Forget the old categories. The future is a creative collision.
SXSW isn't just a festival. It's the epicenter of cultural creation. And this year, we're bringing the energy that changes everything.
The FQ Lounge™ is where visionaries from every corner of creativity and business come together. Where breakthroughs happen not in isolation, but in the beautiful chaos of collision.
Where culture is not just consumed. It's made.
The most powerful innovations happen at the intersection. Let's stop watching and start building.
Let's be the impact. Together.
All are welcome!
EXPERT DOLPHINS:
Lisa Burton, Vice President, HearstLab
Amanda Butler, Chief Marketing Officer, Sundial Media and Technology Group
Anupam Govil, President, Avasant
Nneka Ukpai, Venture Partner, Springboard
PRESENTING COMPANIES:
Dr. Amy Divaraniya, Founder and CEO of OOVA
Eliza Twist, Founder and CEO at Zebble
Michelle Yu, Founder and CEO of Josie
Women’s health is a lifelong journey, and innovation is finally rising to meet it. From fertility and pregnancy to midlife and beyond, breakthroughs across pharma, consumer health, and digital care are reshaping how women experience support at every stage. Join leaders across sectors as they explore what’s working, what’s next, and how bold collaboration is unlocking a more connected, responsive future for women’s health.
In today’s landscape, brand loyalty is built on belonging. As consumers seek deeper connection and shared values, the most forward-thinking companies are moving beyond campaigns to cultivate community as a core business strategy. This conversation brings together leaders who are creating spaces where shared ideas spark dialogue, deepen trust, and turn customers into collaborators.
You’re invited to Dolphin Tank: Austin by Springboard Enterprises in partnership with The Female Quotient. Springboard’s Dolphin Tank brings the power of our collective community to women entrepreneurs innovating in technology. Our Dolphin Tank events showcase exciting women-led companies and provide them with the opportunity for connections, capital, and insight from our audience of investors, advisors, and industry leaders.
People move seamlessly across platforms, spaces, and moments, and they expect brands to do the same. Today, the opportunity lies not in being everywhere, but in showing up with relevance and intention. This conversation centers on how leaders are designing experiences that connect across touchpoints and build lasting relationships in a world defined by constant movement.
The rules of leadership are being rewritten in real time. As breakthrough innovations reshape entire industries, even the most seasoned executives are facing defining moments where conviction must lead. This conversation brings together two trailblazing leaders who have navigated highly visible careers, transforming uncertainty into opportunity and reinvention into momentum. Drawing from deep experience at the intersection of media, advertising, and technology, they will explore what it takes to pivot with purpose while staying anchored in values.
What happens when a personal experience sparks a category-defining idea? In this intimate fireside chat, Allison Ellsworth, co-founder of poppi, shares how listening to her instincts and her community helped transform a kitchen experiment into a cultural force. Together, we’ll unpack the realities of building a mission-driven business, navigating rapid growth, and staying grounded as the spotlight gets brighter.
Leadership in 2026 is defined by the speed and quality of decisions. AI is transforming how leaders access information, evaluate options, and act with confidence. This session explores how leaders are using AI to sharpen judgment rather than outsource it, and how decision-making evolves when intelligence is always on.
The disability community is a robust community that is demanding better access to tools they desire and experiences that are inclusive. Intentional design and approaches to accessible guest and consumer experiences fuel innovation that benefit everyone. The conversation will spotlight how accessibility-forward thinking, strategic partnerships and intentional innovation is shaping the future.
In an era where media moves at the speed of culture and information flows from everywhere at once, how we consume and interpret the news is constantly evolving. Traditional outlets are no longer the default source of information, as audiences increasingly turn to podcasts, creators, and independent voices. This discussion brings together the hosts of Raging Moderates to explore the shifting media landscape, the rise of new platforms, and what it means to stay thoughtful and informed amid an ever-expanding chorus of perspectives.
Sports is no longer confined to game day, it’s a year-round cultural and commercial force. As fan expectations evolve, leagues, teams, and brands must rethink how they show up across platforms and communities. Hear how leaders are expanding audiences, deepening loyalty, and unlocking new revenue streams that last.
As organizations evolve, CMOs are uniquely positioned to connect strategy, people, and purpose. No longer confined to a single function, today’s marketing leaders sit at the intersection of brand, product, growth, and culture. In this session, CMOs share how they collaborate across teams, align priorities across the business, and help their brands move through change with clarity.
Every year, International Women's Day creates momentum. The question is: what happens next? In a world where women are breaking barriers in sports, business, and global communities, visibility alone isn't enough. Real progress requires deliberate action, turning attention into advocacy and pledges into practice. Following CARE's Level the Playing Field campaign, this session brings together dynamic women leaders to examine what it takes to sustain movement beyond a moment. Through candid conversation, we'll explore how storytelling and strategic partnerships drive tangible change, what separates gestures from sustained progress, and how organizations can leverage their influence to expand opportunity for women and girls worldwide.
Ioday, bold vision is only the beginning. Real leadership is defined by what happens next, how strategy turns into steady progress and progress into measurable growth. The challenge is not setting priorities, but sustaining the discipline, clarity, and alignment required to move teams forward together. This conversation brings together senior leaders who have built cultures of accountability with trust, transforming intention into consistent performance.
The most powerful brands today are not built on media budgets. They're built on belief. The smartest founders have shifted from chasing reach to making community their most powerful growth engine. How does fandom become a sustainable business model, and how do IRL moments like drops, tours, and pop-ups convert energy into lasting loyalty? Join the leaders who have made community their competitive advantage and discover how culture, built with intention, becomes the most powerful form of distribution.
AI is no longer a tool layered onto work, it’s becoming the system that shapes how work flows. From decision-making to collaboration, AI is quietly redefining everyday operations. This session explores how organizations are integrating AI into the core of how teams function. Learn what it takes to adapt work models for an AI-powered reality.
Some leaders follow the rule book. Emma Grede writes her own. As a founder, investor, podcast host and author, she has built culture-shifting brands while redefining what success looks like across work and life. Join us for a live Broadlines podcast episode as Emma shares the no-BS lessons behind building businesses with staying power, making bold decisions, and designing a life rooted in clarity and conviction. Plus, an early look at her forthcoming book, “Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life.”
Digital communities are reshaping how women access health information, share experiences, and define confidence—creating space for transparent, judgment-free dialogue around wellness and personal choice. As trusted platforms become go-to spaces for conversation, listening is emerging as a powerful strategy. This panel explores how evolving health discussions reveal rising expectations and how community voices, medical expertise, and industry leaders turn insight into informed, meaningful action.
Women’s health is finally getting the cultural conversation it deserves, driven by community, openness, and lived experience. As more people turn to trusted spaces to ask questions, share stories, and navigate everyday wellness, listening has become the most powerful strategy. This panel explores what today’s health conversations reveal about evolving needs, rising expectations, and the future of women’s health and lifestyle. Hear how leaders across health and consumer spaces turn insight into action, showing up with relevance, trust, and care when it matters most.
Culture moves fast, but insight is what turns moments into lasting relevance. Today’s leaders must decode trends, values, and shifts in real time, then act with intention. This session explores how brands and organizations translate cultural signals into decisions that resonate. Hear from leaders as they discuss how cultural fluency is becoming a competitive edge in an always-on world.
We are living in an era of unprecedented longevity, gaining more time, perspective, and possibility than any generation before us. Yet the cultural story we tell about aging has not evolved at the same pace. For decades, anti-aging has dominated health, beauty, and wellness, celebrating longer lives while quietly stigmatizing the very process that makes them possible. This panel brings together leaders across medicine, psychology, and lived experience to unpack that contradiction, drawing on scientific research, including insights from RIT, that shows how meaning, emotional intelligence, and perspective often deepen with age. Together, they reframe aging not as something to reverse or hide, but as a privilege to value, protect, and design for. If longer was the goal, what does it mean to fully embrace what comes next?
In a moment shaped by constant change and rising expectations, the most impactful CEOs are thinking beyond operations and toward what needs to be built next. From new business models to evolving cultures, leadership today requires long-term vision in a short-term world. This panel brings together CEOs who are making future-facing bets and designing companies that can grow, adapt, and stay relevant as everything shifts.
Today’s headlines move fast, but their impact on our lives and careers runs deeper. The stories shaping culture, policy, and the workplace deserve space for thoughtful conversation and perspective. This panel explores the power of unpacking the cultural moments through dialogue and lived experience. Together, they’ll discuss why creating space for real conversations about the headlines that shape our world is more important than ever, and how those conversations help us make sense of what comes next.
Culture moves in real time, but trust is built over time. In an always-on ecosystem where attention is earned in seconds, marketing leaders face a critical challenge: how to move at the pace of platforms without losing the clarity that builds brand equity. This conversation explores how teams build content systems that move quickly while staying true to brand standards, so every post, partnership, and campaign strengthens recognition and loyalty. When culture sets the pace, consistency is what makes brands stand out.
Leadership isn’t formed in a vacuum. For many executives, lessons learned on the field, at home, or through family roles have shaped how they show up at work. In this conversation, male leaders reflect on how sports, fatherhood, partnership, and lived experience have influenced their leadership styles.
Stories shape culture, and who tells them defines what the world believes is possible. Yet women hold just 25% of key creative roles across film and television, a long-standing gap that signals untapped opportunity for the industry and audiences alike. This conversation brings together trailblazers and emerging creators who are reshaping authorship, access, and influence across generations. Together, they will explore how perspective drives stronger storytelling, how networks accelerate progress, and how creators, brands, and platforms can champion narratives long overlooked, from identity to health to pivotal life stages. When women lead the story, culture does more than reflect the world. It reimagines it.
AI tools are proving what’s possible, but real impact comes when people are ready to use them. This panel reframes AI adoption as a human opportunity, exploring how trust can be intentionally designed and nurtured at work. Through the lens of psychology, emotion, and lived experience, leaders will share how to build confidence in AI, from transparency, risk, accountability, and culture.
Creators are no longer just content engines, they are founders, operators, and brand builders in their own right. As platforms evolve and algorithms shift, sustainability depends on owning audience relationships and revenue streams. This session brings together creators and leaders to explore how they transform influence into infrastructure, brands into ecosystems, and ideas into scalable, sustainable growth.
Brands today are built in real time. Expectations shift overnight, cultural moments move markets, and trust is measured in seconds. For brand leaders, the mandate is clear: move fast, stay relevant, and protect what matters most. Join industry leaders redefining how brands show up with clarity, conviction, and lasting impact.
Confidence is the signal everyone reads. From the creators we follow to the brands we trust, the way we show up sends powerful cues about identity, wellbeing, and how we see ourselves over time. As conversations around longevity and healthy aging reshape culture, the rituals we maintain, from how we communicate to caring for our health, are becoming part of a bigger story about confidence that lasts. This conversation brings together brand leaders and creators redefining how storytelling, community, and wellbeing shape who we are and how we show up.
Women’s sports have expanded far beyond competition into culture, conversation, and connection. This shift sets the stage for Olympian Ilona Maher and Deloitte US Chair Lara Abrash to explore how voice, visibility, and leadership show up on today’s biggest stages, from sport to business to community. They’ll discuss how owning your presence, building community, and leading with clarity can shape what comes next and inspire the next generation of women leaders.