Speakers at BizTimes Media’s annual Women in Business Symposium, which was held Thursday at Brookfield Conference Center, offered advice for leading through shifts in work and life.

The main panel, moderated by Portia Young, director of corporate public relations at Sargento and host of Milwaukee PBS, featured Terry Tuttle, regional president of the Americas for HellermannTyton; Marti Wronski, chief operating officer of the Milwaukee Brewers; Dawn Peterson, president and CEO of Cushman & Wakefield | Boerke; and Jenni Yolo, founder and operator of I Spy DIY and Jenni Yolo Home.

Here are five takeaways:

Treat change as a normal part of a career

Wronski said she has come to view transitions as a normal part of working life rather than a disruption to it.

“Everything’s a transition,” Wronski said. “You go from a student to becoming a professional, and then for those folks who choose partnership in some way to then the transition to being a partner and managing your career through that shift, and then if you decide to start a family in some way, there’s that shift. There’s shifts at every corner, and so frequently we view the shift as an opponent, as something we’re up against. Over my career, one of the things that has helped me the most with shifts is to realize that they are constant.”

Peterson described two particularly deliberate pivots. In 2019, she left a job because she wanted to move toward a finance career after spending 25 years in corporate tax. In 2024, she left another position because she had concluded she couldn’t fix the problems in front of her.

In both cases, she said, it helped to ask a basic question: “Am I moving towards something or away from something?”

Yolo’s career has been even less linear. She moved from fashion and magazine work into a side business that became I Spy DIY, then from DIY fashion into home renovation, television, product development and retail.

“Pivot has been my mantra for a long time,” she said.

Her advice to students and younger workers was to give themselves permission to experiment.

“I would advise people to play a little bit more,” Yolo said. “I think there’s a lot of focus on what you need to be doing right after school, what your career path is.”

Do the work before you have the title

Peterson joined Boerke in January 2025 in a finance and operations role. Five months later, the CEO who had recruited her announced he was leaving.

Rather than waiting to see what happened, Peterson got involved in the process. She advocated for a spot on the search committee, helped develop an RFP for a search firm and pushed the company’s partners to think carefully about what they actually needed from the next CEO. At one point, she told them they didn’t necessarily need to hire someone from outside the company.

They eventually asked whether she wanted the job.

“But I just kept doing all the work,” Peterson said. “Kept the day-to-day running, kept my head down, kept focused on the bigger task. Whatever role you have, start doing the work for the next role.”

Finding your authenticity

The panel also touched on one of the more complicated parts of leadership: adjusting your communication style without losing yourself.

Wronski said she spent years thinking about whether she needed to be more formal or present herself differently in certain rooms. Eventually, she found that focusing too much on how she was coming across got in the way.

“When I just settled into who I really am, the things that I really bring naturally more than naturally to the table, my success in a room … just increased dramatically,” she said.

For Wronski, that means paying attention to people. She wants to hear from the quiet person at the table. She’ll use humor when it helps.

Leaders need to make it possible for people to disagree

“Everyone is different. I can tell the people that they’ll just tell you what they think, some are hidden, sometimes it’s cultural,” Tuttle said. “It’s about assessing the situation, and if someone is holding back, I may just follow up with them later, one-on-one, and ask what they really think. But I encourage in every meeting, ‘You have this opportunity now. Get it out on the table.’”

The goal is to create a culture where people know they won’t be punished for disagreeing, she said.

“We have this culture where you’re not going to get crucified for it,” Tuttle said. “We really want to hear the honest opinion because those opinions make us better.”

The work-family balance is never completely settled

The panelists also talked about the practical realities of building a career while raising a family.

Tuttle described her life as a pie divided among family, work and friends. The size of each piece changes depending on what is happening at a particular moment.

“Sometimes that piece gets a little bit bigger when you need to be there for your family,” she said. “Sometimes it allows the work pie piece to be a little bit bigger.”

Peterson also spoke about the role her family has played in the career decisions she has made, particularly when she chose to leave jobs without another position lined up.

She said those decisions weren’t made casually. She and her husband had “many month conversations” about the changes.

For Yolo, family and work have become intertwined. Her husband, David, eventually left his own job to work with her, and the two have renovated houses, built businesses and taken on projects together.

BizTimes’ Women in Business Symposium also included remarks from Melissa Winter, who was named the 2026 Woman Executive of the year.

The symposium also concluded with four “How I Did It” presentations, featuring Angie Bilstad of Northwestern Mutual, Elizabeth Cizinsky of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, Becky Leupi of Vibrant Gardens and Kate Weiland-Moores of Concurrency, who shared personal stories about career changes, entrepreneurship and leadership.