HerStory Podcast - Presented by Chamber Fayetteville and Be Freaking Awesome - Featuring Stories of Women of Fayetteville

Beth Pittman's dad gave her advice early in her career that she's spent the last two decades respectfully disagreeing with. He told her to keep her head down, work hard, and the company would take care of her. What actually happened was that a client she used to support in a legal capacity looked up one day and said, I think you'd make a really good recruiter. She didn't even know what that meant. She looked into it, interviewed, got the job, and found the thing she was built for.Now, after 20-plus years in recruiting and as the co-founder of Skills Lab Training, she spends her days helping other people find that same thing. And along the way, she noticed a pattern: women keep hitting a ceiling not because they aren't qualified, but because nobody taught them how to ask for what they've already earned.In this episode of HerStory, Sami sits down with Beth Pittman of Skills Lab Training to talk about the winding road from paralegal to recruiter to entrepreneur, what she sees from the inside of the hiring process that most candidates never know, and why investing in yourself is the most underused career tool most women have. She also shares a goal nobody saw coming. In this episode, we get into:How a client's offhand comment changed the entire trajectory of Beth's careerWhat 20 years of recruiting has taught her about the gap between what women are worth and what they ask forThe coaching moment that helped one woman walk into her boss's office and ask for a promotion, a raise, and more responsibility in one conversationWhy starting a business is hard in ways nobody talks about, and what Beth did about itThe secret goal that nobody in her life knew about until this conversationBeth talks about the difference between heads-down work and career growth, why your network is gold even when you can't see it yet, and how Skills Lab's free Business Owners Roundtable came directly from her own startup growing pains. She also makes a case for investing in yourself the same way you'd invest in a tutor for your kid's math test, or a piano teacher, or three years of travel soccer. The skills that get you promoted don't happen by accident.She also says something about the glass ceiling that is worth hearing. As a recruiter who sees exactly what companies pay men and women for the same roles, she is not speaking in theory.The Women of All Generations event is June 16, 2026, 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center. Beth is a past attendee and she loved it. Grab your tickets at fayettevillear.com/woag.Mentioned in this episode:Skills Lab Training: skillslabtraining.comSkills Lab Business Owners Roundtable (free, held every other month)Kristi Martin, co-founder of Skills Lab TrainingWalton College of Business, University of Arkansas (Skills Lab coaching partnership)Women of All Generations event: fayettevillear.com/woagConnect with Beth:Website: skillslabtraining.comEmail: [email protected]: linkedin.com/in/pittmanbethInstagram: @skillslabtrainingFacebook: facebook.com/skillslabtrainingMentioned in this episode:Women of All Generations | June 16, 2026The Women of All Generations event is almost here. Join us June 16, 2026 from 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center for an afternoon of real conversation, connection, and celebration. Tickets and sponsorships are available now. You belong in that room. Grab your spot at fayettevillear.com/woag.

Julie Magnuson didn't plan to end up in Northwest Arkansas. She just kept saying yes to the next right thing. Buying from promotional product vendors. Working for one. Moving to a new market for a colleague who needed help. And then one day, someone asked what it would take for her to stay, and she looked around and thought: this is a good place to raise a family.Forty years later, she and her daughter Cassidy are running Creative Promos together. And the goal Cassidy just said out loud for the first time? To take over the business one day and keep serving the customers Julie has spent decades building relationships with.This episode of HerStory is a little different. It's two women, two generations, one business, and a genuinely honest conversation about what it takes to make all of that work. Sami sits down with Julie and Cassidy Magnuson of Creative Promos to talk about the winding paths that brought them both to NWA, what it's actually like to work with your mom, and why service is still the thing that makes or breaks a business. In this episode, we get into:How Julie went from buying promotional products to selling them, and eventually owning her own companyHow Cassidy went from healthcare recruiting and medical sales to joining the family businessWhat it's actually like to work with your mom (the real answer, not the polished one)How they divide the work so it doesn't swallow their relationshipWhy burnout is real, vacations are not optional, and messy balance is still balanceThey talk about the challenge of being a working mom before remote work existed, when your boss's wife stayed home and he genuinely didn't understand why yours couldn't. They talk about what makes NWA a community worth staying in, and why the answer keeps coming back to the same thing: the people here actually care about each other.And then they each say something out loud that they haven't said before. Julie's is about retirement. Cassidy's is about stepping into something big. You'll want to hear both.The Women of All Generations event is June 16, 2026, 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center. Grab your tickets at fayettevillear.com/woag.Connect with Creative Promos:Website: creative-promos.comPhone: (479) 871-1945Mentioned in this episode:Women of All Generations | June 16, 2026The Women of All Generations event is almost here. Join us June 16, 2026 from 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center for an afternoon of real conversation, connection, and celebration. Tickets and sponsorships are available now. You belong in that room. Grab your spot at fayettevillear.com/woag.

Sixteen years into running her own firm, Brittany Phillips still gives young designers the same piece of advice: go find someone you admire and go learn. Not because she's repeating what worked. Because she lived it, and it's still the truest thing she knows.Brittany is the founder of Brittany Phillips Design, a brand design firm in Fayetteville built intentionally small. She came up through regional ad agencies, global work with Saatchi and Saatchi X, and years at DOCSA under mentor Tim Walker before going out on her own. In this episode, she sits down with Angela to talk about what it actually looks like to build a career, a business, and a family in the same city you stayed in by choice. And the design principle she uses with clients that turns out to be the best life advice she has: when you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing. In this episode, we get into:Why the most boring early-career work often becomes your most valuable skillWhat she'd tell every young woman just starting out in FayettevilleThe word Angela heard in Brittany's life description that neither of them had connected to design beforeHow she handles the frustration of not being heard in a male-dominated industry, and what she did with itThe secret goal involving art she hasn't told anyone about yetBrittany talks about the detail work that felt tedious and almost devastating early in her career, the years of prepping files, checking crop marks, learning what can go wrong at press. And how that exact work is now the thing that makes her irreplaceable to clients. She also opens up about navigating creative disagreement with a client who doesn't choose what you'd choose, and why the advice "take it for what it is, it doesn't define you" is a whole lot easier to say than to live.There's a moment in this conversation where Angela connects Brittany's approach to life to the principles of design itself: restraint, breathing room, margin. The things you don't put in matter as much as the things you do. Brittany hadn't quite framed it that way. Neither will you, until you hear it.The Women of All Generations event is June 16, 2026, 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center. Brittany will be there as the moderator of the panel discussion. Grab your tickets at fayettevillear.com/woag.Mentioned in this episode:Brittany Phillips Design: brittanyphillipsdesign.comBlackwood Martin (regional ad agency, Fayetteville)Saatchi and Saatchi XDOCSA, Fayetteville (mentor: Tim Walker)City of Fayetteville Trash and RecyclingChamber FayettevilleWomen of All Generations event: fayettevillear.com/woagConnect with Brittany:Website: brittanyphillipsdesign.comInstagram: @bpdfayarFacebook: facebook.com/brittanyphillipsdesignLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brittany-phillips-ba49818Mentioned in this episode:Women of All Generations | June 16, 2026The Women of All Generations event is almost here. Join us June 16, 2026 from 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center for an afternoon of real conversation, connection, and celebration. Tickets and sponsorships are available now. You belong in that room. Grab your spot at fayettevillear.com/woag.

She moved to Fayetteville in 2020 for school, got COVID, mono, and tonsillitis three times, and genuinely did not think she was going to stay. Fast forward a few years: she's the publisher of Fayetteville City Lifestyle Magazine, a published author, and one of the people most responsible for making sure this city's stories actually get told. Sydney Sullivan did not plan any of this. And that's exactly what makes her story worth hearing.In this episode of HerStory, Sami sits down with Sydney to talk about what it looks like to build a career around something you've loved since childhood, how to walk into rooms where you feel like you have no business being there, and why Fayetteville keeps doing this thing where people show up planning to leave and end up obsessed. Sydney also shares a goal she hasn't said out loud yet, and it's one that anyone in a season of figuring it out needs to hear. In this episode, we get into:What it actually felt like to go from tech sales to publisher in her mid-20s, and why following what you loved as a kid is still the best career adviceHow to walk into a room where you don't belong and stay anywayThe 'secret sauce' of Fayetteville according to someone whose entire job is to pay attention to this cityWhat she hopes Fayetteville never loses as it growsA secret goal involving women's stories that she's never said out loud beforeSydney talks about the mindset shift that got her through imposter syndrome: "somebody put me here, so it wasn't on accident." She shares what her dad's steady belief in her built inside her, the advice she'd give her younger self about leaning into natural giftings instead of chasing stability, and the question she most wants to ask the panelists at the Women of All Generations event on June 16.What you'll take from this conversation is a little more permission to be exactly where you are, even when it doesn't look like what you planned. Sydney is 24, running a magazine, and still figuring things out in real time. That's not a disclaimer. That's the point.The Women of All Generations event is June 16, 2026, 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center. Grab your tickets and find out everything at fayettevillear.com/woag.Mentioned in this episode:Fayetteville City Lifestyle Magazine: fayettevillecitylifestyle.comThe College Girl's Guide to Fayetteville by Sydney SullivanThe Soul of Shame by Curt ThompsonAndrew Huberman's Huberman Lab Podcast: hubermanlab.comGeorge's on Dickson Street, Fayetteville ARDodo Coffee, Fayetteville ARBaba Boudan's, Fayetteville ARWomen of All Generations event: fayettevillear.com/woagConnect with Sydney:Instagram (personal): @sydney.i.sullivanInstagram (magazine): @fayettevillecitylifestyleLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sydney-sullivan-17699320aMentioned in this episode:Women of All Generations | June 16, 2026The Women of All Generations event is almost here. Join us June 16, 2026 from 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center for an afternoon of real conversation, connection, and celebration. Tickets and sponsorships are available now. You belong in that room. Grab your spot at fayettevillear.com/woag.

There are stories happening all around you. In the coffee shop, in the board room, in the carpool line. Women who built something, survived something, started something, lost something and kept going anyway. Most of those stories never make it past a quick handshake and a business card exchange.That changes now.HerStory is a limited podcast series from Chamber Fayetteville and Be Freaking Awesome, hosted by Sami Kinnison and Angela Belford. Each episode features a different woman from the Fayetteville community, sharing the real version of her story. Not the polished version. The actual one, with the pivots and the hard seasons and the moments she almost didn't make it to the room she was born to be in. We're doing this as a lead-up to Chamber Fayetteville's Women of All Generations event on June 16, 2026 at Fayetteville Town Center, and every episode is an invitation to show up for that day. In this first episode, Sami and Angela introduce the show, share why women's stories matter more than ever, and give you a peek behind the curtain at what's coming. In this episode, we get into:Why Fayetteville's women deserve their own spotlight (and what makes this community different)The real reason we wanted to tell her story instead of just showing up at an eventWhy this podcast is for everyone, not just womenWhat surprised Sami after already sitting down with several guestsHow shared stories create shortcuts to real connection in a room full of strangersAngela talks about what it was like to be a young woman buying a software company in the early 2000s, operating at the intersection of two very male-dominated industries, and what that experience taught her about who gets heard and who doesn't. Sami reflects on growing up in Fayetteville, trying to leave (the part where she found out 'anywhere but here' doesn't have a college application is a little too relatable), and what Leadership Fayetteville taught her about a city she thought she already knew everything about.What you'll walk away from this episode with is simple: a reason to hit subscribe and a reason to show up on June 16. These aren't just stories. They're the conversations that make a room feel less like networking and more like belonging. And we can't wait to show you what that looks like.Grab your tickets and find out everything about the Women of All Generations event at fayettevillear.com/woag. New episodes drop regularly between now and June, and you don't want to miss a single one.Mentioned in this episode:Women of All Generations event: fayettevillear.com/woagChamber Fayetteville: fayettevillear.comBe Freaking Awesome podcast: bfreakingawesome.comLeadership Fayetteville (Chamber program)Mentioned in this episode:Women of All Generations | June 16, 2026The Women of All Generations event is almost here. Join us June 16, 2026 from 3 to 6 PM at the Fayetteville Town Center for an afternoon of real conversation, connection, and celebration. Tickets and sponsorships are available now. You belong in that room. Grab your spot at fayettevillear.com/woag.