Enter one sharp room.
CIRCLE SESSIONS · 90 MINUTES · 12 SEATS
Application reviewed. LinkedIn profile required. Sessions are not recorded.
Standalone live cognitive sparring sessions for accomplished adults 40+ who want to keep their judgment active, challenge their assumptions, and think alongside people who raise the room.
One focused topic.
One curated group.
No passive content.
Each Circle Session combines live prompts, cognitive games, AI judgment challenges, reframing, and productive peer friction.
Spotting persuasive answers built on weak foundations
Separating fluency from judgment
Noticing when AI is framing the question for you
Challenging your first interpretation
Making better decisions when polished answers sound convincing
Application reviewed. LinkedIn profile required. Sessions are not recorded.
NEXT CIRCLE SESSION
AI Blind Spots
How smart people get outsourced by fluent answers
A live 90-minute sparring session on how polished AI output can weaken independent judgment, conceal weak assumptions, and make certainty feel easier than scrutiny.
Live on Zoom
12 seats
$149 per session
YOU WILL PRACTICE:
Application reviewed
Next session announced to waitlist members first.
Ninety minutes of active thinking.
No lecture. No slide deck. No passive audience. Every part of the session asks something from you.
Enter the question
Timed prompts and live challenges interrupt automatic responses and expose first assumptions.
INSIDE ONE CIRCLE SESSION
⇢
⇢
⇢
Think under pressure
Cristina opens with a sharp provocation, dilemma, or problem with no obvious answer.
Spar with the room
You test your position against people who see the same problem from different angles.
Leave with a sharper frame
The goal is not agreement but stronger judgment, better questions, and a more useful way to see the problem.
Live. Facilitated. Interactive. Presence is the point.
WHO ENTERS THE ROOM
The quality of the room is the product.
Circle Sessions are designed for accomplished adults 40+ who still enjoy being challenged, changing their minds, and thinking with people outside their usual professional or personal bubble.
Experienced
You have built, led, advised, created, or learned enough to bring a real point of view.
Curious enough to question your first answer
Experienced, but not intellectually settled
Open
You can hold conviction without treating it as identity.
Comfortable thinking out loud
Willing to challenge and be challenged
Engaged
You are willing to participate, not simply observe.
Interested in AI judgement without needing to be technical
Drawn to sharper conversations, not larger networks
YOU WILL PROBABLY FEEL AT HOME HERE IF YOU ARE:
CURATED BY DESIGN
Every application is reviewed personally.
Selection is based on curiosity, self-awareness, willingness to participate, respect for different perspectives, and the ability to raise the quality of the room.
No pitching.
No spectators.
No ego theatre.
The room is small by design. The conversations stay large.
20+ years in strategic rooms
AI, leadership, business, and systems thinking
Sharper questions across global markets
The Sparring Circle is the room she wanted to exist for people who still enjoy thinking deeply with others and could not find it anywhere.
A room held by someone who knows how to make thinking move.
Cristina Imre
FRACTIONAL EXECUTIVE STRATEGIC ADVISOR FOUNDER, THE SPARRING CIRCLE
ABOUT CRISTINA
Cristina Imre is a fractional executive, strategic advisor, international facilitator, and founder of The Sparring Circle.
For more than 20 years, she has worked across leadership, strategy, entrepreneurship, AI transformation, business building, and high-stakes decision-making.
Her work often sits where most systems break quietly: between intelligence and execution, ambition and structure, people and technology, expertise and relevance.
People who work with her often describe her facilitator style as mental ping pong: fast, direct, layered questions that challenge assumptions without turning the room into ego theatre.
Simple steps. High standards.
Circle Sessions are selective by design. We keep the room small so every person in it can affect the quality of the conversation.
Apply
Selection is based on curiosity, self-awareness, room presence, and willingness to engage.
It is not based only on title, industry, or seniority.
HOW ACCESS WORKS
⇢
⇢
⇢
Cristina reviews the fit
Submit your application and LinkedIn profile.
Answer a few questions about how you think, what interests you about the session, and what you may bring to the room.
Receive confirmation
If accepted, you receive a confirmation email and payment link for the $149 session fee.
Your place is reserved once payment is completed.
Enter the room
You receive the Zoom details and short onboarding information before the session.
No preparation is required.
Live on Zoom
Wednesday, July 29
12 PM ET / 5 PM UK / 6 PM Central Europe
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Is this a course, a mastermind, or a coaching program?
None of the above.
A course delivers content you consume. A mastermind focuses on business accountability. Coaching is typically one-to-one.
The Sparring Circle is a facilitated peer experience: structured thinking games, judgment challenges, reframing exercises, and live sparring with sharp people from different industries.
The value is not simply the information you receive. It is what happens to your thinking when it meets real friction from real peers in real time.
How is this different from a networking group?
The primary value of a networking group is the contacts you collect. The primary value of The Sparring Circle is the quality of thinking you practice.
Those motivations attract different people.
Nobody enters the room to pitch, collect business cards, or search for clients. Some members may develop genuine professional relationships over time, as naturally happens in any strong room. But networking is not the purpose of the session, and it is not why people return.
Why does this exist? What problem does it actually solve?
After 40, the rooms that genuinely challenge how you think can become harder to find.
Networks grow larger and shallower. Conferences become stages. Masterminds become accountability check-ins. AI starts answering questions before you have finished examining them. Many professional gatherings stop being intellectually interesting.
The Sparring Circle exists for people who notice this and want to do something about it.
It is not a medical or wellness program. It is not conventional professional development. It is a live thinking practice with sharp peers who make each other better by being in the same room.
Why is it application-only? Is this just a marketing tactic?
No.
The application exists because the quality of the room depends on who is in it. One poorly matched participant can change the experience for everyone.
The application gives Cristina enough information to make a genuine judgment about fit. The selection is not based only on credentials, industry, or seniority. It is based on intellectual character: curiosity, honesty, self-awareness, willingness to participate, and the ability to be challenged without turning the room into an ego contest.
Price alone cannot filter for those qualities.
What does a session actually feel like?
You enter a live room with approximately 12 to 20 people from different industries and different parts of the world.
Cristina or a personally trained facilitator opens with a direct provocation, a problem, a challenge, or a question without a clean answer. You think out loud. Your peers question your assumptions. You question theirs. You may find yourself defending, revising, or abandoning a position you were not entirely sure you held when you arrived.
It is closer to an unusually good dinner conversation with sharp people than to a conventional professional event.
The friction is real. So is the energy when you leave.
I am not a technology person. Will I be out of my depth?
No.
The AI-related work inside The Sparring Circle focuses on judgment, assumptions, reasoning, and the ability to recognize when a confident answer rests on weak foundations.
It does not require coding knowledge, technical AI expertise, or familiarity with specific tools.
People from non-technical backgrounds often bring valuable perspectives precisely because they approach AI output without automatically deferring to the technology.
Why live? Why not recorded or self-paced?
Because the product is the friction between live minds in real time.
A recording of a sparring session is like a recording of a tennis match. You can watch it, but you cannot play it.
The value comes from being placed inside the question, not knowing exactly what comes next, responding under light pressure, and hearing another person challenge an assumption you thought was solid.
That experience does not survive passive replay.
Sessions are not recorded or distributed. This is intentional.
Who else will be in the room?
Circle Sessions bring together founders, executives, advisors, strategists, creators, and independent thinkers from different industries and geographies.
Professional and geographic diversity are deliberate. The room works because participants do not all approach a problem from the same frame.
What members share is not a title or industry. It is curiosity, directness, and a willingness to have their thinking challenged in real time.
Every participant is reviewed personally before being accepted. Everyone is there by design, not by chance.
Do I need to prepare anything before each session?
No preparation is required.
Sessions are designed to work with what you already know and how you already think, not with material you studied in advance.
Coming in without a rehearsed answer is often better. The sessions exercise live, unscripted thinking rather than your ability to research a topic before class.
Is there a refund policy?
Payment of $149 is due upon acceptance. Once paid, the seat is yours. If a genuine emergency prevents you from participating, contact Cristina directly.
I have a question not answered here. Who do I contact?
Email [email protected] directly. Every message is read by a real person. You will receive a personal reply within 48 hours.
