GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – The Wisconsin Women’s Leadership Conference marked five years of dedication to advancing women in their professional journeys.

The milestone celebration took place at the Resch Expo Center and lasted all day, consisting of Breakout rooms with different focused seminars and breaks in between for networking purposes. Vicki Updike founded the Women’s Leadership Conference with the hope of bringing hardworking women together to uplift and support one another in their career paths.

“We are at the Resch Expo Center, and it’s our first year here because we actually outgrew the KI center last year, and it’s just a really, really wonderful energy of professional women, entrepreneurs, and women just leaning into each other and learning and growing,” said Updike. “Our first year was 2019, and we had 280 participants, and it was just fabulous, and here we are today with about 700 in person and 300 online all over the country.”

The conference is open to the public and aims to support women in the workforce by discussing the challenges of balancing the responsibilities of having a leadership role or striving to obtain a leadership role. One participant, Marissa Kiesling, spoke to Local 5 about what it meant to attend the conference and be able to connect with other hardworking and like-minded women.

“I had found out about it through our SheVentures group that we have at U.S. Venture, and some team members were coming, and it sounded really interesting, so I tagged along with them,” said Kiesling. “I had heard good things about it, and it’s just really refreshing to hear different perspectives but also to actually see women in leadership across the nation really talk about the experiences they’ve had and get to share that with the rest of us.”

Founder Vicki Updike says she hopes the conference continues to grow so women in the area can continue to learn from the experiences of others.