Our Venue and the Land

Nestled in the heart of the great redwoods, our venue Canyon Ranch Woodside is conscious and sustainable retreat space about an hour south of the San Francisco International Airport. Our venue was built on the original tribal land of the migratory Awaswas people, of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, approximately 200 years post colonization in the 1770s. You can learn more about the Awaswas people here. Formerly the Stillheart Institute and Skylonda, the current property was mindfully constructed in the 1990s as a spiritual center and yoga retreat. Today the venue, which exudes the perfect combination of grounded spirituality, natural beauty and high-end luxury, caters to intimate conference events and corporate team retreats.

Your registration for the ACTIVATE Summit is inclusive of both lodging and dining. As an attendee, you will have exclusive and unlimited access to all facilities and grounds including yoga and fitness space with equipment, an indoor-outdoor saline pool, forest trails, a walking labyrinth, fire pits, and outdoor brick-oven, and rope-challenge activities. You will sleep in a well-appointed sanctuary room surrounded by nature, and be nourished by local, sustainable cuisine custom-designed for our group by head chef George Meza. We’ve taken care of all the details, so all you need to do is arrive, settle in, and receive.

Our Founder

LeeAnn Mallorie founder of the ACTIVATE Summit and CEO of Guts & Grace Leadership, is passionate about helping women leaders confidently bring forward cutting-edge ideas that serve the greater good. She is a committed advocate of “both-and” and a steward of the win-win-win – sparking positive disruption in industries and organizations, while keeping stakeholder relations in-tact. LeeAnn has nearly two decades of experience working with innovators in diverse companies like Google, Apple, NASA, Logitech, Cadence, Nextera Energy, Verizon Media, Silicon Valley Bank, Campbells Soup Company, Navair, Roche, Zymergen, She Should Run, the New Leaders Council, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.

Her book Guts and Grace: A Woman’s Guide to Full-BodiedLeadership, Conscious Capitalism Press 2020, teaches women how to dismantle the patriarchy – from the inside out – by tapping into the wisdom of their bodies.

History and Our Bigger Why:

The ACTIVATE Summit is presented by Guts & Grace Leadership, a Certified B Corp whose mission is to…

The vision for ACTIVATE (formerly The MEM2E Project) was born in 2016, while coaching a young Director of Sustainability at a Fortune 500 food and beverage company. While supporting her as she grappled with challenges like confidence, resilience and stakeholder management we thought: wouldn’t it be incredible to bring together a group of passionate changemakers from diverse industries and brands to explore the relationship between inner-work and external success?

I was reminded of an earlier conference experience that left me both impressed and inspired. In 2007 I volunteered at a “collaboration fest” organized by the Special Operations Pacific Command in Hawaii. The summit brought together stakeholders across sectors who were working to solve real-world problems on the ground in their geography. It should never have worked – the participants had too much at stake and too little in common. But the program included embodiment practice and mindset sessions that shifted relationships and sparked a groundswell of new collaborations that lasted long beyond the event.

I knew that if the US Army could create an event with that much magic, then so could a group of forward-thinking women leaders. In the height of the COVID pandemic the pieces came together, and the first MEM2E Project Summit was finally born. Part mindfulness + personal development, part relationship building and part innovation, this unique event is designed to help you fully align your presence and energy with the change you are instigating in the world – and to see clearly that you don’t have to do it alone.

About The Summit

Our Venue and the Land

Our Founder

History and Our Bigger Why:

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