Des Femmes Updates October 2023
Our IRL meetup in Paris and what we learned. Plus: highlights from the community
Sterling here again to tell you all about how amazing Paris was!
Initially, I felt a bit anxious on my way there. I had a lot of stress around my personal and professional lives, and spending a week away from my usual, everyday space felt irresponsible.
But after meeting new people, learning new things, and spending time alone in a new place, I feel so much more motivated than before. I walked away with tangible goals and ideas for 2024—a complete 180 degrees from where I felt the week prior. Huge thanks to everyone who made that happen!
And as part of that transformation, I left the IRL meetup as a certified money mentor. If you’re interested in a free mentorship call with me or one of my fellow Des Femmes money mentors, reach out to us directly in the Slack community before the end of 2023.
Reflections on a week in Paris
From conception to execution, the Des Femmes IRL meetup was a lot of worthwhile work. If anyone wants to plan a similar retreat, here’s what we learned:
Organize well-aligned workshops with tangible learnings. We had the privilege of learning from a number of women in our community:
Career and money coach Leigh Cuen opened our workshops with journal prompts about goal-setting
Financial trauma healer Meenadchi led an abbreviated constellation exercise and talked about how to have a positive relationship with money
Brand consultant and writer Rei explained what mechanism design is and what it looks like in crypto
Dominatrix and fintech consultant Allie shared how principles and practices in sex work can successfully apply to business mindsets
We also completed a 3-day Master Money Mentorship workshop with UMaryland, which means everyone who participated is a certified money mentor! This additional skill set is an additional source of income for women in our community—one grand step towards financial sovereignty for all.
Appease the FOMO. We knew that not everyone could attend the IRL meetup in person or participate in all the activities. Instead of an all-or-nothing approach, we invited people to join us for:
Day of workshops
Dinner at the house
The UMaryland mentorship program
Brunch in the city
As a result, more community members could meet each other, as well as allies and friends outside of Des Femmes. Doing more than just interacting with each other meant that we could spread the “good word” of Des Femmes and expand our mission to support badass women.
Choose coziness over convenience. We stayed nearly an hour from anything in the Paris city center, by both public transit and rideshare apps. As a result, spontaneous walks through the city weren’t really an option.
However, we did get to experience a local farmer’s market and eat at some of the truly quaintest (and quietest) restaurants in the city. It also meant that we could have some real peace and quiet to either relax or work, in addition to home-cooked dinners almost every evening.
Leave space. People usually travel specifically for a conference or event, which means the entire experience—from getting to the airport to being “on” at a networking event—is exhausting. That’s why Des Femmes organized a fine balance of scheduled programming and personal time.
Everyone arrived in Paris with their own objectives. Some took their free time to explore the city and meet up with friends. Others visited museums or simply got work done in a peaceful, new environment. And while we didn’t always eat together, we almost always had time for good conversation.
Community Spotlight
I go by the name "Rei Lee" and I am passionate about the art of language and all things design, particularly behavior science and experiential design.
Although my university degree is in finance, my approach to finance was interdisciplinary: I strongly believed that value is created through perception, that the sticker price of a stock was based on the loudest narrative on the market, not "intrinsic value."
After a year of being a Microsoft Excel monkey creating management reports for a small credit union, I began working with crypto startups, figuring out what skills and roles I both enjoyed and excelled at.
Increasingly, my accumulated experiences with the initial conditions of my career: interdisciplinary application.
I love explaining complex ideas as simply as possible. To me, great writing is synaesthesia: it's the feeling of hitting the sweet spot for a tennis racket, dissolving the perfect amount of sugar in your lemonade, or if velvet was a perfume. When I have free time, I also enjoy doing tarot, astrology and dancing.
Currently, I do brand consultation and freelance writing. I'm looking for full time employment for the right company with the right team; I want to do work that includes writing, design and branding. Contact me on twitter and instagram at @0xrelativity or email me at 0xrelativity@gmail.com for related job openings or inquiries related to the art of language, design, or related interests.
Community Highlights
Big shout out to Ayelen for joining the Financial Freedom team at the Human Rights Foundation!
I (Sterling) published an article on Violet Verse about Girlfriend DAOs—an idea I came up with when writing last year’s Des Femmes DAO Experiment report.
Also, we’re putting together a database of talent in the Des Femmes community. Feel free to add yourself by filling out this form.
Until next time, stay curious!