Created by Kristi Straw, executive strategist, speaker, and market maker for expertise.
Strategy people can use at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday.
Selected clients, stages, and collaborators
1,500+leaders and sales professionals assessed
$4.2M+moved through Lighthouse Rare Rooms™
3,000+copies of UNICORN Leader™
9.7/10likelihood to return to The Pinnacle Dinner™
One strategic home
Start with what needs to move.
Lighthouse connects individual authority, team trust, executive strategy, and designed proximity. Choose the path that matches the decision in front of you.
01
For leaders and founders
Make your authority legible.
Clarify how you lead, what you know, and the next move your experience is ready to support.
Bring Kristi in when the opportunity is bigger than the brief.
Kristi sees the enterprise hiding inside valuable ideas. She connects strategy, language, trusted relationships, market access, experience design, and commercial follow-through so the opportunity can become easier to understand, support, and move.
01
Executive strategy
Clear thinking and candid counsel for leaders navigating consequential decisions, growth, visibility, and organizational change.
02
Founder readiness
Programming and curriculum that strengthen authority, commercialization readiness, decision-making, and the ability to communicate value.
03
Market expansion
Positioning, partnerships, curated access, and executive experiences designed around a new market or strategic priority.
04
Enterprise experiences
Keynotes, workshops, executive retreats, diagnostics, and Rare Rooms™ built around what leaders need to move together.
Authentic Authority™
How you naturally create trust matters.
Authentic Authority™ gives leaders, teams, and sales professionals a practical shared language for how credibility lands, how decisions move, and how different authority styles work together.
It is built for positive executive confidence and cohesion, not for labeling people as problems to fix.
Private executive and strategic authority engagements are scoped through a direct conversation.
Documented outcomes
Proof, not adjectives.
Clearer authority changes what people can recognize, recommend, fund, hire, and move.
$120K
compensation increase and a new executive role
140%
increase in sales conversations for a wealth advisory business
100%
increase in booked business for a hospitality client
Weeks
from CFO uncertainty to a paid fractional consulting engagement
“Kristi’s energy and authenticity moved the room. It was an unforgettable experience that left people ready to use what they learned.”
“Honesty, integrity, empowerment, passion, and confidence became hallmarks of our management team.”
Trust is designed into the room, not left to chance.
Rare Rooms™
Strong relationships need architecture.
Rare Room™ is the Lighthouse methodology for engineering high-trust environments around a specific business reason. BetterStory Studio™ makes authority and language visible. The Pinnacle Dinner™ moves relationships and opportunity. Pinnacle Powered™ brings the methodology inside organizations.
The work is already operating at enterprise scale.
Selected active engagements show how Lighthouse combines advisory judgment, founder development, leadership experience, and market-making. Current work is identified separately from completed outcome proof.
Global commercialization
GABA
Kristi is Strategic Advisor for Sponsorships and U.S.–Africa Partnerships. Her work includes summit strategy, executive rooms, capital proximity, and market access around the September 8–10 Global Africa Summit in Charlotte.
Kristi is Global Head of Founder Programming and Curricular Development. She is developing founder-readiness programming and will facilitate Invested: An AYANA Founder Readiness Workshop at Austin Tech Week on October 26.
Lighthouse is Elevate Digital's Charlotte market-development and executive-experience partner. The work includes private prospect rooms, the September 30 INFUSION Charlotte event, and commercial follow-through into 2027.
Designing and delivering a multi-day executive alignment and leadership experience for a senior team in Baltimore.
Current confidential engagement
Opening keynote
NC TECH
Bringing Authentic Authority™ to 350+ leaders at the Summit for Women in Tech in Asheville.
September 29, 2026
Private-room architecture
Pinnacle Powered™
Designing executive activations that connect the right people, surface what matters, and move qualified relationships into clear next steps.
Enterprise application of Rare Rooms™
Joint operator room
StealthX × Lighthouse
The first Operator Dinner was called “an absolute slam dunk.” Drew Burdick and Kristi Straw return to the table with a second Charlotte room on October 29.
Repeat partnership · 2026
Organizational names describe the context of Kristi's work and do not imply endorsement. Confidential work is described without identifying the client.
Now moving
Current rooms, stages, and activations.
September 23 · Raleigh
BetterStory Studio™
A live story, visibility, and authority lab at Terrace Raleigh. General admission remains available.
An invitation-only AI and digital transformation event at Lincoln Street Kitchen & Cocktails. Lighthouse is the Pinnacle Powered™ partner for the Charlotte room.
Lighthouse Wellness addresses the conditions people need to perform well under sustained pressure. Michael Straw, Principal + Chief Wellness Officer, leads the wellness point of view. The October 14 working Rare Room™ will examine what organizations ask people to carry and what those people need.
Executive strategist. Speaker. Market maker for expertise.
Kristi helps credible people make their value easier to understand, place, and buy. Then she builds the strategy, relationships, rooms, and commercial architecture around what needs to move.
She is the founder and CEO of Lighthouse Leadership Consultants™, creator of Authentic Authority™, The Pinnacle Dinner™, BetterStory Studio™, and Rare Rooms™, and author of the bestselling UNICORN Leader™.
2026 NC TECH opening keynote
2025 GlobeSt. Woman of Influence
Career Mastered Leadership in Action Honoree
Mecklenburg Times Most Influential Women in Charlotte