The New Blueprint for Power: MPW Kicks Off | Fortune Daily

0:00We're here in California for the 2026 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. And we're going to be taking you behind the scenes of everything that's going on. We're also going to be sitting down with some of our headline interviewees. All of that to come over the next few days. But first, I'm bringing on Emma Hinchliffe, Fortune Most Powerful Women Editor, to tell us who's going to be in the room, what they're thinking about, and what we should expect from this year's summit. from beautiful Santa Barbara. I'm Ellie Austin, and this is Fortune Daily.

0:35Emma, hello. We have made it to day one of the Fortune MPW Summit 2026. Can you believe it? I can't. It feels like we've been working on this forever, but here we are. So this is the 28th MPW Summit that Fortune has ever done. How many of those have you been at? Because you're a bit of a veteran. Okay, I believe I've been to nine plus a few MPW Next Gens and MPW Internationals. I think you've probably been to more than most people here today. So congratulations on that. Now, you obviously weren't there at the first MPW Summit in 1999-ish, whenever it was. But tell us a bit about how the summit has evolved over time.

1:12We've seen the MPW Summit evolve with the business world. I think at one point, it was extremely, extremely focused on power defined in a corporate lens. And that's still the core of what we do, but we're seeing an expansion of that definition. So in addition to women running billion-dollar-plus businesses and P &Ls, we have innovative founders building in AI whose companies may even be pre-revenue, but are people and businesses that the women on the corporate side want to learn from and want to know everything about. We have women in venture capital. We have women from politics and entertainment and talent.

1:45And so it's really a broader definition of power, and we see that at the summit. And a really good illustration of that is how we're bookending the next three days. So we start with Ruth Porat from Google, president, CIO of Google and Alphabet. We end with Hayley Bieber, who obviously is the celebrity, kind of incredibly high profile figure, but also the founder of Road, which has just been acquired by Elf. Tell us a bit about who's in the room at this summit, because it's something that we think about very carefully. The room is one of the most impressive rooms that I've ever been in every single year, year after year.

2:18We have this segment of the summit called the Big Get to Know You, where everyone in the room stands up and introduces themselves in three seconds. Just name, title, company. No board seats, no elaborate definitions. It sounds very simple, but when you have 400 women doing that back to back to back, you really get a sense of just how much power is in the one room. And we alternate locations. So last year we were in D.C. this year we are in beautiful Santa Barbara on the beach. How do you think the sense of the summit differs in those two locations? So what will we have here in California that maybe feels a bit different to what we do in DC?

2:53It's really nice to be in Santa Barbara for the first time. Yeah, we've never, we've been in Laguna before, but not Santa Barbara. Yes, it's definitely more of a relaxed retreat atmosphere. I think we can expect to have some really candid personal conversations. Obviously, being in California, we also have a bit more representation from entertainment and tech, just being as it's easier to get here. When we're in D.C., it's still a really unique environment, but we are in that center of political power, global power. And so the conversations do tend to be a little bit more focused on geopolitics and these international business issues.

3:26And, yeah, the sense of being here in California is so different. This morning, the women went on an eco-hike before they start their sessions. What a great way to start the day. What a great way to start the day. Who are you most looking forward to interviewing over the next three days? I have two that I'm really excited for, both a bit controversial, which we love to do here, keep it interesting. One is Luana Lopez-Lara, who is the co-founder of Calci, the prediction market. Of course, a huge business story and a huge regulatory story about what is going to happen with these companies that are really influencing not just business, but culture and how we all engage in the world and the concept of betting on anything that might happen in the real world.

4:01The other is the CEO of OnlyFans, which is a very interesting business. if you don't know that much about it beyond the basics. They're really at the center of a lot of issues, including how we feel about relationships in our society, business and AI, the rise of low-budget microdramas in Hollywood. So there's a lot to talk to her about. Do you prep for your onstage interviews differently to how you prep for print interviews that you do for the magazine? I do. What about you? I do as well, because you have maybe onstage with someone, you have a 20-minute time slot, whereas when you're doing an interview with someone for a feature, you might have an hour and a half with them.

4:34So you can be a lot more sprawling in the questions. Whereas in 20 minutes, there's certain points you want to hit and you have to hit them pretty succinctly. The other thing I do is I always listen to podcast interviews that my interviewee has done, television hits, and I look out for the stories they tell a lot. And I try to think, okay, how am I going to try and steer them in a slightly new direction so that we get fresh quotes? What do you do? That's really smart. I think for my interviews for written pieces, I kind of live by the mantra that there are no bad questions. I think you can ask a question that you feel like is really stupid, that you feel like didn't come out quite right, and they can still give you a response that tells you something new and is interesting.

5:11So I try not to stress about it. On stage, of course, your interviews are part of the experience for everyone who's there. And so you really want to be especially pointed and thoughtful in how you're engaging. And you really want to understand who they are as a person and the vibe and energy in addition to just like seeking information. And what kind of things get said on the NPW stage that you would never hear in an earnings call or you would never see in a press release, for instance? I think the women who are here, you can almost forget just how powerful they are. Because in addition to, you know, talking about like what the Fed might do and interest rates, they're also talking about what it's really like to be in one of these super powerful positions.

5:48and the burdens and opportunities that come with that and what happens when you lose your job and people stop calling you in these conversations that you're really not going to hear anywhere else. Yeah, it's a very, I would say it's a very vulnerable space in a way. It's a peer group like no other. And the women tend to open up more about the failures and the challenges as well as the successes. And they might at a more traditional business conference, just because of the nature of who's in the room. It's a supportive environment, but at the same time, this is journalism. We're always trying to break news.

6:20So it's an interesting line that we walk. Yeah. And it's a really interesting dichotomy as well, because I think you might think, oh, it's a women's conference. And so it's kind of, we're kind of describing not necessarily this kind of vulnerable environment, but that vulnerable environment is not necessarily to talk about like what it's like to be a woman in business. Or empowerment. Exactly. I think at other business conferences, you kind of might have the women's conversation that gets slotted in as something on the side of the main event. and here the women are the main event. So it's not something you really have to discuss at all.

6:47But at the same time, you can discuss these more personal topics in an environment where that feels appropriate. You're so right. We don't name, you know, we don't ask how do you balance it all or what's it like being a woman in business. But the very fact that there are only women in the room means that the speakers on stage genuinely feel more comfortable kind of lifting the veil on what it's really like to be in their positions. Okay, other than your interviews on stage, what else are you looking forward to the most here? Because there's pickleball, there's Pilates, there's a beautiful tribute to Gloria Steinem this afternoon.

7:19What's top of your list? That's going to be really special, the Gloria Steinem tribute. I think obviously she's someone who was so impactful for women. We at NPW were lucky enough to host a talking circle at her home in New York at the beginning of this year. And it's going to feel really special to honor her. And we can all feel so grateful that we got to do that. I'm really looking forward to your interview with Hailey Bieber. I want to hear what she has to say and I want to hear what you're going to ask her. And I'm going to be euphoric by the time I get to that interview because it is the last interview of the summit and the end line will be in sight.

7:46So that's going to be a fun one as well. Emma, how can people follow along? So there's obviously the live stream on fortune.com. Are you going to be covering what's happening in the NPW daily newsletter? Yes, there's a live stream on fortune.com. Follow along on fortune and fortune NPW social plan channels for clips from the summit and you'll really get a sense of what's happening here. And yes, we also have the MPW Daily Newsletter. I'll be on the ground in the summit and my colleagues will be leading the charge on that throughout the week. I'll be back at the end of the week with my personal view on what it was like on the ground and some of the most interesting conversations that I personally wanted to circle back on if we didn't get a chance to highlight them yet.

8:22So those are the best places to follow along. And then after the summit, you're staying in LA to see Miley Cyrus. After the summit, I am staying in LA to see Miley Cyrus at the Hollywood Bowl. So that's a highlight for me. And maybe Miley can join us at the summit in a future year. Next year. Emma, I'm going to let you go because you have to go host a breakfast. Thank you so much for finding time for us. Thanks for having me. So the theme for this year's summit is the new blueprint of power. And that's because power and how it's deployed look different to how it used to. Next up, we hear from two women who built power on their own term.

8:57First up, Lucy Guo, who for a period of time was the world's youngest self-made female billionaire and she tells me how she had plans to retire but ultimately couldn't and then olivia fernie is a travel fixer for billionaires she scaled up her social media following and took the usually secretive world of the billionaire lifestyle public creating an incredibly lucrative business model in the process let's hear from them um so you're an evangelist of FIRE, which is a, it stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. It's a financial and lifestyle movement where you save and invest very aggressively early in life to retire young, which begs the question, why haven't you retired yet?

9:43Why are you still doing so many things? So I would say I did try to retire at some point in time. What age? What age? I want to say I was 22, maybe 21. Long story short, all the Keel Fellows decided, like it were a group of Keel Fellows. A group of Teal Fellows decided, okay, we are going to do fire. So we all bought these kind of shady apartments in Las Vegas. So we were like 70K each. We renovated them and made them a little bit nicer. But we specifically chose Las Vegas because it was close to the airport. So then we were like, okay, cool. We could reduce our cost of living by living in Vegas and then spend all our time traveling.

10:25So I went on this sabbatical, which we could call retirement, it where I live with a teal fellow so it was great because you know I was around a bunch of smart people and then we would travel around the world together like we would live with like Korea together Singapore etc um absolutely phenomenal like we like you did like mileage points hacking etc um but at some point I was like traveling made me really really happy and being able to spend time with friends made me happy but I was not as intellectually stimulated as I wanted to be so then I was like okay what can I do where I can like maintain this lifestyle ish still stay happy but like use my brain a little bit more have you achieved that balance today would you say I think I optimize more for staying stimulated but I'm very happy still but like less happy maybe than I was like more stressed maybe definitely slightly more stressed but I'll take it I'll take care yeah but uh then i went into vc because i think like i think anyone can agree vc is less stressful than founding the company so i went into vc i was like okay this is actually great balance like i think with a founder you're constantly feeling the one intense like it's emotional roller coaster when vc is just a constant like seven eight like if your portfolio company is like let's say you have one portfolio company that's a complete disaster like fires are happening um you can help that but then you have like you know 99 other companies that are still fine or like you have like some that are ripping it and it really is the power law effect with venture so I was feeling great but I ended up wanting to do something different in venture to really stand out so help create this program called HM Zero where we live with founders and really invest our time and resources into helping them forget about like really everything else going on in their lives.

12:08Do you live with them? I physically live with them. In a house? In a house. Or we would like rent out like you know motel complexes etc. Or giant apartments with like you know 30 rooms connected and to physically live with them and really took away all their stressors. So, you know, we would provide a private chef, we would provide housing, like we provided laundry, etc. So they could spend all their time focused on building because that's where their time is most valuable. And that program went really well. It continued. But while I was living there, I got the urge to start a company again. You have an enormous following on social media now, over a million followers.

12:45In a way, it's quite counterintuitive that you talk about your work so much as you do because you're working with these ultra high net worth clients. It's crazy. I know. Usually are incredibly private and demand a lot of discretion from the people they work with. And you very much become the face of the company. I mean, I come from a digital marketing background, so I know the magic that it can do. I don't know if I knew to this level that it would be able to change the face of a business the way that it has for us. Troy has been quiet for 14 years. Working behind the behind the scenes. It's like no one of this caliber would ever want anything to be shown online.

13:19And then one day we just kind of came to a point where I said, screw it, let's just go for it. And almost overnight, it just exploded. And within a year, we have over a million followers on multiple platforms. I heard you say, I'm talking about making more money on a podcast that you make about, you're poised to make about a million dollars a year, this year alone from content creation. Yes. Yeah. Talk us through a bit, like how you've monetized your presence online. Kind of by accident. I mean, obviously, my first priority is growing the business. That will always be the part of the flywheel.

13:49There's Top Chair Travel and Travel with Livvy, and those two things are running in tandem all the time. For me, I got signed by WME about a year and a half ago with a lot of TV show deals on the table and books and podcasts and all those things. We've really taken that slow. There's been a million opportunities, but again, my main focus is work. So those things are kind of in the background slowly happening, but occasionally we've had some amazing opportunities to work with some massive companies that kind of help our business, which is really cool. We work with some amazing like villa partners, for example, and a lot of them are able to pay us on the influencing side, which helps me save money for my future, which is amazing as a young woman, but also helps our business and helps with our margins for our clients.

14:27So we're getting the best prices for them. And there's a scripted TV drama being made about your... There is, yes. I mean, that plays into what I said about us all being obsessed with the lives of the rich. What can you tell us about that? So right now I believe we just found a showrunner, which is really exciting. I'm just, I mean, I'm a theater kid. I grew up in that space. So getting to be on set and be an EP of some sort of production about all the stuff that we deal with just feels like such an exciting full circle moment for me. Wow, that's huge. Yeah. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin.

14:56Please remember to like, subscribe to our YouTube channel and let us know in the comments what you thought of today's show. And remember that you can also find us on Apple and Spotify platforms. I'll see you tomorrow.

15:15And now there's a golf cart. And our friends. Oh, the whole hike is now coming back. Do you want me to go? Yeah. I would just wait for this. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Hi. Hi. Hi. Good morning. Hello. Hi. Here you come. How about you? Okay, we're going to do it now.