CANFIELD, Ohio – The events and people of a person’s life are facts that can’t be changed. And those facts become the framework for the narrative of their life. Sometimes, Laura Burkett told nearly 300 women gathered Friday, those narratives become more powerful than the truth.
Burkett learned the difference while revisiting a manuscript she had written about some of the most difficult periods of her life.
“The facts were accurate, every single fact,” she said. “The truth wasn’t.”
That distinction provided a fitting opening to the second annual Women Rising Summit, held Friday at Waypoint 4180. This year’s theme, “Reframe the Narrative,” challenged women to reconsider assumptions about their careers, businesses and lives and the stories they tell themselves about what is possible.
The afternoon featured Burkett’s keynote address, a four-woman panel discussion, four breakout sessions and a marketplace with a dozen vendors. Topics included leadership, career changes, entrepreneurship, confidence and navigating personal and professional transitions.
Amy Shope, managing partner of Lehner Shope Wealth Group and founder of Dylan’s House, created Women Rising with Lisa Resnick, founder of Dandelion-Inc., after years of hosting her monthly Women’s Power Lunch.
“I just wanted to do something bigger,” Shope said. “I just called up Lisa, who also is very strong with supporting women, and said, ‘Hey, do you want to do this event?’ It just kind of came together.”
They capped the inaugural summit at 250 attendees. This year, attendance grew to about 300.
“I think their biggest thing is they want to hear other women’s stories,” Shope said. “They really want to surround themselves with strong women.”
Resnick said she and Shope wanted Women Rising to go beyond inspiration by providing practical opportunities to learn and make connections, which led them to incorporate the breakout sessions and women-owned businesses into the event.
“We wanted to add another component by bringing in women-owned businesses and giving women an opportunity to support what other women are doing in the community,” Resnick said.
Burkett, a Pittsburgh-area author of “This Is Not My Life,” put that theme into personal terms.
She described losing her sister, later losing her mother to leukemia and eventually returning to a manuscript she had written about her family. As she reread it, she realized she had softened painful experiences to protect herself and others and had gotten away from the truth.
“No more excuses, no more pretty, just truth,” Burkett said.
Rewriting the manuscript ultimately became part of her own reframing.
“Redefining and reframing your narrative means removing the filters, the distortions, the excuses, the stories that we start telling ourselves to survive, and finally asking, ‘What’s actually true?’” she said.
Changing the narrative was familiar territory for several women displaying their businesses at the summit.
Kelly Leeson, owner of Hibiscus Haven inside Garden Kettle in Boardman, started her business in January 2025 after an experience led her to look closer at the products her family was using.
At 3 months old Leeson’s son contracted RSV and was rushed to Akron Children’s Hospital, where he was intubated for seven days. Leeson said his lungs were not fully developed, and afterward he required high-dose steroids and breathing treatments four times a day.
Leeson, a home care physical therapist, said her healthcare background made her conscious of the effects that prolonged steroid use can have on the body. She began looking for safe products to use around her son and found Rocosa Organics, a Texas-based company that makes natural products.
“I came across this line to help try to just get his wellness and get him healthy again,” she said.
Leeson started using several of the company’s products for lung, immune and sinus support. Over time, she said, her son was able to reduce his prescribed steroids and breathing treatments.
Now 4 1/2, her son has not needed a breathing treatment or steroid in about a year and a half, Leeson said.
That experience prompted her to bring the products to the Mahoning Valley. She began with about 50 products when Hibiscus Haven opened and now carries about 190.
“If I could just help one person get the relief that I got, then my business is a success,” Leeson said. “I want to bring this back to the community and make it more of a community-based company.”
Laura Zavadil also changed direction because of circumstances in her life. A former professional dancer, she returned home when her mother became ill, went to college to become a dietitian and began searching for a workout that appealed to her dance background.
“I wasn’t able to find that, so I created it,” she said.
What began as a hobby grew into Mega Barre Youngstown, a boutique fitness studio that now has 20 employees and offers about 60 classes each week.
Amy Abruzzere made her own shift after a career with Limited Brands. She and her husband were both advancing professionally while raising two young children, making two demanding corporate careers increasingly difficult to manage.
Abruzzere, who had studied fashion merchandising, turned toward entrepreneurship and Grey Boutique. The business began online 10 years ago before adding a brick-and-mortar store.
Though Abruzzere says she made the change to have more time, it did not necessarily mean less work.
“I kind of went the opposite,” she said. Going from overseeing 32 stores to running one store and an online business, she said, is “probably triple the work.”
Career changes also provided some of the lighter moments during the afternoon panel featuring Barb Ewing, CEO of YBI; Lynnette Forde, president of The Youngstown Foundation; Stacy Howlett, president and CEO of Howlett Logistics; and Christina Saenger, dean of Youngstown State University’s Williamson College of Business Administration.
Asked about their first jobs, Howlett recalled being a 15-year-old birthday party coordinator at Camelot Lanes and calling her mother after receiving a $200 tip because she thought she had “hit the lottery.”
Saenger rattled off jobs ranging from babysitting to selling pagers at a mall kiosk before acknowledging that she sold exactly zero advertisements during a stint in advertising sales.
Forde’s first venture was a leaf-raking business she started with her brother at 14.
“We went out of business after that season because it was the worst job ever,” she said.
Ewing worked at an ice cream parlor in Salem, where she quickly discovered she could scoop ice cream but could not work the grill.
“There was no chance in the universe that I could work the grill,” she said.
But Ewing brought the discussion back to the summit’s central theme while recounting a much more consequential career move.
She was vice president of government affairs for the regional chamber when she agreed to work for Tim Ryan if he won his congressional race. Ewing did not expect him to win, she said.
When he did, Ewing suddenly had to follow through on a commitment she never expected to keep. She was leaving a job she loved, along with a title and a top-floor office downtown, for a congressional staff position where she would share a room with six other people.
In her mind, the outward signs of the change made it feel like a demotion, and she began imagining how the move must look to everyone else.
“I was telling myself something that wasn’t true,” she said. “Everybody is wondering, ‘What happened? What happened? Why would she leave the good job and that office that she had in the chamber?’”
The experience became a lesson in separating reality from the story she had constructed around it. What had made the transition so difficult was not necessarily what other people thought about her decision, but what she had convinced herself they were thinking.
“The lies we tell ourselves are generally so much worse and so much easier to believe than the lies that other people tell us,” Ewing said.
“There’s a saying: ‘Don’t believe everything you think.’ And I think that’s a real good rule to live by.”
Pictured at top: Author Laura Burkett delivers the keynote address during the Women Rising Summit. Burkett used experiences from her own life to discuss the summit’s theme, “Reframe the Narrative,” and how the stories people tell themselves can shape the way they view their lives.