WIFI Hosts Inaugural Leadership Summit

Members of the WIFI Advisory Board and Leadership Council convened in Charlotte, N.C. earlier this month for the inaugural WIFI Leadership Summit, hosted by Rack Room Shoes. Participants spent the day discussing the future of the WIFI community at large and defining WIFI’s role in building a more inclusive and empowering future for the next generation of women in the footwear industry. 

We sat down with WIFI Advisory Board member and Rack Room’s Senior Director of Planning and Allocation Melanie Ortlieb to hear her take on how the summit went. 

How was the summit experience for you as a new WIFI Advisory Board member?  

It was uplifting to see that most of the initial seven advisory board members still have a guiding light for what they're trying to do with WIFI. They’re still passionate about the mission of WIFI and Two Ten and I am excited to add to what they already have in place.  

What were some of your key highlights from the summit?    

The Working Genius exercise that we did with Circana’s Kimberly Mangus was a big highlight. After the summit, one of the leadership committee members from Rack Room actually paid out of her own pocket to have her team do that same exercise. So clearly, what we did there is already living on past the summit.  

I was also super proud of Molly Hartney being on one of the panels about turning challenges into opportunities. She was a mentor to me over the last year, so it was cool to see her up there with other strong women in the industry. She made Rack Room proud.  

I'm on the DEI committee at Rack Room, something we really believe in. So just seeing my people — my strong female counterparts — really crush it during that summit made me feel proud and happy to be a part of it.  

What’s a new thing you learned on this summit?  

The summit solidified the importance of mentoring people within my own business or elsewhere in the industry. I didn't have a lot of that growing up in the industry, so it's important to extend that hand. I think that overall, a lot of strong relationships were built through this summit. 

 Learn more about WIFI, the Advisory Board and Leadership Council at twoten.org/wifi.