Women have only had a few short decades to operate in business with real authority, yet the pace of our progress has been extraordinary. In that time, we’ve moved into senior roles, built companies, influenced industries, and shaped commercial landscapes that once excluded us at this level. But as women evolve in business, it has become increasingly clear that the spaces around us have not always kept pace.
Traditional networking events, industry gatherings, and women’s business groups have played an important role in getting us here. They created opportunity and visibility when those things were not readily available, and they still matter. Even masterminds once considered a modern alternative offered structure and connection at a time when few formats existed. But many women today are operating at a level of complexity and pace that these more traditional structures weren’t designed for. The reality of modern business for women involves bigger decisions, broader responsibilities, and far more layered conversations than many existing spaces naturally support.
It’s not that these spaces are wrong; it’s that women have outgrown some of the assumptions they were built on and need more on the sideline.
Discussing women-only spaces can be contentious and is often misunderstood. But the truth is that certain conversations still unfold differently, more openly and with more nuance when women are in a room without the additional weight of perception or performance. Women aren’t asking for more coffee catch-ups. They’re asking for rooms that match the level they operate at spaces with enough depth and trust to hold the conversations that rarely make it into everyday professional settings.
My own career of more than 25 years navigating leadership, entrepreneurship, and community has unfolded in many of the rooms that shaped the early landscape for women in business. I benefitted from them, but I also noticed their limitations as my work and responsibilities expanded. What I searched for, and could not always find, was a space where the realities of business could be discussed openly: the strategic decisions, the pressures behind them, the ambition, the doubt, the clarity, the transitions. Not in a performative way, but in a grounded, honest one.
Over time, it became clear that many women were experiencing the same gap. Not a gap in ability, but a gap in environment. We were evolving faster than the spaces designed to hold us. And so, I quietly began shaping environments that reflected the pace, depth, and emotional intelligence of the women inside them. Not as a fixed model, but as a living one growing and adapting as we do.
What stands out most in this evolution is that progress rarely comes from waiting. Women in business have always changed landscapes by moving, questioning, and building as they go. If we wait for permission to redesign the spaces we need, we will wait forever. The shift begins when we acknowledge it and continues when we act on it individually and collectively.
Women in business are not just part of the evolution. We are the evolution.
And so, the question becomes: If this is our moment to shape the next era of business spaces, what part of it are you choosing to shape?
If you feel called to explore what this evolution can look like in practice, you’re welcome to experience the space I’m creating at KK Collective.
Join us at a Circle Open Day, blending neuroscience, executive leadership level coaching, high trust, high growth and a circle of high influence. Designed for women in business who have been there done that and got the t-shirts.
Come and see what it feels like to step into a room designed with your pace, your depth, and your ambition in mind.
Come and be awakened.
Katie Keith
Founder – KK Collective
