Luisa Faist believes that when the right women are in the room to hear someone speaking her dream out loud, everything can change. Not when the dream is polished and packaged, or the business plan is complete and all the answers are neatly in place. But earlier—when the dream is just an idea and the woman is wondering if she’s brave enough to make it real.
“The more that women dream aloud in the presence of other women, the more likely our dreams are to expand,” Luisa says. “When we physically say, ‘I am dreaming X’ and another woman hears it, more likely than not she’s going to say, ‘Hell yes. You do that, and I’m behind you.’”
This is the beautiful beating heart behind The Rêve Collective, the community Luisa founded for female entrepreneurs here in the South Bay. Rêve means “dream” in French, and while the collective itself is relatively new, the dream behind it has been taking shape for much of Luisa’s life.
As a member of Rêve, I’ve watched what happens in these rooms when women share ideas. They make introductions, hire one another, collaborate and become friends. But perhaps most importantly, they remind one another of what is possible.
Luisa knew a woman like that. Laura Bresnahan Bush was her college best friend and great co-conspirator. Years ago, while Luisa was building a successful career in brand marketing, the two began dreaming up a luxury handbag for working women—something beautiful enough to carry into a meeting but also functional. Laura was an architect, and Luisa convinced her to start sketching.
“She was such an example of what it’s like to have a woman who knows and loves you be in your corner, cheer you on and believe in you in a way that you don’t even believe in for yourself,” Luisa says.
Somewhere along the way, Luisa became increasingly fascinated by the idea of a community that could surround the bags. She imagined a flagship store where women would gather over coffee and wine, share their ventures and support one another’s businesses.
“Suddenly, it was much bigger than just bags,” she remembers.
Then in October 2021, Laura was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. Luisa speaks candidly about the profound grief and depression she experienced over her friend’s death, as well as her own earlier struggle with postpartum depression.
“The more that women dream aloud in the presence of other women, the more likely our dreams are to expand.”
She doesn’t attempt to wrap any of it in a pretty bow. Instead, she sees those difficult years as part of the reckoning that eventually brought her back into alignment with herself. Grief has a way of stripping away the noise and bringing up important questions: How do I actually want to live? What matters? What am I waiting for?
“I think part of our grief comes from not being able to share the people we love so much with other people and with new people,” Luisa says. “You get to a point where you’re like, Nobody’s going to meet her again.”
And yet, through The Rêve Collective, they have. Laura is woven into its DNA. Her photograph is present at events. Luisa tells her story. Women who never had the privilege of knowing her have told Luisa that they feel as though they do.
Perhaps most beautifully, Luisa has created at scale what Laura once gave her: a woman in your corner who sees your possibility and says, “I believe in you.”
Luisa had spent nearly two decades in brand marketing, working with Fortune 500 companies and major agencies in Chicago and Los Angeles. After becoming a mother, however, her relationship with work began to change. She wanted autonomy and flexibility but also a deeper sense of fulfillment. She began imagining a life in which ambition and motherhood didn’t have to compete with one another.
Returning to the South Bay in 2020 felt like coming home. Luisa spent her earliest years in Redondo Beach and attended American Martyrs before her family moved to Florida. Now her own children attend the school, a beautiful full-circle return to the community that had always remained part of her.
She began noticing that extraordinary women were everywhere. Entrepreneurs. Founders. Creatives. Mothers. Women building businesses while simultaneously building lives.
She had written the concept for The Rêve Collective long before she actually launched it. I was one of a small group of women she shared it with early on, and I remember immediately understanding the need for it. But sometimes we need someone else to give our dreams that final push.
Around her 40th birthday, Luisa wrote herself a manifestation letter, describing the life she wanted as though it had already happened. In it, The Rêve Collective was real. Less than a month later, it actually was.
The inaugural gathering took place at Love & Salt on November 22, with nearly 50 women showing up despite having only 28 days’ notice. When asked if there was significance to the date, Luisa paused. Laura’s birthday was May 22, so November 22 would have been her half birthday.
“Oh my God,” she said, realizing it for the first time. For her, it was another sign.
From the beginning, Luisa was adamant that The Rêve Collective would not feel like traditional networking. No walking into a sterile room, slapping on a name tag and figuring out what someone can do for you.
“Women are not transactional,” she says. “I want to know your story. And our stories are what tether us to one another.”
Instead of asking “What can you do for me?” of fellow members, Rêve’s women ask something far more interesting: “What can we do together?”
Everything is intentionally designed around that philosophy. New members enter through intimate cohorts and Welcome Collectives held in beautiful, female-owned spaces. There is storytelling and grounding alongside education, business strategy and genuine connection. Monthly gatherings and virtual programming cover everything from brand positioning and financial education to creativity and personal growth.
“I want these women to feel like someone else has been thinking of them,” says Luisa, who sees that women spend so much of our lives pouring into everyone and everything around us: our children, partners, businesses and communities. Rêve is deliberately designed to turn some of that care back toward the women themselves.
That may be what I love most about what Luisa has created. Rêve isn’t asking women to add another thing to their already overflowing plates. It is asking them to consider what might happen if, for once, they allowed themselves to receive support, connection, ideas, friendship and a moment to breathe.
And perhaps, when they need it most, another woman looking across the room and saying, “I see your dream too.” Because sometimes that is all it takes to begin making it real.
