Cassandra Burnett has spent more than 20 years as a litigation attorney. She lives in Williamstown, New Jersey with her husband and two daughters. Ask her what she does, though, and the answer has little to do with a courtroom. 

Instead, she’ll tell you she founded the Hey Girl! Conference to give women a time and place to just be. She also leads the Hey Girl! Fund, a nonprofit organization that supports other women’s work. And on top of that, she bakes pound cake in her mother’s memory through Lizzie’s Love Cakes. For every cake sold, $1 goes to support a nonprofit focused on children. 

Beneath it all lies a simple conviction: nobody should have to feel unseen or unsupported.

Cassandra Burnett is a 2026 Philadelphia Family Women of Influence Award Winner

Philadelphia Family’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Cassandra was selected based on her achievements and dedication to creating positive change. Each Women of Influence Award Winner has committed to support Family Focus Media’s core values. Together, we are committed to fostering a sense of belonging and empowerment for all families. All backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations are welcome and safe with us.

A Conference Born from Catching Up with Friends

The Hey Girl! Conference began during the pandemic, when Burnett and her friends started gathering on Zoom to talk about everything from silly nonsense, to politics and faith. Her husband watched those nights unfold and nudged her to build something bigger. The first Hey Girl! Conference was hosted — virtually — in 2021, with more than 100 attendees and a theme of “I See You.” It has since grown into a full-day, in-person event in Philadelphia, with breakout conversation suites, women-owned vendors, and a brunch.

The details are where Burnett’s attention shows. The event has a quiet suite, because she knows what a crowded conference can feel like. “I go to many events and it can get overwhelming,” she said. Guests can power up or power down. The conference features mocktails that taste like a treat rather than an afterthought. Then there are the swag bags which she describes as having “some weight to them.” These contain anything from customized Yeti cups one year to compact mirrors the next.

Conference speakers get the same care. This year each speaker received a blue box with a monogrammed keychain, a bookmark with a blue tassel, and a brownie. The centerpiece was supposed to be a 4×6 magnet printed with each speaker’s promotional graphic, but the graphics arrived with the names cut off. Two days before the conference, Burnett reordered every single one. At least four speakers texted her afterward to say their names were intact.

“There’s something about your name,” she said. “To know that someone intentionally took time for you in this world feels so good.”

The Great Untethering

Burnett lost her mother in 2012 and her father in 2014. For most of her life, she says, she had been the person who did the right thing, a people pleaser whose identity was tied to making her parents proud. When they were gone, so was the audience.

“Grief forced me to shed the mask that I had been wearing for years,” she said. She describes that stretch as her “great untethering,” like an astronaut watching the cords to the spaceship get snipped one by one. The experience reminded her that other women who had done everything right and pleased everyone needed somewhere to come as they were.

A line from her co-pastor’s sermon later helped her through a different hard season: “flowers still bloom in the valley.” Burnett was fighting a pivot she didn’t want, and her organized, plan-everything nature had no map for it. 

She has since quit trying to map the valley and instead notices what remains steady inside of it. “I’m choosing joy today,” she said. “I know that I have a purpose. It’s undeniable.”

Giving Back, Close to Home

The Hey Girl! Fund grew out of what Burnett and her team were already doing, connecting women and girls who lived in the same communities. The fund hosts its own events, including a brunch for caregivers and daughters called Hey Girl, Know Your Flow, which took on menstrual health. “We made it approachable,” she says. “We stripped the shame away from it.”

It also supports others financially. A brand strategist who held a deep religious faith had long kept those two sides of herself apart. When she finally brought them together in Bloom, her first in-person conference, the Hey Girl! Fund helped pay for it.

Burnett doesn’t limit herself to women’s organizations, however. She looks for the void, then asks who is already filling it.

Space for the Hard Conversations

At the 2024 Hey Girl! Conference, suicide among women was one of the main conversation topics — a subject that kept surfacing in the event lead-up. Burnett didn’t want to open a wound without support, so two therapists stayed in the room while two panelists shared their own suicide attempt stories aloud for the first time.

“It gave me such clarity about my purpose and the vision,” she said. Women also asked, and with real worry, about their daughters. She calls it one of the most confirming moments of the work she does. 

Mentoring the Next Room of Women

The girls are part of the design. Each year a team of teenagers works the conference as liaisons, guiding guests and keeping the day moving. In exchange, they earn community service hours for it. They see women of many ages speaking honestly in public, and they see a woman who sweats the small stuff because she knows it communicates care. 

Burnett has also taught paralegal students as an adjunct professor at Camden County College and Villanova University, and she serves in youth ministry.

Her approach to supporting other women is consistent. She won’t ask them to be impressive. “We want to uplevel. We don’t want to be pretentious,” she says. She would rather have women arrive a little messy and enjoy each other’s company, than watch them perform for the room.

Love Baked In

Burnett’s generosity shows up in the kitchen, too, where she runs Lizzie’s Love Cakes. One dollar from every cake sold goes to a nonprofit that focuses on children. She continues the legacy of her mother, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Rhodes, who spent her life as a Sunday school teacher, daycare provider, foster parent, and adoptive parent. 

Burnett started the business with lemon-zest pound cake in 2020, and local television has since told the story of a bundt cake that, in her words, helped heal her. She later added a workshop series, Love Baked In, and she is careful to call it a workshop and not a class. “We bake, we connect, and we share,” she says.

Each session honors a specific ancestor with a recipe built from stories their family tells. Attendance is capped at 20 so the room stays intimate. At the first workshop, a widowed wife and her two daughters attended to honor their late husband and father. The room felt heavy at the start but lightened as they shared stories. The wife was overwhelmed with grief at times, and when the two hours ended, she hugged Burnett and gave her a gift of remembrance. 

The next workshop, honoring Viola C. Redding-Baggett, is October 24 in Philadelphia. At each workshop, participants make mini pound cake bites, called Love Bites, and take home a recipe card.

A Continuum

Burnett doesn’t see the baking, the conference, and the fund as separate ventures, though. They sit on one continuum, with her at the center of it.

“When people ask what I do, I don’t answer with a job,” she says. “I tell you who I am, at my core.”

Follow the Hey Girl! Conference and Lizzie’s Love Cakes on Instagram and Facebook, @heygirlconference and @lizzieslovecakes. You can also connect with Burnett on LinkedIn. 

________________________________________________________________________________________

Help us honor Cassandra by sharing what her contributions mean to you in the comments below.