Sponsor Session Design Guidelines

Thank you for partnering with us.

We're delighted to have you involved as a sponsor and recognise the expertise, products and services you bring to our community. As part of your sponsorship, you'll have an opportunity to facilitate a session during the event.

This guidance is designed to help you make the most of that opportunity, both for your organisation and for the educators in the room.About the Community

The Women in Leadership Community is free to attend and open to women working across education.

Each session brings together leaders from different schools, roles and career stages who share a common interest in becoming more thoughtful, confident and connected leaders.

Sessions are intentionally informal, practical and discussion-led. While your input sets the scene, much of the value comes from the conversations participants have with one another afterwards.

Our Shared Goal

Our aim is simple.

We want delegates to leave your session saying:

"That was genuinely useful."

When that happens, everyone benefits.

Participants experience high-quality professional learning, your organisation builds credibility and trust, and the conversations that follow are far more authentic than any sales pitch could ever be.

Our most successful sponsor sessions feel like conference sessions that happen to be delivered by a sponsor, rather than sponsor presentations that happen to be at a conference. They contribute meaningfully to the wider event whilst naturally showcasing the expertise of the organisation behind them.

The Purpose of Your Session

Your session is first and foremost a professional learning experience.

We absolutely expect you to introduce yourself, expertise, products and services. But, always prioritize that delegates are joining your presentation because they want to learn from your:

· Experience working with their peers

· Research behind your product and service

· Data collected from your product/service

The strongest sessions are those where what you do becomes a natural part of the conversation and addresses what participants are interested in.

A useful question to keep in mind is:

If delegates leave your session without purchasing anything, have they still gained something worthwhile?

If the answer is yes, you're probably on the right track.

Design Principles

1. Connect to the event

Your session should feel like a natural extension of the event, not a separate conversation.

Consider how your content connects to the event theme, the priorities of the audience and the wider professional learning taking place throughout the day.

When delegates leave your session, they should feel it has contributed to the overall conference experience rather than sitting alongside it.

2. Start with your audience

Begin with a challenge, question or opportunity that participants will immediately recognise from their own professional context.

The strongest sessions don't begin with what your organisation wants to share. They begin with what the audience is already thinking about, experiencing or trying to improve.

As participants recognise themselves in the conversation, they're more likely to engage with the ideas being explored and, in turn, be curious about how your organisation can support that work.

A useful question to ask when planning your session is:

Will this audience see themselves and their reality in this conversation?

3. Design for participation

Adults learn by thinking, discussing and making sense of ideas together.

Rather than planning a session where participants simply listen, build regular opportunities for them to contribute, discuss, reflect or apply what they're hearing.

As a guide, try to create moments of interaction every 8–10 minutes.

This might include:

· paired discussion

· table conversations

· short reflection prompts

· voting or polling

· analysing a case study

· sharing experiences with colleagues

4. Speak to the realities

Your role is to facilitate a professional conversation. Speak to participants as practising educators. Use language, examples and scenarios that reflect the complexity and reality of working in schools, making the relevance to participants and their practice immediately clear.

Think less about:

What do I want them to know?

and more about:

What do I want them to think about?

Great facilitation helps delegates connect your expertise with their own context.

5. Let your expertise lead the conversation

Rather than opening with your company story or product demonstration, consider spending time first sharing useful ideas, practical examples or experiences from your work.

When delegates have experienced the value of your thinking, they're naturally more interested in understanding how your organisation can support them.

Introducing your products or services towards the latter part of the session often feels like a natural extension of the conversation, rather than an interruption to it.

6. Leave people with something useful

Aim for participants to leave with something they can take away and continue thinking about or applying in their own context.

This might be:

· a practical strategy

· a useful framework

· a planning tool

· a conversation to continue with colleagues

· a new perspective or question to explore

If delegates leave saying,

"That gave me something worth taking back to school."

then you've created a session that has made a genuine contribution to the event.

A Simple Session Structure

While every session will look different, we encourage sponsors to build around a simple facilitation sequence.

Connect

Help participants recognise why this conversation matters.

· What challenge, question or opportunity are we exploring?

· Why is it relevant now?

· Where will participants recognise themselves?

Explore

Share ideas, examples, research or experiences that deepen understanding.

Keep presentation segments concise and regularly invite participants into discussion.

Apply

Give participants an opportunity to connect the ideas to their own setting.

Create space for discussion, reflection or planning so delegates actively process the learning rather than simply hearing it.

Extend

Introduce how your organisation, products or services support the work you've just explored.

By this stage, participants understand the context, have engaged with the conversation and are better placed to appreciate how your organisation can help.

Things to Remember

Position your organisation as a contributor to the profession

You're joining a programme alongside school leaders, teachers and other professional learning contributors because you have expertise that adds value to the educational conversation.

Whether that's research, experience, evidence or practical insight, your role is to contribute to the learning, not simply describe your services.

Demonstrate that you understand the world of schools

Draw on authentic examples, experiences and challenges that show an appreciation of the context in which educators are working.

Help participants recognise that you understand their world before introducing how your organisation supports it.

Let credibility come through the learning

The strongest positioning happens when participants actively contribute, discuss, reflect and apply the value of your thinking.

If people leave thinking,

"They understand our world and have something worthwhile to contribute."

then you've achieved far more than a traditional sales presentation ever could.

Thank you for helping us create an event where learning always comes first.