GM Advisory Group Is Rewriting How Women Network

In the last year, we’ve been starved of social contact. As New York Times bestselling author Gabby Bernstein points out, women are especially craving social connection, considering our brains are literally hardwired for it. Therein was the crux of the event GM Advisory Group held in the Hamptons last week. The wealth management firm assembled 50 or so amazing women from across industries to network over dinner, drinks, couture and inspiring, spiritual conversation. It was a professional event unlike any I have been to before. 

Traditionally, networking events don’t allow for conversation this deep nor connections this profound. We enjoyed a three-course dinner prepared by Jean-Georges himself (which was such a treat), and we got to enjoy great conversation at our tables before Gabby took the floor to discuss all sorts of things, but primarily how to become your happiest, calmest self. 

Throughout the night, we talked about signs from the universe, how to make time for yourself, how not to pass your personal trauma on to your kids and how to manifest your aspirations with the universe. To some, a conversation like this, especially at a networking event, might seem a little out there or strange, but it was actually incredible. For one, Gabby has such conviction and is such a positive presence in herself that you can’t help but wonder how she’s done it, and naturally that’s what she was there to tell us about, but it was also the Q&A portion that felt very vulnerable and intimate, with women asking candid questions and speaking about what’s been troubling them, from how to make time for their own self-care with young kids around to how to actually take a day off when you’re founding a company and struggling to get both a company you love and believe in off the ground and make sure that you’re taking care of yourself. In professional settings, like a traditional networking event, this would seem like the kind of thing that would be taboo to discuss, but not here. 

One of my favorite parts of the event was the cocktail hour that preceded it. I met many wonderful women, and we discussed, of course, GM Advisory Group (GMAG), which Worth has a working relationship with, but we also discussed the crazy world of cryptocurrency, what alternative assets are rising in popularity right now (watches and real estate, according to one woman I spoke to who works for an alternative asset firm) and the yachting industry. One story that stuck out to me that night was a woman discussing how stressful her workday preceding the event had been and how she had been supposed to stay in an airport hotel after the event that night and hop on a super early flight to Aspen for another work event the next day, and she had been hoping that event would get canceled because she was stressed and busy enough as it was. The universe threw her a bone, and the event was canceled.

It’s stories and sentiments like hers that made this event feel special. It felt like we could truly connect and discuss what’s been troubling us during the pandemic, what our personal and professional pain points have been and the power of supporting each other. And truthfully, it’s no surprise that GMAG held an event like this, bringing the care and support that the firm has become so notable for.

I’ve heard rumors that this event may be the first in a series of women-centric networking and connection events for GMAG, and I, for one, hope it is. In a time like the one we’ve all endured and are continuing to endure, being able to dress up for other women and have deep and meaningful but also fun and exuberant conversations relating to one another satisfies that hunger we’ve all had during the pandemic to enjoy each other’s company again.