The Retreat Curator Intensive
The retreat everyone’s still talking about six months later!
August 22–23, 2026 · Annapolis, MD · Cap: 10 Women
WHAT IS THE RETREAT CURATOR INTENSIVE?
The Retreat Curator Intensive is a day-and-a-half, in-person experience hosted by Rakita Lillard-Brown, Founder and CEO of Holistree LLC and a decade-long curator of luxury retreat experiences for Black women across four continents.
This is not a webinar. This is not a course you'll finish someday. This is a room capped at 10 women where you do the actual work of building your retreat, with real guidance, real feedback, and real infrastructure to take home.
First 5 Seats receive Early Bird Pricing!
Build in real time…
You have been thinking about this for a while.
The retreat. The event. The room full of women you want to gather. The experience you have been designing in your head for longer than you will admit. You know what it looks like. You know who it's for.
What you don't have yet is the room itself - the concept made real, the budget that works, the pricing that respects your value, the plan that turns a vision into a date on the calendar.
That is what The Retreat Curator Intensive is for.
WHO THIS IS FOR
The woman who has hosted small gatherings, dinners, or pop-ups and knows she's ready for something bigger, but has never built a retreat from the ground up
The woman with an audience already a following, a client base, a community who keeps getting asked "when are you doing a retreat?"
The woman who has an idea for her retreat but no real framework for the money, the logistics, or the experience design
The woman who wants to build something that reflects her actual standards, not a generic template pulled from a Pinterest board
The woman who is done waiting for permission and ready to do the work of turning the vision into a date on the calendar
WHO THIS IS NOT FOR
Anyone looking for a passive learning experience this room requires you to do the work in real time, not take notes for later
Anyone who hasn't yet identified any audience or community of her own this intensive builds on an existing foundation, it doesn't build the foundation itself
Anyone not ready to be honest about budget and numbers - Sunday's work only works if you bring real figures, not hopeful ones
Anyone looking for a spiritual retreat experience rather than a working, building one - this is an intensive, not a getaway
THE EXPERIENCE
Saturday, 5:00 - 8:00pm - Welcome & The Why
The evening opens with dinner - but not a break before the real work starts. Dinner is the work. Over the meal, we go into the why behind your retreat style: what kind of room you're actually called to hold, the energy that requires of you, and the capacity it asks for. This is envisioning, not strategy, you're getting clear on the feeling before you touch a single spreadsheet. From there we move into Module 1: The Foundation - concept, audience, and experience design, built directly on the why you just named.
Sunday, 11:00am - 6:00pm - The Build, Hot Seats & Golden Hour
This is the full working day. Module 2: The Build covers everything practical - the real numbers (budget, pricing, financial architecture), the logistics roadmap, and your 90-day launch plan. Then Hot Seats, where each woman gets time in the room to share her concept and get live guidance from Rakita, followed by Golden Hour - a closing celebration to mark what you built.
Monday - Content Day (optional add-on, capped at 5)
Sunday you planned the retreat. Monday you become the content creator who hosts one.
Content Day is an optional add-on day (capped at 5) for women who want to leave with more than a plan - real content to launch it with. You'll walk away with a personalized content strategy and posting plan, a dedicated individual photo session, editorial group shots from the room, and ready-to-post captions pulled straight from your own shoot. Part content production, part community - styled lunch included. By 3pm, you don't just have a retreat plan. You have the content to announce it.
You will leave as a Retreat Curator with:
A named retreat concept and clear audience
A working budget framework built around your vision
A pricing strategy for filling your room profitably
A vendor and logistics roadmap
A 90-day launch plan
A retreat outline you built in the room, reviewed live in your hot seat
A photo gallery of styled photos from the day (guaranteed to have you in 2-3 images) these can be used for content, retreat launch, update site photos
Investment
Early Bird: $597 (First 5 Registered)
General Admission: $697
VIP: $997 (includes 1:1 session pre and post-event, retreat concierge consult)
Add-On(s) - Monday Dedicated Content Day $397/ MUA Light Make-up $125
Admission includes:
Full day and half of strategy, framework and action plan development
Golden Hour (photographer on-site)
Guide and Workbook (Signature Framework, Templates and Tips)
Dinner + Lunch
Add-On Day Deeper Strategy, Lesson on styling and branding, mini-photoshoot with dedicated photos you can use on your website, flyers etc.
Meet Your Curator Specialist
Rakita Lillard-Brown (Founder of Holistree)
the Founder and CEO of Holistree LLC, a retreat curator and wellness practitioner who has spent a decade building luxury retreat experiences for Black women across continents from Puerto Rico, Grenada, Portugal, Madeira, Antigua, Morocco, Curaçao (and headed to Cape Town) to domestic retreats in California, New Orleans, Martha’s Vineyard, Washington DC. Her gatherings have ranged from intimate rooms of 5 to full experiences of 80+, giving her a working understanding of what it actually takes to hold a room well at any size
Rakita isn't teaching theory. Everything in this room: the pricing frameworks, the logistics roadmap, the hard conversations about margin and capacity comes from what she's actually built, broken, and rebuilt across ten years of curating rooms that hold women well.
Robin Kenyetta Flemming (Founder of Reflective Edge)
Dubbed "as one of the greatest women in photography" by many of the people who have had the honor of working with her, as well as proving to be not only a trendsetter and a rising star in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, Robin Kenyetta has an uncanny propensity of connecting with her clients on a level that goes well beyond the surface, by capturing the very essence of their soul.
Apart from just showing up to every session with her camera in hand, she also brings with her the passion for people to see themselves in their truest selves and a heart to hear and visually narrate their stories in a way that defies space and time. With a creative and artistic eye, she offers a different outlook to photography.
Message from Rakita
I've seen what happens when a room is held beautifully. And I've seen what happens when it isn't.
Ten years in, I've gotten really good at spotting a breakdown before it actually breaks down. I understand the capacity it requires of a facilitator to hold a room well mainly because I've lived on both sides of it. I know what it feels like to hold a room properly, and I know what it feels like when I haven't. The difference isn't subtle. On one side is exhaustion, sometimes even sickness. On the other is joy…an insurmountable amount of it!
That difference isn't small, and it isn't just mine to carry. When a room is built without the right infrastructure without the pricing that protects your margin, the logistics that hold under pressure, the capacity to actually facilitate what you're asking women to bring into that space it doesn't just underperform. It costs something real. It costs the host her health, her joy, sometimes her belief that she can do this at all. And it costs the women in the room the experience they trusted you to hold for them.
Good intentions are not infrastructure. Loving your community is not the same as knowing how to build for them. I've watched women… brilliant, generous women pour themselves into a retreat and come out depleted, because no one ever taught them that holding a room is its own skill, separate from wanting to hold one well.
That's why this isn't just about wanting more spaces for us to exist. It's about making sure the spaces that do exist are actually held right so the women inside them get what they came for, and the woman hosting doesn't disappear in the process.
My favorite sound in the world is the sound of Black women laughing. Enjoying all of who they are. Feeling safe enough to do it out loud. We deserve that. We deserve those spaces and those opportunities, and we don't receive them nearly enough and we do ourselves a disservice when we don't plan for them properly. I know that value because I've built my life around understanding it.
I want Black women to experience more. From the attendee side, and from the curator side. We might think there are a lot of retreats and experiences built for us out there. I promise you there are NOT. Not enough. Not close.
I want us all to eat. I want us to know what it feels like when both sides of the table: the curator and the attendee are held with intention, resource, love, and more. It's magical. It's why I named this brand the Sweet Life in the first place.
That's the work this room is for. Not more ideas: the infrastructure to hold what you're already carrying, and the room to build it in.
Come build it with me.
~Rakita
Your Questions, Answered
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The full day-and-a-half experience, your workbook, and meals during the event- dinner Saturday, lunch Sunday. Access to a photo gallery of styled photos from the event that you can use in your own content.
The Monday Content Day add-on includes a light breakfast and lunch. A mini-photoshoot where you will receive 5 edited images to use immediately for your content. VIP adds two private 1:1 sessions with Rakita.
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VIP includes everything in General Admission, plus two private 1:1 sessions with Rakita before and after the event - priority hot seat placement, and a bonus Retreat Concierge Consult for when you're ready to launch.
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Both. The Retreat Curator Intensive is the full in-person experience, capped at 10 women. There's also a self-paced Digital Experience for women who want the framework without traveling four modules, a digital workbook, and a private completion call with Rakita. -
This is a drive-in event held in the Washington DC area, so no hotel is required if you're local or driving in. If you're flying in from out of town, we've got you - hotel recommendations are available on request. We are a luxury retreat business, after all; we know how to point you toward a good stay. area.
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YJust yourself and your idea — even if it's not fully fleshed out yet. You don't need realistic numbers, a finished concept, or anything close to a plan. What you need is your willingness to explore the possibility. We'll build the rest together in the room.
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No. Some women in the room will have hosted small gatherings or pop-ups before, others will be starting from a fully blank page. What matters more than experience is that you have or are actively building an audience or community you're hosting for. This intensive builds on that foundation; it doesn't build the foundation itself.
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That's exactly what Saturday is for. You'll leave the weekend with a named concept, a clear audience, and an experience design, even if you walk in with nothing more than a feeling that this is something you're meant to do.
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Content Day is an optional add-on day on Monday, capped at 5 women, for those who want to leave with real content = not just a plan to launch with. It's a separate ticket add-on and entirely optional.
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Society members receive a discounted rate on both the in-person intensive and the digital course. Reach out for your member pricing before you register at the public rate.
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Yes. You can make a 50% deposit and pay the balance within 2 weeks.
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You may receive a refund up to 14 days before the event.
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The room is capped at 10 women to keep the hot seat experience meaningful and give you real, individual guidance - not a lecture hall.