Slidell Summit Aims to Turn Northshore's Under-40 Workers Into Future Leaders

The St. Tammany Chamber of Commerce is rolling out a new half-day event for the Northshore's early- and mid-career workforce, gathering professionals under 40 at Slidell's Harbor Center on October 15 for a summit called UNLOCKED. The gathering runs from 7:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. and wraps with a keynote luncheon featuring Fleurty Girl founder and CEO Lauren Haydel, who built her New Orleans-based retail brand from a single t-shirt design and a $2,000 tax refund back in 2009.

According to New Orleans CityBusiness, the chamber designed the summit to develop Northshore business and community leaders, positioning it explicitly as a workforce development opportunity. The event opens with a session called Northshore Collaboration: A Live Podcast Conversation, which examines collaboration among businesses and communities and the role young professionals can play in regional development. From there, the day moves into panel discussions and presentations covering leadership, career development, communication, relationship building, civic engagement, and professional confidence, alongside a dedicated session on navigating imposter syndrome.

Registration costs $75 and includes summit programming, networking opportunities, and the keynote luncheon. Chamber CEO Lacey Osborne said the organization is committed to developing a leadership pipeline for the region, noting that developing the next generation of leaders is important to the strength of our businesses and our community, per the same report.

Why a Northshore Chamber Is Betting on Its Under-40 Workers

The push comes as St. Tammany Parish's workforce skews slightly older than the state as a whole. Census Bureau data from 2024 shows the parish's median age at 40.5 years, compared with 38.7 statewide, according to Census Reporter. At the same time, the parish carries real economic weight: it is Louisiana's fourth most populous, with roughly 279,108 residents in 2025 and a 2024 median household income of $81,202, among the highest in the state, per Cubit Demographics.

Those numbers help explain why the chamber, which represents about 1,000 member organizations ranging from small businesses to multinational companies with operations or interests on the Northshore, is investing in a leadership pipeline rather than simply recruiting from outside. Young professionals involved with the chamber helped identify the topics that matter most to workers in the early and middle stages of their careers and helped shape the summit itself, according to CityBusiness. The chamber frames the event as a tool employers can use to invest in emerging employees and prepare them for larger organizational roles.

A Keynote Built on a $2,000 Bet

Haydel's keynote will focus on entrepreneurship, leadership, marketing, resilience, and lessons learned from business setbacks. Her biography gives those themes some weight: as detailed by Gulf Coast Woman Magazine, Haydel launched Fleurty Girl in 2009 as a single mother working with a $2,000 tax refund, and has since grown it into a multi-million-dollar operation with more than 70 employees. Fleurty Girl has since expanded to nine brick-and-mortar locations across Louisiana and Mississippi.

The chamber's track record adds institutional credibility to the pairing. Under Osborne's 23 years of leadership, the organization earned a 5-Star Accreditation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, placing it among the top tier of chambers nationwide, according to The New Orleans 100. That accreditation sits alongside an existing pipeline of youth-focused programming: the chamber's Northshore Young Professionals committee already hosts monthly morning networking socials and growth activities for under-40 workers across the parish, per Northshore Young Professionals.

Slidell's Harbor Center Brings Capacity and Local Payoff

Hosting the summit is The Harbor Center, a 54,000-square-foot venue in Slidell that includes an 18,000-square-foot column-free Grand Hall and 9,000 square feet of flexible meeting space added during an August 2024 expansion, according to Visit The Northshore. The venue's own economic tracking indicates that for every dollar it receives in local hotel tax funding, it generates more than five dollars in total economic impact for the St. Tammany Parish economy, per The Harbor Center.

The summit also arrives against a backdrop of state-level attention to workforce readiness. In June 2024, Governor Jeff Landry signed Senate Bill 293 into law, directing the Louisiana Workforce Commission to coordinate statewide business workforce solutions directly with local educational and economic development entities, according to the St. Tammany Chamber of Commerce. Local higher education is already feeding that pipeline: Northshore Technical Community College, headquartered in the parish, awarded 2,390 degrees and credentials in 2024 to support local workforce needs, per Data USA.

Taken together, the UNLOCKED summit represents the chamber's attempt to translate that broader policy and educational infrastructure into a single day of programming aimed squarely at the workers who will eventually run the region's businesses. Registration remains open ahead of the October 15 date at The Harbor Center in Slidell.