the indie consultant ✌🏽

January 28, 2022 — Femmecubator officially welcomed its first cohort of mentorship matches into the family this Friday! From The Bay Area to St. Louis, to San Antonio to NYC, Minneapolis to Florida, and everywhere inbetween – we are starting something. It’s all virtual, allowing us to meet from anywhere, anytime.

Mentorship is at the core of the Femmecubator mission. The operations team had been talking about pairing up people for quite some time now. And the program is finally alive!

It was so great hosting this intimate gathering. I loved how folks shared some cool commonalities like being self-learners to top earners, coming from wildly different industries, to getting into freelancing, to breaking into UX, there was such a range of experiences, goals and opportunities!

For the next 8 weeks, people who are matched will develop a mentorship relationship based on the goals they discussed during their 35-min breakout room discussion. As a squad, we are sharing space in a season of becoming..

slide shared during mentor match kickoff by Krizia Fernando, Femmecubator Founder + Co-Director

I was truly inspired from the tip-top of the night when we toasted to Krizia’s quotable and motivational moment, till the very end when we signed off listening to Janelle Monae’s Turntables. This matters. We are being the change we wanna see and feel in the world!

Cheers to what’s to come! Keep eyes out for Mentor Match, I know there will be many connections and success stories out of this 🙂

And big thanks to everyone involved in the program (as well as those supporting and promoting it!) It’s exciting to build something new again out in the open with all of you. #thisisjustthestart

I will be sitting down with members of community in the coming weeks for a “Meet the Mentors” interview series. So make sure you’re following @Femmecubator on Linkedin + @Femmecubator on Instagram & hit subscribe down below to get notified when a new article drops!

With Love,
@heatherlee.nguyen
#TheIndieConsultant

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I’ll be pausing about once a month this year to write about exciting new updates related to my freelance work, community engagements, and Think Olive Creative. this new year is off to an energetic start!

full-circle moment!
on Wednesday, January 12, 2022, I spoke for 30 minutes at Optum about community-led design and the origin story of Black Designers Ignite. 111 people attended (when I checked), and the response both during the session and behind the scenes was touching. so many of us feel the same way (about tough things that are hard to speak on at work) but when we do talk about it.. it reflects in people around us, something ignites, and it transforms us. community strengthens. and this matters!

feeling so thankful for this full-circle moment, which I’m honestly still unpacking. will share more about this later. till then, here were some of my favorite slides (swipe the IG post below!)

Femmecubator mentor matching!
on Friday, January 14, 2022, I hosted a happy hour workshop for Femmecubator’s very first wave of mentors for, Mentor Matching, a new program launching soon!

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I have been working in the field in Minneapolis since 2009 (12 years!) and I love how I’m meeting people everywhere now. Mentors and mentees are matching all over the country through this program.

I left feeling inspired and ready to continue these budding relationships..

and all this reminded me of the one beautiful thing the pandemic brought to us, the mainstream acceptance of all-virtual events and doing it all from home 🙂 busy working moms like me actually have greater access to being able to show up, support, attend, advance, and connect now easier than eever before. and I don’t know about you but we are taking full advantage!

[sidenote: if you are a mentor (experienced or first-timer) who is interested in mentorship circles, being a one-on-one career coach, serving as a technical mentor to women getting into UX + tech?! get in touch by filling out this mentor matching interest form @femmecubator.

at our workshop we reflected on how best we can serve as mentors. the goal at Femmecubator is to create a flexible, yet impactful program where people can connect on their own time, and where mentors have support, tools, and resources for successful mentorship moments. this is just the start!

Brand Design!
on Monday, January 18, 2022, HL-UX met an exciting milestone! We delivered the final logo for our client, along with an initial icon set and full-on brand guidelines. this was a supplement to the foundations of the fresh new design system I’ve been building with them the past few months.

as a UXer I haven’t had many opportunities to both lead product design AND design the brand. (talk about another full-circle moment!) I have loved building a relationship with this client over the years and this was an exciting deliverable. Swipe the post for the polaroid highlights 🙂