Coming to Palm Springs in May 2026, the VWS Conscious Leadership Retreat puts the spotlight on sustainable, ethical leadership.
The desert has long been a place for reinvention. Come May 2026, that energy will take new shape as founders, investors, and visionaries gather in Palm Springs for the first-ever VWS Conscious Leadership Retreat — an immersive experience designed to recalibrate how we think about influence, success, and sustainability. Taking place across four days and three nights, this retreat aims to be the world’s first leadership gathering focused on bringing together professionals and leaders from all backgrounds to focus on a shared personal and professional passion for a more sustainable world.
Conceived by Jennifer Stojkovic, the founder of Vegan Women Summit (VWS), and presented in partnership with Ethos, the retreat invites a new model of leadership that blends wellness, sustainability, and collaboration in equal measure.
“Leadership is evolving — and it’s about more than quarterly reports or growth charts,” says Stojkovic. “The next generation of leaders is defined by emotional intelligence, sustainability literacy, and the ability to build businesses that nourish the world, not drain it.”
At a moment when corporate activism is under scrutiny and ESG frameworks are being rewritten, the idea of a “conscious leader” is both aspirational and essential. The Palm Springs retreat is built around that tension: how to build influence that is as restorative as it is ambitious.
A shift in the leadership paradigm
Hosted at the luxury desert Avalon Hotel, known for its architectural serenity and wellness focus, the VWS Conscious Leadership Retreat represents a step toward a more integrated approach to professional development — one that values reflection as much as ambition.
For Stojkovic, the concept emerged from years of leading global VWS conferences, which were attended by thousands of professionals and highlighted entrepreneurs and innovations across food technology, fashion, beauty, and sustainability. “We kept seeing the same feedback from our attendees,” she explains. “These professionals, founders, and impact-minded consumers found our summit transformative in bringing them together with other like-minded leaders and the ability to co-create and collaborate on the issues they care about most. That’s where the idea for the Conscious Leadership Retreat emerged.”
The retreat’s programming blends high-touch wellness — think sunrise meditations, circular economy discussions, and plant-based dining — with intimate panels and salons that explore how personal values translate into enterprise-level change.
Partnership with purpose
Ethos, the retreat’s official media partner, brings its editorial lens on sustainability, culture, and conscious luxury to the experience. Together, the two platforms aim to model what collaboration looks like when mission outweighs metrics.
“We’re living in a time when leadership demands both clarity and softness,” says Jill Ettinger, founder of Ethos. “The VWS Retreat offers a framework for that balance. It’s about leading with integrity, but also leading with care — for our teams, our planet, and ourselves.”
For Ettinger, whose work spans sustainability storytelling and cultural insight, the partnership underscores a shared belief that culture shifts happen when the right stories — and the right people — converge. “This is not a retreat for retreat’s sake,” she adds. “It’s a gathering designed to shape what leadership will look like over the next decade.”
As mindfulness and mission become as vital as management skills, the VWS Conscious Leadership Retreat captures a larger cultural shift: one in which ambition no longer exists apart from wellbeing. “Leadership should feel restorative,” says Stojkovic. “When we operate from exhaustion, we create exhausted systems. Conscious leadership is about sustainability in every sense of the word — personal, professional, and planetary.”
With its blend of luxury and purpose, the retreat mirrors the evolution of modern leadership — where responsibility, reflection, and renewal are inseparable. Palm Springs, with its quiet vastness and endless horizon, becomes the natural setting for that recalibration.
It’s not a coincidence that this conversation is happening now. From Silicon Valley to Soho House, burnout has become the unspoken language of success. The VWS Conscious Leadership Retreat offers a new vocabulary — one rooted in restoration, community, and ethical innovation.
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