Inside the women-only executive retreat that turns boxing into leadership training

""I decided, like so many women do, the thing I hadn't changed was my body," Renzas said. "I was looking for how I could perfect myself into the point of happiness." That included becoming "the perfect version of what society tells us to be," she said, losing more than 100 pounds through diet and exercise. Rather than finding happiness as she got smaller, her mental health deteriorated. She said she found herself experiencing dissociative episodes."

"At times, she was convinced she had died. Renzas was working as an operating partner at investment group Prosus in Amsterdam at the time. "I would go into big, huge meetings and then I would go to the gym, and then I would come home and tell my mom I didn't exist - for basically two years," she said. Her gym had a boxing ring in the back. Sick of running, she decided to give it a try. She was immediately hooked."

Erin Renzas built a high-paying tech career, including serving as marketing lead during Square's IPO, after nearly two decades of climbing the corporate ladder. She pursued dramatic weight loss, losing more than 100 pounds through diet and exercise to fit societal ideals. Instead of happiness, her mental health deteriorated into dissociative episodes, at times believing she had died. A gym's boxing ring became a turning point; boxing forced bodily grounding and eliminated dissociation. She became an amateur boxer with four wins, is writing a memoir about boxing's effects, and co-launched a retreat encouraging senior women executives to try the sport.

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