2026 Women in Educational Leadership Conference

Thursday, March 26 Keynote Michelle McCullough
Stretch Capacity: Building Sustainable High Performance Without Snapping

Today’s school leaders juggle endless demands, competing priorities, and constant change. This inspiring workshop helps you find your stretch zone—where growth happens without tipping into overload. Discover practical, energizing strategies to sustain your focus, renew your resilience, and lead with steadiness through uncertainty. You’ll gain tools to reframe challenges, recover faster from setbacks, and build a culture where collaboration, innovation, and well-being drive high performance. Leave recharged and ready to lead with purpose, balance, and lasting impact.

Participants will be able to:

1. Recognize and Manage Stretch Capacity
   1. Identify the difference between healthy stretch (growth zone) and overload (snap zone).
   2. Apply practical strategies to sustain personal energy and avoid burnout while managing competing priorities in education leadership.
2. Strengthen Resilience for Long-Term Leadership & Performance
   1. Understand resilience as a renewable skill that can be built through intentional practices.
   2. Gain tools to reframe challenges, recover quickly from setbacks, and lead with steadiness in uncertain times.
3. Create a Culture of Team Building & Problem Solving
   1. Explore research-backed methods to cultivate collaboration, innovation, and problem-solving within school teams.
   2. Learn how to model resilience and adaptability so staff feel supported, motivated, and empowered to deliver their best work.
   3. Create a school culture where high performance is achieved without sacrificing mental health, morale, or long-term capacity.

Get to Know Michelle McCullough

Michelle McCullough blends research-backed expertise with energizing, practical strategies to help leaders tackle today’s most urgent workplace challenges—from communication breakdowns and lack of trust to employee retention struggles.

A seasoned keynote speaker, Certified Speaking Professional (CSP®), and engaging emcee, Michelle has delivered over 400 presentations for organizations like Goldman Sachs, the Air Force Reserve, and Ancestry.com. As a Future of Work researcher, she’s led national studies including the 2025 Leadership and Engagement Report and the U.S. Happiness Report, revealing the hidden behavioral influences that drive performance, engagement, and retention.

Michelle is the bestselling author of four books, including The Make It Happen Blueprint and The HappyIST and serves on the Board of Directors for Stampin’ Up! As CEO of DreamBoard Media, she leads her own team using the same leadership and emotional intelligence strategies she shares worldwide.

Featured over 250 times in outlets like Entrepreneur.com, Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates, Michelle answers the critical questions executives are asking—delivering actionable insights with her signature energy, engaging storytelling, and data-driven approach. Above all, she’s passionate about helping teams stretch, innovate, and enjoy success together.

Friday, March 27 Keynote Sarah Stevens
Unburdened: A Somatic Approach to the Stress Cycle

It is so hard to be human.

Competing priorities abound, relentless personal and professional expectations meet us on every front, and at the end of the day, we are often left with too little time to be able to do anything about the situational stress that saturates our lives. And so we just keep going, often living with an excess of physical, mental, and emotional strain because we don’t have the tools to live any other way.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We are biologically wired to move stress through our bodies, allowing us to complete the stress cycle without adding one single thing to our to-do list. We only need someone who can show us how.

In this session, Sarah will connect us to the inherent wisdom of our bodies and provide tactics and tools to complete the stress cycle instead of being endlessly stuck in it. Through a combination of instruction and experiential application, we will both understand and experience our bodies in a new way, a way that allows for relief and encourages connection.

Get to Know Sarah Stevens

Sarah Stevens is a former healthcare executive turned writer, speaker, and entrepreneur. After leaving her career in corporate healthcare in 2016, she founded The Beautifull Project - a storytelling collective that has reached tens of thousands of women across the globe with its powerful message about learning to take up space.

Today, Sarah is pouring her time and attention into Sanctuary Studios, a pay-what-you-can studio for movement and meditation. At Sanctuary, Sarah combines her lifelong love of movement with her deep commitment to helping people find a way to be safely present in their own bodies, creating an experience where every body belongs. She also helps other people tell their story through Branded by Sarah Stevens, a small business offering a full suite of marketing services.

Sarah is a gifted storyteller with a skill for using her own story as a woman navigating the world in a fat body to invite her audience to encounter the parts of themselves they hide away from the world, the parts they believe to be “too much.” Addressing everything from “too-big” bodies to a fear of failure that cripples confidence, Sarah amplifies a message that moves beyond a body-positive sentiment and creates a movement that makes room for every body to tell their truth and take up space. She draws out confidence and courage. She believes in being free and full. And she will make a believer out of you, too.