I started Brigadoon in 2013 out of genuine frustration.
Not with any one conference. Not with any one industry. With all of it — the accumulated weight of too many rooms full of the same people, thinking the same way, saying the same things, and calling it professional development.
I'd spent years moving between boardrooms in New York and art exhibits in Singapore, watching how power, commerce, and culture intersect in ways most people don't see coming. And what I kept noticing was this: the most useful thinking never happened on stage. It happened in the margins. At dinner. On a walk. In the kind of conversation where someone drops their guard and says what they actually think.
That's what I wanted to build. Not another conference. A room.
Brigadoon has been that room for thirteen years now — a winter camp gathering at Sundance Mountain Resort, operating under Chatham House Rule, with no PowerPoint slides, no panels, no name tags, and no pretense. Just forty or so carefully selected founders, investors, journalists, civic leaders, designers, doctors, and thinkers who show up ready to think out loud.
The rules are minimal. The conversations are not.
What I didn't anticipate in 2013 was how much the gathering would mean to the people who kept coming back. Year after year, I'd hear the same thing: I'm still turning that conversation over in my head. The question is: how do you keep that going for twelve months, not just a weekend?
That question is what led me to Brigadoon Professional.
This is a twelve-month membership that keeps the conversation going between gatherings with biweekly essays and analysis, live expert calls, curated books, and guaranteed seats at the events that matter most.
I want to be clear about what it isn't. It isn't a content subscription. It isn't a networking platform. It isn't a community app with a Slack channel and a lot of noise.
It's a membership built on the same philosophy as the gathering itself: that the most valuable intelligence flows between people who trust each other enough to think out loud. Brigadoon Professional is an attempt to build that trust year-round — and to give members the intellectual fuel to show up sharper when they get back in the room.
Four tiers. Four levels of engagement. From a biweekly newsletter and expert call series at $500 a year, to a full-access membership — including Scotland, salon dinners, and a private Patron Dinner — at $7,500.
I've been deliberate about keeping capacity limited at the upper tiers, because the whole thing breaks down if the room gets too crowded. Exclusivity isn't a marketing device here. It's a design principle.
If you've been to Brigadoon, you know why.
If you haven't, and this sounds like your kind of room — that's probably worth paying attention to.
-Marc A. Ross
Founder @ Brigadoon
