Reset & Rise: RightBrains Women's Leadership Retreat

Leave 2026 lighter. Enter 2027 clearer.

There comes a moment in every woman's life when the question is no longer:

“Can I do this?”

The question becomes:

“Is this the life and leadership I truly want?”

You have spent the year moving, contributing, deciding, delivering and showing up. And somewhere beneath everything the year has asked of you, a quieter part of you may be ready to exhale.

RESET & RISE is an invitation to pause long enough to hear yourself again.

To take honest stock of the year you've lived.

To celebrate how far you've come.

To release what you don't want to carry forward.

And to intentionally decide what you want the next chapter to hold.

For two days, you'll step away from the pace of everyday life and into a circle of women who, like you, are ready to close one year consciously and enter the next with greater clarity and intention

You'll leave with four things that can elevate the way you enter 2027:

Clarity. Confidence. Courage. Community.

And beneath them all, something equally important:

Relief.

The feeling of finally having had the space to stop, breathe and hear yourself think.

RightBrains invites you:

RESET & RISE is an invitation to step away from the pace of everyday life and give yourself something that is increasingly rare: uninterrupted space to reflect, reconnect and choose what comes next. Set in the quiet of the Friesland countryside as 2026 draws to a close, these two and a half days are an opportunity to honour how far you've come, integrate what the year has taught you, release what you don't want to carry forward, and create a clear, intentional vision for 2027. You'll return to your life feeling lighter, clearer and more confident about where you want to go next.

The experience: the Reset & Rise arc

The retreat moves you through a deliberate arc, from release, to reflection, to forward motion. This is where rest meets leadership development, and reflection becomes direction.

Day One - Arrive & Release (Thursday afternoon → evening) You arrive, exhale, and let the outside world fall away. The first evening is about landing fully: a warm welcome, an intimate opening circle, and the beginning of real connection over a beautiful shared table. No performance. No small talk. Just the quiet relief of being somewhere designed entirely for you.

Day Two - Reflect & Reset (Friday, full day) The heart of the retreat. Guided leadership sessions on self-leadership, career ownership, and visibility, woven together with a holistic women's wellbeing reset, journaling, deep reflection, honest conversation, sauna and restoration, and a dedicated nervous-system session. This is the day you take stock of 2026, celebrate it, and set down what no longer serves the year ahead.

Day Three - Rise & Design (Saturday → close) Reflection becomes decision. You'll turn insight into an intentional plan for 2027, clear priorities, courageous choices, and a personal 12-month roadmap you can genuinely stand behind. The retreat closes with a ceremony that marks the threshold you've crossed, and sends you back into your life rooted, clear, and moving.

What you will carry into 2027

Two days. Four shifts that shape what comes next.

CLARITY

“I know what matters now and what I want next.”

You'll step back far enough to see the bigger picture, what 2026 has taught you, what you want more of, what needs to change and where you want to focus next.

Your clarity becomes practical through a personal 12-month roadmap for 2027, translating reflection into priorities and action.

CONFIDENCE

“I trust myself to make the next move.”

You'll reconnect with your strengths, your voice and your ability to make decisions from self-trust rather than comparison, expectation or pressure.

Not confidence because every answer is certain.

Confidence because you trust yourself to navigate what comes next.

COURAGE

“I'm ready to act on what I know.”

Clarity means little without action.

You'll identify the conversations, choices and steps your next chapter requires—and leave with the courage to begin taking them.

COMMUNITY

“I don't have to figure everything out alone.”

You'll share the experience with a small circle of women navigating their own seasons of growth, change and possibility.

Not forced networking.

Real conversation, shared experience and relationships designed to continue beyond the retreat.

And underneath it all: Relief

The relief of stepping out of your usual roles for a moment.

Of not needing to perform, produce, manage or know every answer.

Of finally having enough space to breathe, and enough quiet to hear yourself again.

The setting

NEW EDEN

Friesland, The Netherlands

Ninety minutes from Amsterdam, and a world away from the pace of everyday life.

RESET & RISE will take place at New Eden, a private retreat sanctuary.

At the end of November, when the year itself begins to quieten, New Eden gives us exactly what this retreat requires: privacy, space, warmth and room to breathe.

Between sessions, you'll be able to walk through the surrounding forest and landscape, find a quiet corner to journal, gather around nourishing meals, or allow your body to unwind in the wood-fired sauna.

The accommodation has been created for immersive residential retreats, with comfortable private rooms and en-suite options, while the surrounding nature provides the separation from everyday life that makes deeper reflection possible.

For these two days, you don't need to commute anywhere, organise anything or rush onto the next thing.

You arrive. You settle in. And everything you need is here.

Why does this retreat exist?

For more than a decade, RightBrains has worked to close the gender gap in digital and technology careers, through the Digital Talent Programme, the Digital Leadership Programme, coaching, mentoring, and a professional community of women building serious careers in tech.

Over those years, something became difficult to ignore.

The women who step away from technology are almost never the women who lack capability. They are frequently the most capable in the room. What they lose isn't skill. It's clarity, the thread connecting the work they're doing today to the life and leadership they actually want. Talent was never the constraint. Space to think was.

Reset & Rise was created to change that.

Not to help you endure your career, but to help you consciously architect it , so that the seniority you're building leads somewhere you genuinely want to arrive. So that ambition and wellbeing stop competing for the same ground. So that the next decade is chosen rather than inherited.

And there is a wider truth here, one that matters to RightBrains and may matter to you.

When a woman rises and stays, visible, senior, and leading on her own terms, she does not only change her own trajectory. She becomes the sponsor, the proof and the open door for every woman coming behind her. Your clarity is never only yours.

This retreat is the next evolution of the RightBrains mission: creating space not only to advance professionally, but to step back and consider the woman, and the leader, you are becoming.

Meet your facilitator

Eslyn Olivia Barends is a leadership advisor, strategist and facilitator who supports leaders navigating pivotal moments of growth, change and reinvention.

Her career spans leadership, technology, business development, social impact and women's empowerment. She holds an MBA from Henley Business School and has held roles at Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, where she worked within some of the world's most dynamic technology environments.

Before returning to the corporate world, Eslyn co-founded and led DreamGirls Academy, a social-impact organisation dedicated to supporting young women in accessing education, opportunity and meaningful careers.

Today, through Luminary Leadership, she brings more than a decade of experience across leadership development, coaching and women's empowerment to helping people consciously architect their next chapter, from the inside out.

Her work integrates identity, self-leadership, emotional and nervous-system awareness, career ownership, strategic reflection and practical action.