The Pyramid Club sits high above Philadelphia — and on the afternoon of our November 2025 Women of Influence Luncheon, the conversations among the 75+ local women business, nonprofit, and community leaders inside matched the altitude.

Three remarkable Philadelphia-area women took the stage to share talks built around this year’s theme: The Power of Rising: Resilience Stories of Women of Influence. What they offered wasn’t inspiration in the motivational-poster sense. It was something more useful — clarity about what transformation actually looks like, how collaboration multiplies impact, and what it means to move from success into significance.

Watch the talks below, and find the insights that matter most to you.

Feature photo by AMC Photography Studios.

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Resilience Story #7: Successful Women of Influence Transform

Dr. Michelle El Khoury’s talk, Move From Success to Significance.

Dr. Michelle El Khoury opened with a provocation: what if the very thing that looks like success from the outside is actually keeping you from what matters most?

Her talk explored the quiet cost of achieving goals that no longer align with who you are — and the particular kind of courage it takes to release what’s working on paper in order to pursue what’s true. For a room full of high-achieving women, it was an invitation to ask harder questions.

Dr. El Khoury’s framework for moving from success to significance:

• Develop a growth mindset, viewing challenges as opportunities for learning and personal development.
• Practice emotional intelligence to manage your own emotions and respond effectively
  to those of others during difficult times.
• Build a strong support network of mentors, peers, and team members while prioritizing personal
  wellbeing to enhance your ability to cope with stress and change.

Michelle is a member of our class of 2024 Women of Influence Award Winners alumni. Read her profile here.

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Resilience Story #8: Successful Women of Influence Amplify

Watch Perri Shaw Borish’s talk, Create Exponential Impact Through Collaboration.

Perri Shaw Borish closed the afternoon with a talk about what happens when you stop thinking about your impact as individual and start thinking about it as collective. As the founder of Whole Heart Reproductive Mental Health — a practice that has grown into a team of dedicated clinicians — she knows this firsthand.

Her message was both practical and profound: the ripple effect of your work depends not just on what you do, but on how you build the ecosystem around you.

Perri’s framework for amplifying impact through collaboration:

• Build collaborative networks where mentorship and mutual support create lasting, systemic change.
• Realize that your individual impact can be multiplied by building ecosystems of support — teams, partnerships, and communities that share your mission.
• Understand that supporting others’ success directly amplifies your own — this isn’t altruism, it’s strategy, and it’s also just right.

Perri is a member of our class of 2024 Women of Influence Award Winners alumni. Read her profile here. Whole Heart Reproductive Mental Health supports the Women of Influence Network as a sponsor. Read their story — Whole Heart Reproductive Mental Health: Philadelphia’s Premier Women-Focused Practice.

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Resilience Story #9: Successful Women of Influence Innovate

Watch Dr. Brooke Goodspeed’s talk, Champion Inclusive Solutions.

Dr. Brooke Goodspeed’s work at GETincluded exists at the intersection of personal passion, practical innovation, and systemic change — and her talk showed exactly how she got there.

Where others saw barriers, Brooke found blueprints. Her talk at the Pyramid Club challenged attendees to look at the communities and populations who are consistently underserved — and ask what they, with their specific expertise and platform, are positioned to do about it.

Dr. Goodspeed’s principles for championing inclusive solutions:

• Transform personal challenges into community solutions — the obstacles you’ve navigated are often the map for someone else.
• Use your expertise and platform to advocate for underrepresented populations — your voice carries more weight than you may realize.
• Build bridges between different worlds — academic research, practical application, and community need are more powerful together than apart.
• Lead with both heart and evidence — data without compassion misses the point; compassion without data can too.

Brooke is a member of our class of 2024 Women of Influence Award Winners alumni. Read her profile here.

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The Full 2025 Series

These three talks were presented across three Women of Influence Luncheons in a series spanning the Greater Philadelphia region. Explore the full lineup:

• Resilience Stories from Main Line Women of Influence — featuring Coral Edwards, Dr. Seema Bonney, and Lara Aman Mattey
• Resilience Stories from Bucks County Women of Influence — featuring Dr. Melissa Lee-Agawa, Corina Jenkins, and Sarah Bond
• Resilience Stories from Philadelphia Women of Influence — you’re here

Nominations for the 2026 Women of Influence Awards open March 8, 2026 and close Mother’s Day, May 10, 2026. Submit your nomination and get your tickets to join us May 7th for Mom’s Night Out for Mother’s Day for some Speed Networking with the Women of Influence Network.

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