As the guests filed into Kathy Korman Frey's home in the District of Columbia on Saturday afternoon for the first Hot Mommas Project "Super Bowl of Mentors" global watch party, she handed each a blue notecard and asked them to rate — on a scale of 1 to 10 — how confident they were feeling.

They had come to hear stories about women around the world who, much like themselves, are striving to meet career goals and live full lives outside work.

Frey, a business professor at George Washington University who has an MBA degree from Harvard Business School, had gathered the case studies as part of the Hot Mommas Project.