In 2026 We are starting our chapters around the World.

We have identified our key markets, and in these chapters we will be hosting local meetups, events and they will be key for how we connect our community worldwide

Meetups & Events

I spend most of my time talking to senior professionals in commerce.

People who already did what they were supposed to do. Built teams. Scaled businesses. Sat in boardrooms. Carried responsibility for years.

And at some point, usually quietly, the question changes.

Not “how do I grow faster?”

But “what does a good next chapter actually look like?”

2025 was the year this question stopped being abstract inside EVOLVE.

Not because we found a perfect answer.
But because the same tension kept showing up, no matter the market, the role, or the company.

By the end of 2025, EVOLVE had close to 500 senior members across more than 48 markets.

We reached 92 expert sessions.
Published over 40 Voices episodes.
And gathered in person in cities like São Paulo, London, Lisbon, Hamburg, Berlin, Bucharest, Dubai.

All expert sessions are available on our YT Channel

For Voices you can find all our episodes on Spotify

At the start of the year, Time To EVOLVE was simply a way to connect dots.

A bridge between our expert sessions and the quieter conversations already happening inside the community. A place to slow things down and put language around what kept repeating.

Over time, it became something else.

Once the rhythm settled, behavior changed.

Weekly sessions stopped feeling like events and started feeling like continuity. People showed up knowing what kind of room they were entering. WhatsApp wasn’t used to broadcast updates. It became a signal. “This might matter to where you are.”

Matchmaking stopped being something we tried to design. It happened naturally once trust was there.

Nothing dramatic changed.
Everything became more consistent.

The in-person gatherings were never about expansion. They were about listening carefully to what senior leaders say when they’re no longer performing.

In São Paulo, Flavio spoke openly about life after being a CEO. Not in abstract terms, but in lived ones. How the transition into board work, investing, and advisory roles reshapes identity. How authority changes when you are no longer the operator in the room, but still carry decades of judgment. And how that shift requires learning how to influence without control, decide without owning execution, and remain relevant without being central.

That conversation mattered because it named something many senior professionals are living through but rarely articulate clearly. The move from executive power to portfolio influence is not linear. It requires unlearning as much as experience.

In London, Angela brought a similar depth from a different angle. As a former CEO of Avon, she spoke about her own career trajectory, about conversational commerce, about emerging technologies, and about what it actually means to negotiate with boards when innovation meets legacy reality. The conversation moved fluidly between leadership, technology, and governance, not as separate topics, but as forces that constantly collide at senior level.

What stood out was not the technology itself, but the judgment required to introduce change inside complex organizations. How much of leadership at that level is about timing, translation, and credibility, rather than vision alone.

Across both conversations, a clear pattern. Senior roles are less about doing more and more about choosing where and how to apply experience once formal authority shifts.

What do I keep doing?
What do I let go of?
How do I stay relevant without staying overloaded?

After enough conversations, patterns stop feeling like opinions.

A few things became very clear in 2025.

Transformation matter more than metrics.
Advisory roles formed, conversations started, relationships forged, deals closed.

These things rarely show up publicly, but they are the only outcomes senior professionals really track.

Rituals matter more than novelty. Weekly sessions. Familiar formats. Predictable value. Trust compounds when people know what to expect.

Trust density beats scale. Selective rooms aren’t about exclusivity. They’re about making honesty possible.

Partnerships only work when they are operational. Logos don’t build communities. People do.

EVOLVE isn’t trying to be a better event or a better content platform. It’s choosing to sit where most ecosystems don’t. Closed, senior, experience-led conversations about responsibility, trade-offs, and transition.

Some expert sessions and Voices episodes were revisited again and again this year.

Especially the conversations about decision-making under pressure, leadership inside constraint-heavy environments, and what happens to identity when senior professionals move into advisory or portfolio roles.

That return behavior matters more than any engagement metric.

It tells us what people are actually trying to understand.

By now, it’s clear that career transitions are not a side topic. They are the topic.

Many senior professionals are moving into advisory roles, fractional leadership, portfolio careers, or combinations of all three. And most are doing it without a clear map, without peers openly sharing what works and what doesn’t, and without support structures that respect their experience.

So this is where EVOLVE is going deeper.

More intentional learning and development for senior professionals redesigning how they work. Not beginner courses. Learning focused on context and real decisions.

Tools that help people navigate advisory and portfolio work with more clarity.

More opportunities to exchange with others who are already living these transitions, not just talking about them.

And yes, more structured ways to invest. In people. In ideas. In companies. In ways that align with how senior professionals actually want to spend their time and energy.

In the end it It’s about acknowledging that a lot of experienced people are standing between chapters, and most ecosystems don’t know what to do with them.

Gustavo started as a volunteer and became my partner. Without his consistency and willingness to carry weight, EVOLVE wouldn’t exist in its current form.

Laís, my dear wife, has been my anchor throughout all of this. From Hamburg to London to São Paulo, she’s been there in ways that don’t show up in any recap.

To our partners at Edesk, Netopia, Druid, Airmeet, Globalfy, DGT Innovation, Aiphoria, PagBank, Braze, Sinatra, and VTEX, thank you for choosing to invest in people rather than impressions.

And to the members who show up without agenda, who share context instead of credentials, and who protect the room, this community exists because of how you behave, not because you are present.

If you’re reading this and you feel like you’ve already done the thing you were supposed to do, but you’re not sure what the next chapter should look like, you’re not alone.

That’s the conversation EVOLVE is here to hold.

Curated. Personable. Global.
That is EVOLVE

Carlos Monteiro
EVOLVE Commerce Club - Founder

The E-commerce Berlin Expo is the largest pure-play B2B ecommerce event in Germany, gathering operators, brands and technology leaders from across Europe. Their tenth edition takes place on February 17 and 18, 2026 at Messe Berlin and is expected to welcome more than fourteen thousand attendees.

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