Aligned Community for Women in Business in Buffalo, NY and beyond 

WINC began in 2019 with a feeling — not a business plan.
At the time, I was navigating a new industry and walking into networking rooms that felt sharp, transactional, and overwhelmingly masculine. I remember standing in one of those rooms thinking, “There has to be a place where women can just breathe.”
A place where the energy was warm instead of forced, connective instead of performative, and deeply human instead of hierarchical.

I wasn’t looking to build an empire.
I was looking to build a room that felt like home.

When I shared the idea with Chris Belin — who quickly became my co-founder — her entire face lit up. Her yes was immediate, full-bodied, and affirming. It felt like someone had put their hand on the small of my back and whispered, “You’re onto something.”
Together, we created WINC’s first version: a monthly gathering where women could show up, be welcomed, and share more than what they do, but who they are.

Those early years were beautiful. The rooms buzzed with excitement. Women lingered long after meetings ended. There was laughter, shared stories, light in people’s eyes.
But as we grew, we didn’t yet understand the full value of what we had built.
So we kept adding.
More benefits. More rules. More structure.

Looking back, it was our attempt to make the intangible — the vibe, the magic, the belonging — make sense on paper. But in that process, the container became heavy. Busy. Oversaturated. Especially for Chris and myself as we traded cycles of burnout.
We were trying to justify something that didn’t need justification.

By 2025, when Chris stepped fully into her own business, I took sole leadership of WINC.
And what followed was both a heartbreak and a clearing.

Women I loved left with her. My Slack channels went quiet. My inbox felt like an echo chamber. I found myself grieving — not just the loss of my co-founder, but the loss of the version of WINC I had once cherished.
For months, I carried the weight of feeling like I was too much and not enough at the same time.

But grief has a way of showing you what’s underneath everything you’ve been holding together.

Beneath the noise, beneath the pressure, beneath the layers of “should,” I finally felt the truth:
WINC wasn’t dying — it was shedding.
And so was I.

Networking as an industry was shifting. Women weren’t craving handshakes and one off conversations anymore; they were craving intentional spaces. They weren’t hungry for more business cards; they were hungry for depth, resonance, truth, and the kind of connection that actually moves something inside you.

WINC had never really been a networking group.
It had always been a container for awakening — I just hadn’t been ready to call it that.

Today, WINC looks and feels completely different.
It’s simpler, deeper, softer, and stronger.
It’s a high-vibration container for driven, spiritually-aware women- those who understand that we are all connected though something greater than ourselves- who are ready to peel back their armor, step into alignment, and remember the woman within them who has been waiting for years to come forward.

Here, you will be seen.
Here, you can exhale.
Here, you are safe to ask what you really want — and to honor the answers.

The fire imagery that runs through WINC now is intentional.
It symbolizes the release of who you were taught to be, the burning down of what no longer fits, and the unapologetic emergence of your higher self.
Your truth doesn’t whisper — it blazes.
WINC is where women finally feel the warmth of that flame again.

And as for me?
I lead as a community builder, a mirror, and a guide — for women who are done performing, done pushing alone, and ready to lead from alignment instead of exhaustion.
Not because I have all the answers, but because I know the terrain.
I’ve walked through the fire of reinvention myself.

WINC’s promise is simple:
alignment — with who you are, how you lead, and the woman you’ve always been beneath the shell you built to survive.

And if you feel the pull toward this space…
that’s not an accident.