The costa rica retreat
ACTIVATE Your Professional Reinvention with Us.
at Verdesana by Imiloa, October 10-15, 2026
Join NOwLeave behind the Old Rules of Sucess & Step into your Next Era now. Anchor your Truth, Embody your Vision, and Trust your Intuition.
Ignite your Clarity and Rewrite your Definition of Impact
ACTIVATE Live in Costa Rica – a six-day immersive retreat for women.
Join us in Costa Rica for an experience designed to empower, connect and inspire.
ACTIVATE is an intimate gathering of female leaders, disruptors, and changemakers – where embodied and indigenous wisdom meets business innovation at an all-inclusive regenerative rainforest resort.
Does this resonate? we invite you to ACTIVATE.
Reserve Your SpotMENU
Why this retreat? why now?
You are Ready for a new paradigm of success.
One guided by intuition. Anchored in truth. Capable of quietly, groundedly sparking massive ripple effects across your industry.
It all starts when you say “yes!” to your reinvention era.
When you choose to pause. Reset. Recalibrate. When you choose to activate a new way of being that aligns your body, your presence, and your purpose.
As a leader today, you are being called to ride the waves of change…
to face and disrupt old structures, out-of-date systems, and even yourself
Through collaborative visioning, you have the ability to shape a new world – one that honors your true nature, treating both humans and non-humans as sacred.
Through courageous action, you have the opportunity to bring this new world to life. But it isn’t easy to wield the presence, skill and trust necessary to redesign our systems.
And the energy required to create lasting, sustainable change can be tremendous. Indeed, it takes a different kind of leadership to build the future YOU wish to see.
To birth a new paradigm of success, you need to get back to your roots.
HERE, YOU WILL:
- Unravel the urgency, overdrive, and isolation that keep you in survival mode, so you can breathe and create from clarity again.
- Remove distractions and strengthen your ‘why’ to radiate the true frequency of your professional mission.
- Root into the land, your body, and your inner knowing, awakening a deeper wisdom that’s waiting inside you.
- Build lasting relationships with women who reflect your brilliance, call forth your courage, and hold you accountable to the truth of your vision.
This is why we gather. When women heal and dream together, we don’t just change our lives. We change the future of humanity.
The Activate Process
Rooted In Modern Science & Ancient Technologies
Our proven 3-step somatic development process combines mindfulness and science with time-tested wisdom to help you…
Release
Survival patterns and overdrive and conditioning through restorative movement, mindset shifts, bodywork, and somatic practice.
Receive
Greater clarity about your mission, informed by ancient wisdom, spaciousness, and visioning that reconnects you with your center.
Realize
Your new paradigm of success in real time, surrounded by women who mirror your highest self and celebrate your bold action.
Each day, you’ll immerse in practices that upgrade your nervous system, awaken your clarity, and anchor you in the frequency of your authentic power.
Your personal shifts will later be applied in a unique innovation + design process with a small group of industry-related peers.
Detailed Itinerary
What We’ll Do In Six Days
Day 1: Arrival & Reset
Settle into Verdesana’s forest sanctuary, meet the team, and ground on the land. Begin your reset with an opening circle, intention setting, delicious food, and space to breathe.
Day 2: Release
Unravel old patterns of urgency, overdrive, and isolation. Through guided somatic practice, ritual, and reflection, shed what no longer serves your body or leadership.
Day 3: Receive
Restore your nervous system and open to ancient wisdom. Experience practices that reconnect you to intuition, stillness, and feminine ways of knowing that fuel sustainable leadership.
Day 4: Integrate
Rest, digest and integrate the prior days’ experience. Partake in a unique indigenous wisdom ritual, join a small group integration activity, or enjoy some solo downtime.
Day 5: Realize
Step into the future of your leadership. Vision boldly, claim your mission, and be reflected in the circle of women who see your brilliance. Anchor this realization through action-oriented practice.
Day 6: Commitment & Completion
End your journey with a completion circle and ritual. Leave with clear practices, a sisterhood of allies, and a recalibrated nervous system that will sustain you long after you return home.
Asking your company for support?
Download the schedule and travel details below.
Have Questions?
Let’s Talk.
Book a 20-minute call with our team to discover your WHY. Decide if attending the ACTIVATE Retreat is right for you.
Book an Info CallEvery detail of the ACTIVATE experience is designed to nourish, connect and transform:
- Powerful Curriculum
Daily sessions with LeeAnn where leadership meets somatic practice, ancient wisdom, and next-level strategy. - Unique & Meaningful Connections
Guided conversations with peers that spark courage, presence, and clarity – the kind of dialogue you won’t find in boardrooms. - 5-Star Nourishment
Locally sourced meals prepared onsite and shared in community, reminding your body what it feels like to be fully fueled and cared for. - Nature Immersion
Lush rainforest trails and the sacred stillness of Costa Rica drawing you back into presence, peace, and purpose. - Spa & Wellness
Optional bodywork, massage, and movement classes that support your restoration and integration. - Personal Support
Hands-on bodyworkers and experienced coaches available throughout your stay, ensuring you feel fully seen, supported, and resourced.
ACTIVATE is more than a retreat. It’s a full-body immersion that activates your leadership, re-sets your nervous system, and ignites your spirit.
The Restorative Magic of Costa Rica
A rested mind sparks new ideas. A restored body gives you the energy to face big change. A slower pace opens you to the guidance of spirit.
The ACTIVATE experience takes you out of your status-quo and into a deeper reflection on your leadership that taps into your body, instincts, and truest nature. Our intimate venue in the rainforest Blue Zone of Costa Rica brings the perfect combination of grounded spirituality, natural beauty and tasteful luxury – in fact, it’s a living, breathing field of transformation.
Here, the land itself is your teacher. The rainforest holds you as you let go of urgency and melt into flow. The sound of the jungle at night, the morning light breaking over the mountains, the taste of meals grown from the soil beneath your feet — every detail is designed to return you to pure presence.
This is sacred ground. Once you’ve walked it, you’ll never forget the magic.
Let's practice a brighter future together. ACTIVATE gathers women and non-binary leaders who are making positive waves in their organizations, industries & communities.
Our agenda evolves to meet the group’s needs. We honor where each traveler is on her career path, along with the broader ‘field’ of current events, to create a meaningful collective experience. Expect moments of synchronicity, deep rest, profound connection and joyful surprise.
This retreat is for you if you are:
- An executive, founder, or entrepreneur leading initiatives that shape the future.
- A visionary in fields where humanity is calling for radical change — e.g finance, sustainability, AI, healthcare, technology, social justice.
- A community leader who is making wide ripples by actively supporting others to rise.
- A woman who has already achieved traditional success and knows it’s time to lead differently with intuition, presence, sustainability and grace.
ACTIVATE is an initiation for those ready to embody a new paradigm of success alongside women who are equally committed to building what’s next.
Curious if this retreat is for you?
OUR CLIENTS’ ORGANIZATIONS
Stories of Transformation
Sahar Alnouri
Senior Director of Social Inclusion at Mercy Corps
Laura Kahn
Biotech Strategy Consultant | Former VP R&D Strategy and Ops @ReCode Therapeutics
Carrie Gruenloh
Sr. Conflict and Governance Advisor, USAID
Tomeka Robinson
Director of Customer Relations, Progressive Insurance
Aparna Sundaram
CEO & Co-Founder, Kosha
Anna Young
Executive Leadership Coach
Load More +
Verdesana by Imiloa
Nestled in the heart of Costa Rica’s stunning Central Highlands, our eco-village venue includes serene lodging, a rejuvenating wellness center, and a sustainable farm.
Surrounded by the lush beauty of tropical cloud forests and endless evergreen vistas, Verdesana offers a truly unique sanctuary to disconnect from the world and reconnect with nature’s purest essence. Our charming rustic log cabins, lovingly handcrafted from pine wood sourced from our very own plantation, provide a cozy, eco-friendly retreat that blends comfort with the beauty of the natural world.
Your tuition for the ACTIVATE Retreat includes all lodging and dining.
Guests will have exclusive and unlimited access to all facilities and grounds including yoga space with equipment, outdoor hot baths, fire pits, forest trails, a walking labyrinth, bubbling river and indoor-outdoor dining area.
You will sleep in a well-appointed sanctuary room surrounded by nature, and be nourished by local, sustainable vegetarian cuisine custom-designed by our 5 star chef. We’ve taken care of all the details, so all you need to do is receive.
Book Your Best Ever Professional Retreat Today!
The ACTIVATE Retreat is part of a broader eco-system of game-changing courses and cohort programs for women leaders – both live and virtual – that will change the way you think about work. We can’t WAIT to begin the journey with you in Costa Rica this year!
ALL PACKAGES INCLUDE:
- Pre-event virtual kickoff call
- Six-day full event experience
- Five nights luxury lodging on site
- Airport-to-venue transit
- Five-star means plus snack + beverage
- Curated wellness activities
- Property access including spa, hiking etc.
- Optional 1:1 bodywork (additional cost)
- Post-event group integration call
- Post-event networking access
- A community of badass female peers
- Discounts on future training
REGISTER NOW:
$1,500 Deposit Required to Book*
Earlybird Discount:
$1,000 Off First 4 Travelers Paid in Full*
SPONSOR
Pay-It-Forward Tuition
For leaders with financial means who want to co-create the future by contributing to one or more attendee’s tuition at the ACTIVATE Summit live in Costa Rica this year.
$5,500
RegisterTransform
Standard Tuition
For leaders who are ready to reset and redefine success by attending the ACTIVATE Summit live in Costa Rica this year.
$4,500
RegisterReceive
Scholarship Tuition
For BIPOC and NONPROFIT leaders who may require financial support to attend the ACTIVATE Summit live in Costa Rica this year.
*Room Type Subject to Availability. Deposits and EarlyBird Discounts are non-refundable
Our Founder & Host
LeeAnn Mallorie, founder
and CEO of Guts & Grace, helps women leaders confidently bring forward cutting-edge ideas
that serve the greater good.
She is a committed and passionate advocate of “both-and” thinking – the win-win-win approach that sparks positive disruption in industries and organizations, while keeping stakeholder relations in-tact. LeeAnn has two decades of experience working with innovators in diverse companies like Google, Apple, NASA, Logitech, Nextera Energy, Verizon Media, Silicon Valley Bank, Campbells, Navair, Roche, She Should Run, the New Leaders Council, Mercy Corps and USAID.
Her book Guts and Grace: A Woman’s Guide to Full-Bodied Leadership, Conscious Capitalism Press 2020, teaches women how to dismantle threads of internalized patriarchy – on their own terms – by tapping into the wisdom of their bodies at work.
The ACTIVATE Retreat is presented by Guts & Grace, a Certified B Corp whose mission is to empower extraordinary women leaders to create profound systemic change… without burning out.
The vision for ACTIVATE was born in 2016, while coaching a young Director of Sustainability at a Fortune 500 food and beverage company.
She was grappling with challenges like confidence, resilience and stakeholder management. We thought: wouldn’t it be incredible to bring together passionate changemakers from diverse industries and brands in a transformative co-learning environment?
Part mindfulness + personal development, part relationship building and part innovation, this unique retreat is designed to align your presence with your vision for the world – and to prove that you don’t have to do it alone.
The Activate Effect
Leading from Their True Power
Real stories. Real shifts. The leaders who’ve attended ACTIVATE describe it as the reboot they didn’t know they needed. A turning point that brought them back to themselves and changed how they lead – for good.
For the kinds of problems that we need to solve in the world, it’s imperative to expose our vulnerabilities and to find the commonalities between our shared experiences. It's also imperative to step out of your daily work and gather in community. This powerful time spent together really brought things to the surface. And there's no way to do that by yourself. I leave inspired and ready to take action on the new ideas and inspirations.CEO of Circle Box Ventures | Former VP of Strategy & Regulatory at TRC Companies
I was carrying a lot of frustration, anger and grief from work and recent geopolitical events. ACTIVATE helped me to release some of those emotions and create space for more hope, optimism and strategic thinking. I appreciated the variety of approaches, including movement and voice, incorporating traditional practices with attribution, the space for real emotional expression, and her ability to hold space for the vulnerability of women in the group.Senior Director of Social Inclusion at Mercy Corps
Do it! You must go! The mind and body approach will take you places that will transform you in ways you could never anticipate. Some of the nooks and crannies of who you are will surface. It freed and released me from some things holding me back that I had not been fully aware of. I was able to put divided elements of myself back together and then step into a new or renewed "shape" – for myself and for my leadership. The experience was amazing.Founder & President at EdIntersect, LLC
This retreat is medicine for the soul! LeeAnn’s ability to tune into the energy of the room highly, vibrationally affected the space. I also appreciated LeeAnn's approach to visioning and creative brainstorming made me hopeful for the future. To any woman thinking about joining, trust your gut and attend. You will unpack what’s been holding you back and give momentum to the true vision that’s been eluding you. You can’t break through everything in just one week… but the momentum this experience built is ingrained in my DNA now.Biotech Strategy Consultant | Former VP R&D Strategy and Ops at ReCode Therapeutics
If you're the type of person that's looking to make a greater impact in the world, I would highly, highly highly recommend that you have a chat with LeeAnn and join one of these programs. It's an incredible network of women, of individuals, and I'm sure that there's something that you'll find here that'll benefit you and benefit your future generations.Founder & CEO of Pink Rocket | Former Senior Manager at Amazon Prime
If you have any fire in your belly to make change, whether it's within your company, within your family or within the world, no matter how small or grand, this will move you forward. For me it made a tremendous difference. As an executive, there's always considerations around time, commitments, around money – even fear of what is this going to be? Am I going to be vulnerable in front of people? But what comes out the other side is worth the commitment of time and resources that you put into it.Chief Content Officer at e.Republic | Founder, The Humanity Code
Even though there were a lot of women at the retreat, LeeAnn went out of her way to make time for a personal connection with me. I felt valued and seen on a very deep level. I appreciated the discussion around personal history and how it connected with our professional goals, our roadblocks and our bigger visions. It was really interesting, impressive, and unexpected to learn how the other women had arrived where they were in life.Integrated Communications Strategist
I had a sense of what I needed and ACTIVATE more than met my needs. I am coming away inspired, energized and nourished. I appreciated LeeAnn’s ability to be present. To know when to push and when to affirm. Her ability to be part of the work as well as teaching the work. Her joyful-ness. Her ability to dance between different types of roles. To really see me. To any woman considering attending this retreat, take time to set your intentions before you come and then be open to seeing where the journey takes you.Executive Leadership Coach
This is not just another women’s Retreat.
This is a cellular-level reset that calls you forward as the leader you were born to be.
You don’t need to push harder.
You don’t need to brace yourself or walk alone.
You just need to remember.
Because the life you’ve built so far is only the beginning — and the woman you are becoming cannot emerge in an environment where the old rules still bind you.
Six days in Costa Rica is not an indulgence. It is an initiation.
STILL HAVE QUESTIONS? LET’S TALK!
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
We aim to recruit a group of open-minded, forward-thinking women across industries, from different sectors, of different ages, nationalities and ethnicities. We do this on purpose – because we’ve found that there’s no greater value than learning from women with the same challenges who look very different than yourself. In particular, we believe that cross-sector cross-pollination (education -> non-profit, non-profit -> corporate, corporate -> government etc) breeds innovative ideas that raise the bar across the board.
All of the women who join our programs are up to game-changing work in their industries, organizations and communities. And we are always surprised at how very much we have in common. That said, if you want to be sure there will be more women like you taking the program… we encourage you to invite your friends!
Totally understand. 90% of our current clients had exactly this same concern before we started working together. It’s one reason they felt called to participate. Rest assured that we have designed this program for busy women, just like you. It’s set up to deliver the maximum benefit with the minimum amount of time and energy investment. we’ve removed all fillers. Every activity is practical – and most can be implemented on the fly, as part of what you’re already committed to doing every day at work.
The “catch 22” is this: the very things you’ll need to do in order to make time for the program are typically the very same moves you’ll need to make in order to end self-sabotage, bring your deeper strengths online, and get your full power back.
Individual coaching is fantastic. But if you want to get quality individual coaching support with a highly skilled executive coach it’s going to cost you hundreds of dollars an hour. If you’ve got there sources, give us a call! We’d LOVE to go deep with you. If not, or you want to get your feet wet first, this is the next best thing.
After running our year-long executive coaching and mastermind program for over a decade, we designed this program especially for women who want to get the maximum benefit for the bare minimum investment. BECAUSE we’ve been doing transformational executive-level coaching for over a decade, we bring every ounce of that expertise into our group coaching sessions. Most women find they get at least as much support and transformation in a program like this – and we go way deeper – than coaching apps like Better-Up. Don’t use your desire for coaching as an excuse to wait another year to get the support you really need right now. Start here.
Our event caters to director-to-executive level leaders, founders and entrepreneurs, though we welcome all women who feel inspired to attend. Past Summit attendees included: the CMO of a government sector tech company, a product and diversity initiative leader at Apple, a marketing exec opening a new territory for a beverage company, the former COO of a hospital staffing company, a documentarist on AI and humanity, a sustainability expert at Google, the president of a Women in Clean Tech organization, a biotech company CFO, an upcycling innovator, and a retired IBM executive pursuing spiritual growth.
Because a signifiant portion of your tuition covers the venue, team, and other non-refundable costs on our end, our full priced tuition deposit and early-bird tuition discounted tuition tickets are non-refundable. We recommend our travelers book trip insurance through Global Rescue to cover your refund in the case of unforeseen travel disruptions. In some situations where at least 60 days advanced notice is given, a portion of your tuition may be transferred to cover the cost of a future event or future service. These requests are handled on a case by case basis.
We do offer a limited number of scholarships to BIPOC women with limited financial resources who are doing game-changing work and are deeply committed to their own personal development. That said, there are also lots of ways to gather the financial resources for your tuition. Especially if you believe (like we do) that doing the work will increase your skills and impact. Many of our clients also talk to their employers about company sponsorship. We recommend you get clear about what you want first… THEN figure out how to pay for it. You never know what’s possible until you set your mind to it!
