Where your experience is seen in full
The Athenae is a private membership for accomplished women from different fields, deliberately built for range. We get to know one another, talk through challenges in confidence, and find new possibilities for what we know and can do.
Who the room is built for
Women who have led teams, built businesses, run services, held board or public appointments, or built expertise deep enough that people come to you for it. Women who are interested in what they could learn from others whose working lives look nothing like their own, and in what their own experience is worth to them.
A note from the founder
You may have spent your career in a very different field from most of the room. I suspect you will recognise more in each other's experience than you expect, just from the positions you hold or have held. Sometimes someone outside your own world asks the question nobody inside it has thought to ask. Sometimes it is simply a relief to talk something through with someone who understands the responsibility, even if her work looks very different.
Lynn Mackay-Thomas, Founder
What the membership includes
A considered set of spaces, conversations and resources, designed to help you be more clearly seen, more meaningfully connected and more intentionally positioned for what comes next.
The
Agora
The Athenae private digital community. An ongoing space for thoughtful exchange, peer counsel and quiet support away from the noise of public social platforms. The everyday gathering place where members think out loud and build relationships that develop over years rather than minutes.
The
Salons
Monthly live conversations on the themes that matter: leadership, reinvention, contribution, visibility, influence. Each Salon brings members together with an invited guest. Recordings shared for those who cannot attend live.
Recognition Sessions
Quarterly small group sessions (no more than eight members per session) for the deeper work of seeing your value more clearly, sharpening how you are positioned, and identifying the next conversations and opportunities worth pursuing. Never recorded.
The
Gathering
An in person day for members in London. A slower, deeper kind of room designed for unhurried conversation and meaningful connection.
Included in membership.
The
Library
A growing collection of essays, frameworks, prompts and tools including
the full Influence Audit, the Recognition Map and the Positioning Guide.
Designed to be returned to, not consumed once.
Member Counsel
When a member is sitting with a question that matters, The Athenae can bring together a small peer group around it, chosen for the useful difference in their experience. This is reciprocal member counsel: members offer their judgement and receive it in turn. It is confidential, unhurried, never recorded and distinct from commissioned Strategic Sprints for organisations.
What the room asks of you
Most of this page describes what membership gives you. This is the shorter part: what it asks.
What members say to one another, in the Agora, in Salons, in Recognition Sessions and in Member Counsel, is held in confidence. Take away what you learned. Leave behind who said it.
Salons are recorded so that women who cannot be there live are not shut out, and you are told before recording begins. Those recordings stay within the membership. Recognition Sessions and Member Counsel are never recorded at all.
The room is not a place to sell, to recruit, or to build a mailing list. That holds for me as much as for anyone in it.
None of this is unusual, and all of it sits in the Membership Terms. It is here because it is easier to join a room when you already know how it behaves.
How it works
Applications open on 27 September 2026. Until then, joining the waitlist means you hear first and you are read first.
Then, apply - a short application to help us understand your experience, what you are exploring, and what you are seeking. The first cohort, The Founding Circle, is limited to thirty-five members.
Welcome - once accepted you are welcomed, personally, into the Agora, sent your first reading and invited to the next Salon.
Begin - settle in at your own pace. There's no schedule to keep, or pressure to perform, but this is a room shaped by what its members bring as well as what they receive.
Why women are joining
I am joining The Athenae because so much of the judgement, influence and resilience women build across their lives sits outside formal job descriptions, and that is often where our greatest value lies. I hope this room makes space for more honest, generous and unexpected conversations than conventional networks allow.
I am joining The Athenae because after 30 years in education, I know women bring far more to the room than their job titles reveal. I want to be in the room where change happens: sharing experience, challenging thinking, championing inclusion and creating opportunities to be heard, valued and influential.
I rarely see real professionalism matched with genuine experience and expertise, built on mutual interest with highly intelligent people. I want to believe there is a space where people share knowledge and expertise to achieve excellence together. That is what is missing most.
Annual Membership
£1,500 per year
The first thirty-five members, The Founding Circle, pay £950 per year, locked in for as long as they remain continuous members.
The Founding Circle opens on 27th September 2026.
Annual membership only at launch, we do not offer monthly billing in the first year.
The Athenae is shaped around five connected ideas: Recognition, Positioning, Presence, Connection and Influence.
This is not about reinvention. It is about building on the value you already hold and carrying it forward with greater clarity, confidence and intention.
If this sounds like you:
Whether you are exploring The Athenae for yourself or for your organisation, we would love to hear from you
Contact [email protected]
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The Athenae is a trading name of The Athenae Platform Limited, registered in England and Wales, company number 17377925. Registered office: 2 Silver Street, Buckden, St. Neots, England, PE19 5TS - Privacy Policy - Terms & Conditions