The attendees include journalists, business leaders, and an eclectic group of political figures including Republican political consultant Kellyanne Conway; Trump’s first-term White House press secretary Sean Spicer; and the iconoclastic Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman.
But Powell McCormick, who is ranked No. 58 on this year’s Fortune Most Powerful Women in Business list, is the undisputed star of the show. Perfectly poised and dressed in a sky-blue cropped jacket, cream pants, and stilettos, she interviews the CEO of a small cement company that is leveraging Meta’s suite of AI tools. From the stage, she has a politician-like habit of calling out prominent attendees by name—”There’s Speaker Paul Ryan, who’s investing in some of the most important tech in this space!” she exclaims at one point.
She interviews Sen. Fetterman, the Democrat who has broken from his party on several high-profile issues, whom she describes as a dear friend and “one of the most courageous people I have ever known.” She makes a self-deprecating joke about how when she and her husband, Pennsylvania Republican Sen. David McCormick, went out for dinner recently with Fetterman and his wife, more people wanted to take selfies with Fetterman than with her husband.
