‘Tis the season of thoughtful gifts to encourage our loved ones to pursue their passions. It’s a heartwarming time of year. If you’re looking to support a professional woman – significant other, wife, daughter, sister, or mother who is looking to expand her career with networking, lunch n learns, meetups, conferences, or public speaking – may I suggest some gifts to consider? As a collection, these gifts provide an incredible go-to kit for both internal and external company events that help handle the stress of uncertainty and promote a professionally prepared persona. More importantly, we can never be in the room with our loved ones when we want to support them the most, but we can send them in with reinforcements.

Let’s see, the simplest stocking stuffer is travel size hand sanitizer – large events often involve shaking over 50 people’s hands and are frequently followed by colds. Even for small events it is a proven secret weapon for tackling the combination of finger food and hand shaking at networking events. Next up, after a recruiter once had to run 10 minutes to get an adapter from a campus bookstore – I vowed no more tech surprises. The way to minimize tech setup uncertainty is to carry an extra adaptor, distinctive thumb drive so it doesn’t get mixed up with other speaker’s thumb drives, your personal laser pointer so the buttons are always in the same place, and of course a power bank. Rising above the logistics, to encourage learning in communications, consider Ted Talks, a joyful combination of entertainment and actionable insights.

Now for the fashionable parts to customize for your special someone. Dresses cause no small amount of anxiety for the microphone techs – the solution is ridiculously simple – waist belts. Keeping it fashionably utilitarian, an easy to read big face analog watch allows one to focus on listening to people during hallway one on one conversations, but politely stay cognizant of time without checking a phone. My favorite for the je ne sais quoi touch of professionalism is a personalized engraved business card holder. Lastly to bring everything together, this is a special kit and as such, an inspirational travel pouch to help stay organized seems to be the right cherry on top.