Can you believe it’s been four weeks since we kicked off #GGFest? We certainly can’t! After many months of uncertainty and a lot of time spent missing our community, we’re so glad we could bring you all together for a series of inspiring and intimate sessions. Thanks to everyone who’s been involved so far – we couldn’t have done any of this without you.

We’ve covered a whole host of subjects, from the psychology of role modelling to Jo Whitfield’s biggest business challenges, and the response has been amazing. We sold completely out of our full festival bundles, and many of our sessions sold out too!

This month has given us so many new ideas for supporting our community moving forward, and we’re really excited to start planning for even more events coming very soon. We’ll be sharing a survey with all our members soon, asking you how we can make a difference for you and your career.

But before all that, we need to let you know what’s coming up for our final instalment of the festival.

Friday 9 October

10-11am: Panel – Inclusion is Everyone’s Priority

We’re really excited about this one. We’ve brought together a stellar line-up of industry leaders to tackle the ever-changing and critical subject of inclusion. Join Sam Thomas-Berry (HR VP for Europe, Kellogg), Ian Mumby (Director of Merchandising Transformation, Waitrose), Claire Camara (HR Director, Co-op) and Anna Harris (Strategy Director, Stein IAS and Women in Retail Expert) as we explore the wide world of inclusion, discussing just how important it is not just for businesses, but also for us as individuals, to engage with. This session is for the benefit of all; we’ll be asking our panel to share their personal stories at the same time as giving their expert insight into how things look through a grocery lens.

1.30-2.30pm: Workshop – Overcoming Challenges with Emotional Resilience

Terms like ‘emotional resilience’ get banded about a lot, especially now, when the world is throwing us plenty of new challenges and unknowns. But what does it actually mean? And how can we find or strengthen it? This session will be led by some of our founding volunteers: Helen Goodchild, Head of Demand Planning (UK), Mars Wrigley, Jayne Mizon, Learning & Development Manager (UK), Kepak Group and Cheryl Montgomery, Divisional Financial Controller (GB and Ireland) SHS Sales & Marketing. Sharing their own personal journeys to finding emotional resilience, they’ll guide attendees through some thought-provoking exercises to find the answers to those questions.

*UPDATE: Due to overwhelming popularity, we’ve decided to list a few more tickets for this session. You can buy them on the Eventbrite page now – but don’t hang about, we expect them to sell out quickly!*