Your past isn't baggage. It's architecture.

Marquita Rugless is a nationally recognized experience designer, serial entrepreneur, author and speaker who has built seven purpose-driven ventures from the ground up in Rochester, New York. As Founder and Chief Experience Officer of ROC Events LLC, she has designed and executed 314 events across six states and internationally, turning every room she touches into something people talk about long after the lights go down.

She leads businesses across experiential design, construction, real estate, lifestyle media, children's educational publishing and technology, and she does it all as a first-generation entrepreneur who decided early that her story was a blueprint.

As The Visionary Voice, Marquita speaks to women and entrepreneurs who are ready to stop apologizing for where they started and start building from exactly where they are. Her framework, Shape Your Story, gives audiences a way to excavate their history, find the architecture inside it, and activate a vision that was always bigger than their circumstances.

She is a Prepare to Prosper alumna, a ROC Women's Business Center Advisory Board member, MWBE certified, and a proud Rochester native who believes the most powerful thing a woman can do is walk into a room and own every inch of it.