After attending many local UX design meets up, I always left feeling more anxious than when I arrived. The conversations were really stale, they were filled with newbies trying to break into the industry and there was always the seasoned man, a few beers deep, mansplaining CTA buttons to me.

This lead me to create "Cool UX Girls" - the name originally started as a joke because I just wanted to bring together women who were "normal" in the UXD space, but then it stuck.

We meet monthly and this has become one of the greatest groups of women in my life. It started with 4 of my friends who I had met in the wild through living in SD, who always happened to be UX designers, and now is up to 10 women - we're expanding!

We usually surf then get tacos and talk shop. Some of the topics have been: navigating portfolios, freelance vs corporate, working with PMs, cool tricks on Slack (did you know you could leave a voice/video memo?!). All convos are catered towards mid-level designers.

We plan to do a "retreat" this year to Mexico to surf.