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NewslettersMPW Daily

Ruth Porat, Jane Fraser, and Hailey Bieber will join the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Here’s what else to expect

Emma Hinchliffe
By
Emma Hinchliffe
Emma Hinchliffe
Most Powerful Women Editor
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Emma Hinchliffe
By
Emma Hinchliffe
Emma Hinchliffe
Most Powerful Women Editor
Down Arrow Button Icon
October 5, 2026, 12:56 PM ET
Former SAIC CEO Toni Townes-Whitley is guest co-chair of the 2026 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit.
Former SAIC CEO Toni Townes-Whitley is guest co-chair of the 2026 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Stuart Isett/Fortune
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The countdown is on. In one week, we will be in Santa Barbara, California for the 2026 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit.

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It’s shaping up to be an incredible gathering of women leaders across business, politics, culture, and more. Today I’m going to share a quick preview to get us all excited – with much more to come next week.

We’ll kick things off on Monday with a conversation between Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s president and chief investment officer (and No. 11 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list) and Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. In addition to Google’s perspective on the AI race, Porat will talk about her own POV on AI in health care as a two-time cancer survivor.

We’ll debate the future of media with NPR CEO Katherine Maher, hear about what’s next in philanthropy from Olivia Walton, and learn about the future of health care with Centene chief Sarah London, the youngest woman to run a Fortune 500 company (and No. 63 on the MPW list).

The next morning, I’ll interview Sam’s Club CEO Latriece Watkins, who made her MPW list debut at No. 87 this year and who I profiled in the spring. She is someone to get to know; the Sam’s Club CEO job at Walmart is often a springboard into even bigger things. Fortune MPW editorial director Ellie Austin will chat with Emma Grede, the exec behind Skims, Good American, and Off Season whose hot takes on business and leadership often set social media abuzz.

Our guest co-chair Toni Townes-Whitley, the former CEO of defense contractor SAIC (and No. 82 on the 2025 MPW list), will guide us through a discussion with retired U.S. Army Colonel Edna Cummings on the state of women and minorities’ advancement in the military under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

I’ll interview Kalshi cofounder Luana Lopes Lara, who is the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire leading day-to-day business at the prediction market as it battles legal challenges and more. And I’ll chat with OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair about the future of the platform with new investor Architect Capital—including its plans to offer financial services products for adult content creators who have trouble accessing mainstream banking services.

And I’m excited to have an awesome conversation with three leaders in women’s sports: Kim Ng, the first woman to serve as GM of a major American men’s professional sports team, now running an emerging league as commissioner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League; Gotham FC owner Carolyn Tisch Blodgett; and Nneka Ogwumike, the longtime head of the WNBA’s players’ union who negotiated a historic sports labor agreement.

To finish up on Wednedsay, our MPW list No. 1, Citi CEO Jane Fraser, will make a special appearance. And we’ll close out with Hailey Bieber, alongside her Rhode cofounder Lauren Ratner, who will talk about their $1 billion acquisition by Elf Beauty and how to win in the beauty industry.

And there’s so much more I didn’t even mention here! We’ll be covering the Summit in this newsletter as the week progresses and you can also follow along on Fortune.com (there’s a livestream!) and Fortune and Fortune MPW social channels.

What are you most excited for from this year’s lineup? Let us know—we’ll make sure to bring you highlights right here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world.

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

Rest in peace, Brooke. Brooke Eby became well known online after she started chronicling her own disease—she was diagnosed with ALS at 33 years old. She died last week at 37. Eby worked for Salesforce when she was diagnosed, and the company helped her keep working as her illness progressed, including sometimes flying her to conferences on its company plane. She brought humor and relatability to her experience even as she spoke of her illness as a death sentence. "Everyone was a lot more comfortable with my situation when I was laughing," she once wrote, "and that came back around to make me feel more comfortable too." 

Why General Mills picked an insider for its turnaround. New CEO Dana McNabb tells the Minnesota Star-Tribune that growing up on a farm instilled in her a "very big work ethic" and respect for the people who make the ingredients that go into the company's food every day. The stock has fallen 45% in five years, and McNabb's goal is to "understand consumers better than anyone else and meet them where they are." 

Democrats expect to reach 100 women in the House after the midterms. As many as 113 Democratic women could serve next term if the party wins every competitive race, far past the current record. When EMILYs List was founded in 1985, less than 5% of House Dems were women. 

The latest at Cornell. Cornell president Michael I. Kotlikoff released an eight-minute video statement on Saturday, about a week after the university's handling of an alleged gang rape became a national news story. "We must do everything we can to prevent what happened to Jane Doe and everyone before her and anyone after her from ever happening again," he said. There are also new details of exactly how all seven men involved in the alleged rape were punished by the school. 

ON MY RADAR

Zoe Kazan's heady and bighearted East of Eden New Yorker

She won Hollywood's highest honor. So why was making her next film so hard? LA Times

I wrote a book about fraternities. The Cornell case shows how they resist change Bloomberg

PARTING WORDS

"There's great liberation in being able to just write whatever I want and not be thinking, 'Is this going to get played on radio? Is it going to be as big as my last hit?'"

—Sheryl Crow on getting older in the music industry

This is the web version of MPW Daily, a daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
About the Author
Emma Hinchliffe
By Emma HinchliffeMost Powerful Women Editor
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Emma Hinchliffe is Fortune’s Most Powerful Women editor, overseeing editorial for the longstanding franchise. As a senior writer at Fortune, Emma has covered women in business and gender-lens news across business, politics, and culture. She is the lead author of the Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter (formerly the Broadsheet), Fortune’s daily missive for and about the women leading the business world.

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