Women & Hospitality brings its global seminar series to North America for the first time, with founder Margarita Sáder and Julie Reiner co-hosting at Milady’s New York on June 8, 2026.
The ninth edition of Margarita Sáder‘s industry initiative crosses the Atlantic for the first time this summer, landing at Milady’s, the SoHo cocktail bar co-owned by Julie Reiner, Susan Fedroff, and Christine Williams. The afternoon seminar on June 8 pairs a panel of New York hospitality heavyweights with a one-off cocktail menu built by the team from Paradiso, the Barcelona bar Sáder helped found in 2015 and which topped The World’s 50 Best Bars in 2022.
A First North American Stop for a Global Series
Since launching in 2020, Women & Hospitality has convened in Barcelona, Sydney, Buenos Aires, and most recently Medellín. New York marks the program’s first US edition, and Sáder has chosen a venue with deep roots in the city’s modern cocktail story. Milady’s, the relaunched Prince Street institution, sits inside the same hospitality group as Brooklyn’s Clover Club, giving the seminar a natural home among operators who have spent decades shaping how New York drinks.
The format stays close to what regulars of the Barcelona editions know: a three-hour afternoon built around networking, financial education, and community, with the bar program treated as part of the welcome rather than an afterthought.
The Panel
The conversation will be moderated by journalist and author Mandy Naglich, whose book How to Taste was a Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards finalist. She’ll be joined by three operators who between them cover a wide slice of the city’s bar economy.
Faye Chen, the Taiwan-born co-founder of Double Chicken Please, brings the perspective of a bar that was named North America’s Best Bar by The World’s 50 Best Bars in 2023. Chen started as a server and built the brand alongside GN Chan into one of the most influential cocktail operations of the last decade.
Susan Fedroff speaks from the operations side. With a background in economics and finance, she co-owns Milady’s and Clover Club with Reiner and Williams, and oversees the day-to-day of two of New York’s most respected cocktail destinations, a useful counterweight on a panel built around financial education.
Patty Dennison, co-owner of the Brooklyn venues Kinda Nice and Shenanigans, rounds out the panel. An award-winning bartender, her résumé includes Blacktail, Hawksmoor, and Grand Army Bar.
Why Financial Education Sits at the Center
The choice to put money, ownership, and operations on the agenda is deliberate. Sáder set up Women & Hospitality in 2020 to address the gap between the women working in the industry and the women running it. Putting Fedroff, Chen, and Dennison on stage together, three women who own and operate their own venues, frames the seminar less as a celebration and more as a working session on how the next generation gets to the same place.
Reiner framed it directly. “I’ve had the pleasure of being part of Margarita Sáder’s inspiring Barcelona-based events over the past several years, where women from around the world come together to celebrate their craft, share knowledge, and build meaningful connections,” she said. “By creating spaces where talented women in hospitality can support and elevate one another strengthens not just our industry, but the global community we’re building together.”
Paradiso Takes Over the Next Night
The seminar runs from 1pm to 4pm on June 8, opening with the Paradiso team’s bespoke menu for the afternoon. The Barcelona crew stays in town for a second night: on June 9 from 7pm to 10pm, Paradiso takes over Milady’s for a full guest shift, an unusually direct way to see how the team behind one of Europe’s most influential bars builds drinks in another room.
What It Signals
Sáder was named the 12th most influential person in the industry by Bar World 100 in 2025, and Women & Hospitality has become one of the clearest examples of how a single operator’s side project can scale into something the wider industry plans its calendar around. The New York edition, hosted inside a Reiner room, with Chen and Dennison on the panel, suggests the series has now reached the point where it’s no longer importing the conversation from Barcelona, it’s setting the agenda for the cities it visits.
Tickets are by invitation. Milady’s is at 160 Prince Street, New York.
