection sparked at another DealmakeHers event that she hosted with Grossman. Comedian Zarna Garg was seated beside the CMO of JCPenney, and that conversation turned into a real partnership. Zarna is now the face of JCPenney’s national back-to-school campaign.

This year produced similar momentum. Jamie Cygielman, global head of dolls at Mattel, said leaders she met through the group became collaborators for American Girl, including clothing and lifestyle brand LoveShackFancy and the NFL’s LA Rams. Kristen D’Arcy, CMO of True Religion, left the retreat with a call booked with “one of the largest beauty companies in the world.”

Grossman ties the current success of this model to the force reshaping every industry. “I’m a big believer that AI is going to become the next human renaissance,” she shared. “People are going to want to come together, want community, want the time to build real relationships.”