Fobrbes Women Summit Warsaw 2026

Careers Are Rarely Built in Straight Lines: EWVC at the First Forbes Polska and Forbes Women Polska Summit

The inaugural Forbes Polska and Forbes Women Polska Summit brought together some of Poland's leading business voices in Warsaw. European Women in VC was proud to be part of it.

Our founder, Kinga Stanisławska, joined Karolina Pelc and Ula Sankowska on stage. The topic: unconventional paths to building skills and competencies.

A conversation about detours

The panel explored a question that matters deeply to our community. Where do the most valuable skills actually come from?

Karolina Pelc's career offers a compelling answer. She started on casino floors. She then moved into tech and product, boardrooms, entrepreneurship and investing. Today she writes and speaks. Her debut book, Her Play, captures that journey.

Her view is that many of the most valuable skills are acquired in places that never appear on a traditional career roadmap. The challenge is recognising them and putting them to work.

For Kinga, this theme is central to the work of European Women in VC. Venture capital rewards pattern recognition. Yet the patterns that shape great investors and founders are often formed far from conventional paths. Widening the lens on what counts as relevant experience is part of building a more inclusive ecosystem.

Experience over success stories

The Summit was carefully curated and set against a stunning Warsaw skyline. What stood out most was the tone of the room. Speakers shared real experience rather than polished success stories.

That distinction matters. Success stories tend to smooth out the detours. Experience keeps them in. The detours are usually where the learning happens.

The organisers also included Her Play in the Summit gift bags. Karolina described the moment of finding her own book waiting for people she admires as uniquely surreal.

An evening at Royal Łazienki

The evening before the Summit, speakers gathered for an intimate dinner in Warsaw's Royal Łazienki Gardens. Guests heard from Grażyna Kulczyk. She is an entrepreneur, art collector, patron of contemporary art and founder of Muzeum Susch in Switzerland.

Her career has repeatedly crossed the boundaries between business, culture and ideas. Her philosophy is to create things that did not exist before, rather than follow an established blueprint.

The thread

One idea connected the panel, the room and the dinner. Careers that look unconventional on paper often make perfect sense in retrospect. Every detour leaves something behind: a skill, a perspective, a relationship, a little more courage. The real work is learning how to use it.

This also shapes how European Women in VC thinks about progress for women in business and investing. It is not about everyone following the same definition of success. It is about creating enough room for more definitions of success to exist.