The Women of Flexo Annual Conference made its way to Clemson University this year for its fourth edition. The event drew professionals from across the flexographic printing industry for sessions spanning stress management, technical fundamentals, mentorship, and leadership development.

Held March 17–18, 2026, and chaired by Kara Pedigo of BiOrigin Specialty Products and Catherine Haynes of All Printing Resources, the event balanced the personal and the professional with characteristic candor and left attendees with practical tools they could use.

The conference theme invited participants to unwind — connecting, reflecting, and recharging — and rewind to the fundamentals driving innovation in flexographic printing, looking back to move forward stronger.

Unwinding First

The opening workshop, themed “Unwind & Rewind,” set the tone. Facilitator Rachel Acevedo framed the session around a challenge many in the room recognized instinctively: the inability to pause.

Day one centered on three interconnected practices — pausing, finding support, and setting boundaries. Co-chair Kara Pedigo reframed the concept of “rewinding” not as going backward but as pausing with intention: a deliberate reset that provides clarity, restores purpose, and prepares professionals to realign before moving forward.

Group discussions quickly surfaced work-life balance and boundary-setting as the dominant pain points. Constant connectivity — Teams notifications, unread email counts climbing, and anxiety attacks triggered by setting vacation auto-replies — emerged as the central issue, with the absence of hard boundaries identified as its root cause. Participants shared a common experience of 24/7 availability expectations and the social difficulty of saying no.

Practical adjustments included implementing clock-in/clock-out systems, a 24-hour rule before responding to emotionally charged emails, and 10–30 minute decompression windows between leaving the office and engaging with family at home. The workshop also introduced physical and behavioral early-warning signals — shoulder tension, rewriting emails multiple times, a “fire in chest” feeling — as triggers to pause before reacting.

Mentorship with Structure

The Women of Flexo Mentorship Program session featured a keynote from Allison Tolles, VP and second-generation owner of Fine Line Graphics Inc., an 11-location flexographic prepress and platemaking company based in Kansas City.

Tolles, who chairs the program, outlined its structure: professional sign-ups open each May, with one-on-one mentoring running August through May, supplemented by group webinars on work-life balance and a spring student component.

A central concept introduced was the “Board of Directors” mentor model — replacing the traditional single-mentor relationship with four distinct mentor types: career/technical, leadership, life transition, and peer. The model acknowledges that different career seasons demand different forms of support. Early-career professionals need safe spaces to ask questions without judgment.Mid-career leaders need strategic decision-making support. Those navigating parenthood, caregiving, or burnout need grace over growth pressure.

Tolles also addressed the practical challenge of family business dynamics, advising open dialogue, honest communication, and a focus on shared company goals as the foundation for separating professional and personal relationships.

Leadership Panel and the 2026 Woman of the Year

The Women of Flexo 2026 Woman of the Year honor went to Jenny Scott of Amcor, recognized for 36 years of creative services leadership at Berry Global, FTA Board service since 2018 — including a term as Board chair — and her role in founding Women of Flexo.

The leadership panel that followed was direct and practical. Perfectionism, participants agreed, is learned behavior that serves early-career professionals well and then becomes a ceiling. The panel advocated shifting from polish to progress — sharing work earlier, delegating deliberately, and operating at 80% capacity to preserve bandwidth for the unexpected. Tools like the 5-5-5 Rule (does this matter in 5 minutes, 5 hours, or 5 days?) and the Eisenhower Matrix were offered as antidotes to decision fatigue. The panel’s preferred response to overload: “I can do it — what do you want me to bump?”

Technical Foundations and the Workforce Pipeline

Day two opened with a flexographic printing fundamentals session led by Ali Pierson of DuPont Cyrel. Pierson emphasized that understanding each component of the printing process — plates, inks, substrates, aniloxes, doctor blades, tapes — is essential for accurate troubleshooting. Problems, she noted, are frequently misattributed when the actual root cause lies elsewhere in the system.

Attendees also received exclusive access to Clemson’s Sonoco Institute and Watt Family Innovation Center. There, they received a behind-the-scenes look at cutting-edge flexo research and technology shaping the future of the field. The Graphic Communications program, housed at Godfrey Hall and the Sonoco Institute, has seen enrollment shift to a female majority — up from a historic 30%.

Yet the broader industry faces a timing challenge with a large percentage of the flexo workforce expected to retire within five years, creating significant demand for new graduates. Staff and students expressed concern with geographic and housing barriers preventing students from accepting distant internships. Presenters urged companies to consider helping with stipends for housing and the creation of corporate housing programs as a recruiting advantage and emphasized that outreach at the elementary and high school level — including initiatives like the Phoenix Challenge — is essential to building the pipeline.

Closing Keynote: Say Yes Before You’re Ready

The conference closed with a keynote from Kristin Shields, president of Graymills Corporation, who built her career narrative around a single conviction: confidence follows action, it does not precede it. Shields arrived at the family business reluctantly — fresh out of college with her sights set on Madison Avenue — and spent four decades learning that lesson firsthand.

From presenting at industry conferences before she felt ready, to leading 60 employees through a pandemic while personally sidelined by COVID, to receiving a stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis in December 2020 and recently marking her five-year all-clear, Shields offered a portrait of leadership assembled over time, not possessed at the start.

She introduced the concept of a personal Board of Directors: a small group of trusted advisors selected not for comfort but for challenge. Her own Board includes a chair who tells her what she needs to hear rather than what she wants to, a PR professional who pushes her toward visibility, and a retired attorney serving as trusted counsel.

Her closing charge to attendees was threefold: say yes before feeling ready, define your own professional presence before someone else defines it for you, and lift others as you climb. “When your hand shakes,” she said, “raise it anyway.”

The fifth annual conference location has not yet been announced. For more information, visit the Women of Flexo website.