Founder & CEO @ Mint & Lemon 🍋 | Building personal brands for startups founders and CEOs | Speaker | Startup Advisor

Hi, I’m Elisabetta 🙋🏻‍♀️ My journey has been defined by resilience, self-belief, and a commitment to continuous learning. From navigating language barriers to building and leading teams in successful startups, I’ve proven that determination and grit can take you anywhere.

I’m passionate about personal branding and the power it has to transform careers and open doors. LinkedIn has been a game-changer for me, and I believe it can do the same for you.

Here’s what we can help you achieve:

- Attract inbound sales
- Spark investor interest
- Attract and keep top talent
- Land speaking gigs and podcast invites
- Expand your network and business opportunities

Ready to take your personal brand to the next level?

✋🏼 Book a call here to work with us: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/linkedinpersonalbrandstrategy

✋🏼 Want only a one-off LinkedIn power session? Book a call here: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/1-1-linkedin-power-session

✋🏼 Brand Partnerships - Work with me on an influencer campaign: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/30-minute-meeting-clone

Elisabetta Torretti

For International Women’s Day I've been asked to 👇🏼

- Speak on a panel for FREE
- Join a podcast that was “free for me”… but required two promotional posts
- Be featured in a magazine for £500
- Share my experience as a woman in business… for “visibility”

Funny how that works. The same week we talk about:
• the gender pay gap
• supporting women
• empowering female founders
Women are still expected to work for exposure.

Let’s call it what it is: 
Unpaid labour wrapped in a nice pink ribbon.

Ladies, start saying NO.
No free panels.
No “visibility opportunities.”
No discounted expertise because it’s International Women’s Day.

Equality doesn’t start with hashtags, it starts with paying women properly.

2012: Got a Master's in Law
2013: Started working in fashion
2014: Started working in fintech

2015: Worked for 2.5 years as a product manager
2017: Started my career in sales as an SDR
2019: Account Executive

2020: Head of Sales
2023: Head of Sales and Customer Success
2024: Build my Personal Branding agency

Careers are not linear paths, and if someone is trying to blame you for switching industries or positions, tell them politely to f* off. 

This is your superpower.
(It was for sure mine ✌🏼)

Instant red flags in a LinkedIn tagline 🚩

- 7-figure founder
- Forbes-featured
- ex (name of big companies)
- Top 1% smt (according to who?!)
- building in stealth (is this such a secret project no one can know about?!)
- DM me ‘SCALE’
- thought leader

Anything to add to the list?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

I built a personal brand out of desperation
(and that's what you shouldn't do..)

In 2020 I had ZERO sales budget and desperately needed to build a pipeline and sell, so I thought ..

Q: "where are all my prospects?"
A: "LinkedIn"

Q: "is the platform free?"
A: "yep"

Q: "can I post FREE ads there?"
A: "kind of.."

So I started putting out posts and envisioning them as a sort of "subliminal ads"
(yep, basically FREE ads)

People laughed (I didn't care)
Prospects saw them (I DID care)
Prospects liked them and talked about them in sales calls
Prospects became clients

And it worked 🤷🏻‍♀️

So yeah I built my personal brand out of desperation, but you shouldn't..
Because it's 2026 and building a personal brand it's no longer a luxury, it's a necessity.

Don't wait to build it till you NEED it.
Build it now
Use it later

You're welcome 🫡

PS: funny how some of my previous clients, bosses, ex-colleagues also eventually became clients of Mint & Lemon 🍋
.. you never know in life :)

Mint & Lemon

Everyone says they want a job.
But honestly?
Some people don’t.

I’ve run a recruitment agency.
I’ve hired for my own teams.
I’ve reviewed thousands of CVs.
Over 6 years.
And this is what I keep seeing 👇🏼

-> I ask for a portfolio.
They never send it 🤦🏻‍♀️

-> I interview someone for a LinkedIn ghostwriter role.
They have:
– An empty profile
– Two connections
– No photo
Nothing..

-> I ask what they know about the company.
Silence, no clue about what we do

-> I hire for creative roles.
I receive a 7-page Word CV.
Really BAD formatting.
Grammar mistakes.
Zero effort.

-> Some people don’t even reply when I ask:
“Do you want to move forward with the interview?”

And then they say they “can’t get hired”.
If you can’t:
– Send a simple email
– Spend 10 minutes understanding the company
– Show up professionally for the role you applied for
– Do anything basic required to get hired 🤷🏻‍♀️
I won’t hire you.
Ever.
(and not only me)

You don’t need to go above and beyond.
You don’t need to work for free.
You don’t need to beg.
But you do need to do the bare minimum.

No one is serving you a job on a silver plate.
If you’re not hungry, it shows.
And hiring managers and recruiters see it immediately.

PS: This is NOT the majority of people looking for jobs.
I’ve met and hired incredible humans throughout my career.
This doesn’t take anything away from those fantastic hires 👌🏼

IWD is coming.. but let's cut the fluffy BS and let's push the WOMEN of LinkedIn.
10 women you should follow NOW 👇🏼

1. Jessie Schofer - THE HR queen 👸🏼
2. Jingjin Liu - women empowerment at its best ⬆️
3. Mariya Valeva - your Finance queen☝🏼
4. Oana Leonte - your IP lady 👌🏼
5. Alya Annabi - empowering women 24/7 💜
6. Laura Wyer - Your FMCG go-to-recruiter 💁🏻‍♀️
7. Yasmeen De Piante - oh hello fellow Italian 🇮🇹
8. Carina Cunha - Advisor, Investor and much more 🟢
9. Shali Rana Reed - 100% Unfiltered content (and I LOVE IT) 👏🏼
10. Lea 🌈 Turner - I just love how your content is so raw and authentic ☺️

Anyone I should add to the list? 👇🏼

Once upon a time, I used to train for looks.

But looks do not equal healthy.
(After spending 10 years in my 20s battling eating disorders I can assure you that..)

There is no business, there is no friends or family or vacations or promotions or parties or partners or anything..
..if you CAN’T take care lf yourself for the long run.

So I stopped measuring success based on the looks and focused on the inside.

1. What is my blood test saying?
2. How am I feeling?
3. How clear my mind is?
4. How strong I am?
5. How well do I sleep?
6. What nutritious food do I eat?
7. How present am I for myself?
8. How present am I for my family and partner?
9. How good am I for my business, for my team and for my client?

Those are my KPIs, and that’s what I am training for.

What are you training for?

WTH is happening?!

followers followers followers

Guys, are we loosing track of what's really LinkedIn about?

Who cares about the vanity metrics 🤦🏻‍♀️
FOCUS on 👇🏼
real connections
quality of content

STOP chasing followers.

And guess what?! You want to grow fast with all the 7 toxic leaders cheatsheets? Good luck with that..

This is YOUR brand, this is YOUR reputation, 
don't dilute it.

Everyone thinks a personal brand is “optional.”

My darling… wake up. It’s 2026.
It’s not optional anymore.

You must build your personal brand if you’re:

-> An early-stage founder.
Because you are the brand. You’re the salesperson, the fundraiser, the recruiter, the face of the vision. In the early days, people don’t buy the product. They buy you.

-> A CEO.
This is reputation management, PR on steroids. And if you’re not actively shaping the narrative around you and your company, someone else will. Silence is no longer neutral. It’s invisible.

-> In sales.
Your conversion rate changes dramatically when people know who you are before the first message lands. Trust built in public makes cold outreach warmer, faster, and far more effective.

-> A candidate.
The market is tough. Standing out isn’t about tweaking your CV anymore. It’s about showing your thinking, your expertise, your voice, consistently.

These are the 4 main reasons people come to Mint & Lemon.
But something has shifted in the last year.
We’re now working with far more CEOs from large multinationals.

Why?
Because they understand that controlling the narrative is power. 

The days of relying on a single polished PR feature are over. Leaders are becoming public figures in their own right, and LinkedIn is actively rewarding that,  more visibility, more influence, more Top Voice badges, more reach.

The platform is evolving.

The real question is simple: do you want to fall behind, or do you want to ride the wave?
Your personal brand is your number one tool.
Stop underestimating it.

Every International Women’s Day we hear the same conversation.
“Women should start more tech companies.”

More women in tech.
More female founders.
More women building companies.

But nobody talks about the real barrier.
Building was never accessible to most women.

For years the path looked like this:
Learn to code.
Find a developer.
Raise money.

Then maybe… you can build something.
So millions of ideas never left the notebook.

I’ve heard it so many times:
“I have this idea… but I’m not technical.”
That sentence has buried more ideas than failure ever did.

But something interesting happened this International Women’s Day.
Thousands of women around the world opened their laptops
and built real apps in a single day.
Using Lovable.
For FREE.

No coding background.
No dev team.
No gatekeepers.
Just ideas finally becoming products.

Because when the barrier disappears…
the builders appear.

And suddenly the next founder might not be a developer.
She might just be someone who finally had the chance to try.

If you’ve been sitting on an idea for months - maybe even years -
Build it → lovable.dev

#LovablePartner #ad

Lovable

So.. I've been working pretty hard on a secret project lately..


It's called: Project ELISABETTA 💁🏻‍♀️

Yep.. I figured out I want to better myself,  but no project on yourself can start without better HEALTH.

So I've been working hard on fixing 👇🏼

my sleep consistency
my sleep amount
my Vo2 MAX
my cardio
my food time
my food quality
my heart health
my weight training

(still working on screen time and stress levels, but we'll get there..)

I realised if there is no "project ELISABETTA", everything falls apart:
my business
my relationships
my family
myself

So, what's holding you back from making YOU your own Number 1 project?

PS: it's a work in progress and yes I still f*ck up here and there, but I bounce back every single time ✌🏼😉

"Fake it till you make it"

Lot of people will hate on this, but it has been one of my mantras for so many years (and it really worked lol)

I talked about this and much more during the lovely chat I had last week with Jeremy Bennett: from linkedIn inbounds, to personal branding, to how NOT to build a content strategy based on "the 7 toxic leaders" type of clickbait posts 🤦🏻‍♀️

Watch the episode below 👇🏻

And thank you so much again Jeremy for the wonderful chat :)

I interview LinkedIn’s top 1% every weekday, 7am EST | Featured in Forbes | 10M views | 100K followers | 2 world designations | 3 books | Featured in 3 documentaries | Keynote Speaker | Spoken live to tens of thousands

POV: you stop caring about impressions..
and suddenly, your impressions take off again 🤷🏻‍♀️

it's no secret I started to not look at my impressions (since a while now)
(yep there was a time I was checking how posts would perform every 30 mins.. NOT recommended)

I stopped (and my mental health thanked me.. dah!)
but then the other day, my data-brain asked, "ok let's now go back again and check those stats.."
(I know I know, I shouldn't have done it..)

But guess what?
Took off again 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ok now enough, I promise I won't look at those for at least another month 😅

Anyway, moral of the story: focus on the business, NOT on your linkedIn stats
Your business (and your mental health) will thank you 🫡

PS: and drink some good espresso 😆

Looking for some good in-person communities/ 
events in London 🇬🇧

Any suggestions? 👇🏻

Interested in:
- Entrepreneurship
- Startup space
- Female founders

Open to:
- Investor circles
- Intimate dinners/events
- Wellness x ambition spaces
- Smart, curious people building interesting things

Where should I be showing up?

It was 11:47pm.

And I was doing something extremely important..

Resizing text boxes 🫠

Not changing the strategy.
Not improving the narrative.
Just manually transferring my own thoughts into slides like it’s 2014 and I’m an unpaid intern.

Because obviously that’s the workflow, right?

Think in Claude.
Then leave.
Then rebuild everything in a slide tool.
Then spend 37 minutes nudging alignment.

Peak performance 🚀

The annoying part?
The thinking was done.
The structure was solid.
The argument was sharp.

But the slides hadn’t “caught up.”

So recently, I didn’t leave.

I stayed in Claude.
Used Gamma right there in the conversation.
The deck just… appeared.

Then I changed the angle.
Refined the story.
Tightened the structure.
And the presentation updated with it 😍

No exporting.
No copy-paste gymnastics.
No “FINAL_v9_THIS_ONE_FOR_REAL.pptx.” 🤡

Just thinking → turning into slides → refining.
In one flow.

The surprising part wasn’t “wow AI.”
It was realising how long I’ve accepted unnecessary friction as normal.

Anyway.
If you enjoy rebuilding the same deck at midnight, carry on.

If not, Claude + Gamma together is a much saner way to work ✨
https://lnkd.in/e2SkwUvq

PS: Thanks Gamma for taking my creative thinking to the next level 🙏🏻😍

#ad

Gamma

Gamma x Claude

I love automation.
So much.
Which is why I obviously check it 14 times a day 😅

You know.. Just to make sure it’s… automating.

Because nothing says “I trust my systems” like manually reviewing the thing that’s meant to run without you 🙃

For the longest time, my marketing was “automated”.
Which actually meant:
• I built it
• I monitored it
• I tweaked it
• I double-checked it
• I low-key emotionally supported it

Very autonomous. Obviously.

The problem wasn’t the strategy.
The problem was that I was still the safety net.

If something dipped, I spotted it.
If something broke, I fixed it.
If something underperformed, I spiralled.

At some point I realised:
This isn’t automation.

It’s delegation with trust issues.
(BIG ones)

That’s where ActiveCampaign hit differently.

Because Active Intelligence isn’t just “if this then that.”
It learns from behaviour.
It adjusts.
It optimises timing.
It flags what actually needs attention.
That’s Autonomous Marketing.

Not:
 “Set it live and panic quietly.”
But:
 “Set it live and let it adapt.”

The biggest shift? 
I stopped being the emotional support human for my campaigns.

They run.
They optimise.
They tell me when something matters.
And my brain is free to do actual thinking.

If you’re still babysitting your “automations”…
(Respectfully) that’s not automation.

Try ActiveCampaign and see what happens when the system grows up -> https://lnkd.in/ed5fXQej

#Ad #ActiveCampaignPartner #OutOfTheWeeds #AutonomousMarketing

ActiveCampaign

Last week was Mint & Lemon 🍋 2nd birthday.

2 years ago this started as a one-woman show.
Just me.
An idea.
And honestly… a lot of figuring things out as I went.

We had not one, but two pivots.
Today Mint & Lemon is not only a personal branding agency, but a full social media agency, with personal branding still at the core of everything we do.

Somewhere along the way… 
that one-woman show became a team of 6.

That part still blows my mind a little.
Because honestly, the journey hasn’t been pretty.

Not only the pivots.
But a lot of stress.
A lot of moments where I thought: what the hell am I doing?
And I definitely had to deal with a lot of sh*t along the way.
People trying to take advantage of you because you’re small.
People thinking they can push you around.
People assuming you won’t say anything.

One thing I learned quickly:
If you don’t stand up for yourself, nobody will do it for you.

Looking back, these 2 years taught me more than any job ever could.
Messy.
Hard.
Stressful.
But also incredibly rewarding.

I’m deeply grateful for the team we’ve built and for the clients who trusted us along the way.

Two years in.
And it still feels like we’re just getting started.

Happy birthday Mint & Lemon 🍋 🎂 💜

PS: Of course I'm cheering with a cup of tea 🫖 💁🏻‍♀️

Erica Isotta Surace

Community-led growth at the D2 collective | Making meaningful connections in tech happen in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, New York and beyond ✨ x-LinkedIn | TEDx & Public Speaker

Community builder, event mastermind, and advocate for intentional networking.

I published my first book at 21 and started my first business at 23. I have worked at start-ups and big corp such as LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Miro. 

My vision is to build bridges among people and opportunities, weaving a tapestry of connections that not only strengthens communities but also pave the way for collective growth and endless possibilities.

I am on a mission to make the [tech] world feel closer with the D2 collective, the fastest-growing community for professionals to make meaningful connections in the tech industry.

I have delivered 50+ presentations on DIB, future of work, advancing your career in tech and making meaningful connections in events such as TEDx and CMX, and to students from top universities such as John Cabot University.

𝗙𝘂𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀:
🌟 Featured on Vanity Fair at age 29 for my dedicated work in promoting gender equality in the literary industry with Women Plot.
📚 Pioneered the first-ever reading retreat in Italy, fostering a community of 8k+ avid readers and literary enthusiasts.
🎙️ Hosted and produced the Embracing Life podcast, a platform dedicated to exploring mental health and relationship dynamics, which garnered 35k+ downloads since its launch in late 2021.


If you've read it so far, and think we might have synergies - send me a message! 


Personal interests: reading, running, travelling, podcast, and mental health.

Co-Founder - Community Growth, Events & Partnerships

the D2 collective makes it possible for its 3000+ members to form long-lasting and meaningful connections within the tech community. Our members have the chance to connect to inspiring and talented individuals in the tech industry, join exclusive events, access expert-led content to develop their careers, and browse jobs.

If you're an organization and want to step up your brand awareness, employer brand, engagement programs, and lead generation with our thought leadership & events, get in touch at erica@thed2collective.com

Looking for speakers :)

We're hosting an International Women's Day event in Amsterdam on March 3rd: "Navigating Career and Life: Parenthood, Infertility, Being Childfree & Caregiving"

I'm looking for women in tech willing to share their story on the panel, about navigating their career while managing infertility, miscarriage, caregiving, being childfree by choice, or balancing motherhood.

If you've lived one of these experiences and would be open to speaking (with honesty and zero judgement), send me an email at erica@thed2collective.com with a bit about your story.

We'll work to bring together a panel as diverse as possible, so everyone who attends feels seen.

📍 Amsterdam, March 3rd, 18:00–20:30

Edit: As this event sits within our D2 community series for employees working at tech companies, the intersection between these life experiences and a career in tech is essential. We’re specifically looking for speakers who can share their story in that professional context.

P.S. If you’d like to be considered, please email a short description of your story and why it’s relevant, along with your LinkedIn profile. It doesn’t need to be long, but we can’t evaluate if you would be the right fit without that.

Making meaningful connections in tech happen at the D2 collective✨ TEDx & Public Speaker | Woman in Tech Award 2023

Last night, we gathered at Datadog's Amsterdam office for "Accelerating Complex Sales in the DACH Market," welcomed by Bor-Tsong Chen and the whole team.

To be honest, the conversations from the evening have been sitting with me since.

The room was full of sales leaders, account executives, and SDRs working across the DACH region. My favorite part? The speakers shared real deals. The ones that dragged, the ones that almost died, and the ones that only closed because someone refused to stop paying attention.

Here is what stayed with me.

💜  Persistence without learning is just noise. Theresa worked on an account for nearly three years. The previous rep had contacted tons of people with zero replies. She inherited it, kept getting rejected, and then discovered they had been pitching the wrong use case for two full years. Instead of walking away, she treated every no as information, stayed close enough to spot the exact moment her help would matter, and closed the deal in two weeks. 

💜  In Germany, trust is built through voice, not inbox. Lucie made the case for cold calling not as a numbers game but as a human one. The goal is to learn something. When you approach it that way, connection follows naturally.

💜  What customers tell you and what actually happens inside their organization are often two very different things. Niklas shared a deal that took a full year, got stuck behind budget delays, board approvals that did not come when planned, and a partner relationship that added complexity. 

💜  If the people above your contact will not engage, the deal might not be real. Timo described how he tests organizational alignment by reaching up. If a director on the customer side does not reply to his email, that silence is a signal worth listening to.

💜  And the thread that ran through all of it, as Vanessa put it in her closing: slow down to accelerate. Poor preparation is wasted time, the best business case means nothing if it is not tied to a real company initiative, and power does not always follow titles.

This is what D2 events look like. 

Grateful to our speakers Theresa, Lucie, Niklas, and Timo for their openness. To Vanessa, Lauren, and Holly for the partnership and for making this evening possible. 

If these are the kind of conversations you have been looking for, stay close.  More coming soon.

I've been thinking about why we come together. 

Priya Parker's The Art of Gathering makes the argument that most events are already failing before anyone walks in, because the purpose was never specific enough. A format is not a reason to bring people together. A panel with drinks is just a container: that's not enough on its own.

The why behind last night's event started with something personal.

Last year I was sitting in a meeting, physically present but completely elsewhere. I was going through grief. I said nothing, contributed nothing, and kept pretending everything was fine. Weeks later someone working with us told me they had assumed I was angry at them. They had no idea what was going on. And honestly, that was on me.

You can't expect people to understand something you haven't told them.

Vulnerability is a generous and painful act in order to be known and maybe understood. 

I didn't think that part of me belonged at work. So I performed being okay until I eventually stopped performing and just said it: this is what's happening, I'm sorry if you've seen a version of me you didn't recognise. I also don't recognise myself anymore.

That's why I personally wanted the space we created last night. Because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has sat in a room carrying something invisible and said absolutely nothing.

Last night, six women made the generous and painful act of sharing.

We heard about going through IVF in a male-dominated office with nowhere private to give yourself injections. A pregnancy loss, and being back at your desk before you were anywhere near ready. Raising a child with autism while holding a career in one of the most demanding industries going. Choosing not to have children and having to justify that choice repeatedly, to colleagues, to strangers. Losing a parent in the first year of new motherhood. Adopting a daughter at 50, after years of trying every other possible path.

A few things that have stayed with me since:

🤍 Grief is a tunnel, not a cave: you move through it. It doesn't have to be where you live.

🤍 The mask works, until it doesn't. We all wear one. Whether the people around you make it feel safe to put it down occasionally, that matters more than most policies ever will.

🤍 Ambition isn't one shape: going deep instead of climbing up the ladder is not settling. 

🤍 Someone always has to go first. One honest thing said out loud shifts what everyone else in the room thinks they're allowed to say.

A leader said something at a D2 event in Dublin last year that I've thought about far more than they probably expected: if you don't tell your story, how would you expect others to know?

Thank you to Ali Garcia Higgins, Andreia Dos Santos, Anke den Ouden, Emily Firth, Francesca Catanuso, MA, and Isha Smith for telling yours last night 🖤

Last night we gathered at Personio’s Amsterdam office to talk about something that all of us are experiencing: change.

The room was full of leaders and individual contributors who have lived through restructures, new roles, AI shifts, parenthood, ambition, fatigue, and growth all at once. Instead of abstract advice, the speakers shared moments where they did not get it right.

One story that stayed with me was about handling a redundancy early in a management career. The speaker described being emotionally distant, repeating the corporate message, and only later realizing that people do not remember the rationale. They remember how you made them feel in their most vulnerable moment. The shift came when he understood that a leader cannot outsource empathy to HR, and that moving through your own resistance quickly is part of the responsibility of leadership.

Another speaker talked about ownership in a way that felt refreshingly practical. Entrepreneurship inside a company is about owning the outcome, even when the structure does not fully support it. That mindset led to growth, trust, and eventually bigger responsibility.

We also heard about the reality of leading while exhausted, of becoming a working parent and realizing that if you do not check in with yourself, you cannot show up well for your team. That honesty created space for others to step up rather than step back.

The common thread across all of them was this: change is not a single announcement. It is a process. If leaders do not take the time to understand the why, ask the uncomfortable questions, and provide context repeatedly, people will fill the gaps themselves (someone brilliantly called this, “a lot of mental gymnastics”)

As a facilitator, I was reminded that the most useful conversations are the ones where people share how they moved from resistance to responsibility.

Change is not optional, but the way we meet it is.

Grateful to our speakers (Iteke, Jakub, Liset, and Scott), to everyone who joined us, and to Personio for hosting us. 

These are the conversations that make leadership feel human again.

No alternative text description for this image

Couldn't be in the room for this one, but I felt every bit of it from afar 🖤 

This week, Rachael Monaghan and Adon Blackwood co-hosted a very inspiring panel for the D2 collective: Craft Your Path: Reinventing your Career, and from everything I heard and saw, they created something genuinely special.

A few things that stuck from the conversation:

Career reinvention isn't always a bold leap. Sometimes it's an 8-year experiment - a 20% project here, a course there - until the direction becomes undeniable.

Energy is data. Multiple speakers talked about tracking where their energy goes as a compass for what's next. That's underrated advice.

Your "board of advisors" matters more than one mentor. Diverse perspectives across gender, industry, and seniority will tell you things a single mentor never could.

The best advice one panelist ever received? Stop coming with solutions. Come with a real understanding of the problem. That's what makes you indispensable.

Thank you to our hosts, our speakers and to everyone who showed up and asked the hard questions. This is exactly why D2 exists 🖤

I got on a prep call this week with a CEO of a tech company ahead of our Women's History Month panel. 

At some point she told me about an offsite she attended almost a year into being CEO. 

Her leadership team was there, people she had hired herself. The format was simple: everyone stands up, says their name and their role. When it was her turn, she froze. She could not bring herself to say her name and her title out loud. And right next to her, two men who had been in the company for a fraction of the time stood up and said their titles without a flicker of hesitation.

That moment woke her up. 

She described it as the point where something clicked and she thought, there is something wrong here, and it is not me being unqualified. It was the beginning of a long piece of internal work she has been doing since.

What stayed with me is that by any measure, she was already succeeding when this happened. The results were there. People were telling her she was doing a great job. And none of it was enough, because the work she needed to do was not about performance, it was about belief. Nobody could hand that to her.

I am sharing this because I think a lot of women in the communities we build are living in that same gap: capable, delivering, outwardly fine, and yet not quite able to claim the thing they have already earned.

This is exactly why I love the work I get to do at D2. Bringing stories like this one to life, and creating the space where sharing them can actually bridge that gap for someone else in the room.

Last night in London we partnered with Contentful to bring together marketing leaders from enterprise companies who are responsible for driving meaningful growth inside complex organizations.

From the outside, it was a private dinner at the Bvlgari hotel with senior leaders around one table, a curated guest list, a thoughtful setting.

What made this one different was the level of care that went into the details.

We decided to approach the evening with more personalization than we ever have before. Handwritten cards. Wax seals. Individual notes prepared for each guest. Small touches that most people would never call essential, especially in a B2B context.

There is always a question in moments like this. Does this level of effort actually matter, or is it just aesthetic?

You could feel the answer as soon as guests arrived.

People slowed down. They read what was written for them. They commented on it. The tone of the room felt considered from the beginning. And when the conversation started, one of the leaders spoke openly about the tension they are navigating between driving growth and maintaining long term brand trust inside a large enterprise. It was thoughtful and honest, and the rest of the table responded in the same way.

That shift did not happen by accident.

Right now, many tech companies are investing more in field marketing and community-led initiatives to support growth. More dinners. More roundtables. More moments in person.

But the difference is not in the act of hosting. It is in the way you host.

The level of care you put into the experience shapes how your brand is felt in the room. It shapes how safe people feel to contribute. It shapes the depth of the conversation.

A big thank you to Swarnalatha, Charlotte, and the Contentful team for their care and collaboration. Partnering with people who know that hosting is about more than attendance is always a pleasure.

This evening was a reminder that meaningful connection is not a format. It is a design choice.

And when it is done well, you can feel it 🖤

March at the D2 collective 💥

After a wonderful February, so much looking forward to officially kicking off event season with moments of connection, learning, and community.

March 3: 🇳🇱 Amsterdam: Navigating Career and Life: Parenthood, Infertility, Being Childfree & Caregiving
↳ https://lnkd.in/e_eE-KMX

March 3: 🇬🇧 London: Craft Your Path: Reinventing your Career
↳ https://lnkd.in/eXmWBEDz

March 4: 🇫🇷 Paris: AI as Your Co-Pilot: Leading the Next Generation of Work
↳ https://lnkd.in/e5-BeH5r

March 5: 🇸🇪 Stockholm: Designing a Career Around Transferable Skills at Mentimeter
↳ https://lnkd.in/dRhB7RAp

March 12: 🇪🇸 Barcelona: Navigating Career Growth as a Woman in Tech at Dynatrace 
↳ https://lnkd.in/ejsbJyDZ

Mar 12: 🇨🇦 We're off to Toronto, Canada!

Mar 17: 🇬🇧 London: Winning with Outbound in Competitive Markets at HiBob
 ↳ https://lnkd.in/dtxSXHqg

Mar 18: 🇮🇹 Milan: AI as Your Co-Pilot: Leading the Next Generation of Work at Spotify
↳ https://lnkd.in/d2qQnzG3

Mar 26: 🇩🇪 Berlin: Hiring and Retaining the Right Talent for Growth in partnership with Rippling
↳ https://lnkd.in/d4aQU7KE

Looking forward to seeing you soon 🖤

Last night we hosted a CFO dinner in London in partnership with Rippling to spark meaningful conversation on accelerating growth while controlling cost with a room of finance executives.

According to Gartner's most recent research, more than half of CFOs have cost optimisation as a top priority for 2026, while almost the same number have growth investment in their top five simultaneously. What we've seen is that the leaders who are solving it well have stopped treating those two things as being in competition with each other.

This is exactly the kind of conversation D2 exists to create space for, where finance leaders can think out loud and where the questions are honest.

Thank you to the Rippling team for their partnership and to everyone who showed up and contributed.

Only 13% of European employees are engaged at work (Gallup).

That number sat with me when our own Vivienne came back from last week's HR Leadership Dinner in Amsterdam, and shared just how meaningful the conversation had been.

She co-hosted the evening with Culture Amp around redefining motivation and a question that feels increasingly urgent: can we win back employee ambition?

A small, curated group of senior HR leaders. Honest conversation about what's genuinely hard right now: retention, leadership fatigue, the gap between what organisations promise and what employees actually experience.

This is exactly why we build D2, to create the conditions where the right people can find the answers together.

Proud of Vivienne for leading the room with the care and curiosity she always brings.

And a big thank you to Jason, Jason, Stephanie and Charlotte from Culture Amp for making this such a thoughtful and meaningful partnership.

More of this 🖤

Next week we're in Paris, and this is one of those evenings I'm genuinely excited about because of what happens when you put the right people in a room and let them think out loud together.

This is by far my favorite part of the D2 collective: the collective learning. 

Someone shares how they're navigating something, and you can feel the room shift because three other people were quietly sitting with the same question. 

For this one, we brought together four people who are figuring out what leadership looks like when AI becomes part of the daily work. 

Leading the conversation will be Vivienne, who joined D2 two weeks ago and is already shaping the way we run these rooms. So proud to have her on the team 🖤 

You can register here: https://lnkd.in/e5-BeH5r

One of my favourite things about building the D2 collective is creating spaces for conversations that actually matter.

On March 12th, we're hosting Navigating Career Growth as a Woman in Tech, and I'm so proud of the women who said yes to sharing their journeys with us Anastasia Yavorska, Chiara Corticelli, Fiona Garvey and Maura Nardacci MBA.

Whether you're early in your career or leading a team, this evening will have something for you. Expect honest conversations, practical insights, and a room full of people who get it.

📅 Thursday, March 12th 
🕔 18:30 – 20:30 
📍 Dynatrace office, Barcelona

Register here: https://lnkd.in/ejsbJyDZ

This week we hosted a very meaningful conversation at the Mentimeter office in Stockholm that kept circling back to the same uncomfortable truth.

Someone can check every box on a job description, have the right background, the right experience, even the right attitude in the interview, and still hit a wall two years in. Not because they lacked the domain knowledge, but because nobody ever helped them understand how they relate to challenge, to feedback, to the moments where progress is invisible and doubt creeps in.

During my conversation with Lisa Wetter about their a program called "You're Here", I was impressed to learn about this IC self-leadership track designed around something most companies avoid: the inner work of a career. The question behind it was simple but pointed. If people don't fail because of hard skills, why do we keep investing only in hard skills?

What struck me was how grounded the reasoning was. This initiative came from watching what was actually breaking down, and deciding to address it directly rather than work around it.

The other thing that stayed with me while preparing this panel was this: the people who seem most resilient across career shifts are not the ones with the broadest skill set. They're the ones who know how to learn, and who treat that ability as something worth developing deliberately rather than assuming it will just happen.

I'm sharing this because we talk a lot in tech about building the right team. But we spend very little time thinking about what we give people once they're inside, to actually grow into the work and into themselves.

That gap is closing, slowly and last Thursday felt like evidence of that.

Thank you Lisa Wetter & Menti for creating the space for those meaningful conversations, to Ewa Olszewska and Lisa Lindell for connecting the D2 community with care, to our wonderful speakers for sharing so generously James Wood, Jessica Hedlund, Lisa Wetter and Nilufar Anwar and to all those who trusted us with their time and showed up to pause, reflect and connect. 

So grateful for the D2 collective community 🖤

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