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Women-only executive retreat uses boxing as leadership training
Summary
Fight Co.Lab is a women-only, three-day retreat that blends basic boxing practice with guided coaching for senior executives; the first session took place at Gleason's in Brooklyn and a second session is planned for March in Los Angeles.
Content
Erin Renzas left a high-profile tech career after a period of severe dissatisfaction and mental-health struggles, and found that boxing helped her feel grounded. She has since become an amateur boxer and co-founded a women-only executive retreat that pairs boxing with somatic and leadership coaching. The program aims to use the sport's physical demands and tactical vocabulary to explore career decisions, resilience, and the pressures faced by senior women leaders. Organizers and participants described the combination as intense but connective.
Key details:
- Fight Co.Lab was co-founded by Erin Renzas and somatic and executive coach Shea O'Neil as a hybrid boxing intensive and personal-development workshop.
- The inaugural three-day session took place in November at Gleason's boxing gym in Brooklyn, with 11 women participating and several coaches flown in from Amsterdam.
- A second session is planned for early March in Los Angeles; the Brooklyn base fee was reported as $5,250, and the LA session is priced starting at $4,200 with discounted rates for nonprofit leaders.
- Participants were generally senior executives at career inflection points; attendees reported forming a continuing peer group and accountability network after the retreat.
- Organizers and participants said the physicality of boxing lowered defenses and deepened coaching conversations, and Renzas — who has competed as an amateur boxer in four fights and is writing a memoir — helped bring boxing language into leadership work.
Summary:
Participants and organizers describe Fight Co.Lab as a focused experiment in using embodied practice to examine leadership, career choices, and gendered workplace pressure, with attendees reporting stronger peer connections and concrete follow-up commitments. The program's next scheduled session is in early March in Los Angeles; broader plans beyond that were not specified in the reporting.
