Latest news with #Meetup
Business Insider
18-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
I've landed 8 work opportunities through networking alone. These 3 tips got me in the door at companies like Bank of America.
Being an adoptee from China didn't just impact my passion for building inclusive communities — it ignited it. My dream was battle-tested as I grew up, switching schools multiple times, dealing with bullying, and ultimately leaving college early to finish online due to my living situation. Instead of extinguishing my spirit, these experiences crystallized into a unique superpower: I now understood how to use my voice as an agent for positive change. I've persuaded tech executives to crown the mental health nonprofit I founded with an award, encouraged others to speak up in class, and ultimately landed multiple internships and jobs. I'm now 23, and I've secured three internship offers at Bank of America, received offers from multiple startups, and became the first product manager at SeekOut through networking alone. I've landed eight roles in total, both temporary and permanent. Here are my top three tips to channel your voice to maximize your networking. 1. Master cold outreach I didn't attend a top school for computer science. Knowing I probably couldn't rely on my environment for an abundance of career opportunities, I created my own. My first goal was to get a summer internship. I joined free online career communities, such as Rewriting the Code, to meet other ambitious students. I also emailed my favorite professors to inquire about research internships and consistently posted on LinkedIn. This extremely simple concept of asking for what you want and expressing who you are accelerated my career growth. If you don't know where to start, first identify your top career goal and then write a message to someone who can potentially help. Crafting the ideal message requires three simple steps that I honed for years: Introduce yourself as who you want to be Concise is key — no busy person has time to read multiple paragraphs Include a call-to-action as a question that creates a win-win situation Many say cold outreach is a numbers game and you just get lucky. While it is a numbers game, solidifying the right approach matters, too. If you follow the three steps and reach out to people on LinkedIn, via email, and other platforms, you'll get closer and closer to your dream career opportunity. 2. Skip school career fairs and attend specialized events instead My hot take is that most school career fairs won't truly level up your career. If you have ambitious goals, I recommend meeting actual hiring decision-makers at in-person tech events. San Francisco and NYC offer panels, fireside chats, hackathons, and mixers. You can find these events on apps like Luma or Meetup, and by following LinkedIn Top Voices. Founders at tech companies can make invaluable introductions, invite you to join their teams as an intern, invest in your ideas, or even mentor you. I attended the free Harvard Women in Entrepreneurship fireside chat with the nonprofit Foundess and connected with multiple clients seeking career coaching. I teach this approach because many driven students and job seekers don't try it, which means competition can be nearly nonexistent. Always try to meet the speakers, introduce yourself, and casually mention that you're looking for your next career move. I've seen multiple people succeed with this strategy and eventually land great opportunities. 3. Be a 'go-giver' Being a go-giver is a highly underrated hack. If you want to meet decision-makers who can unlock your next career opportunity, ask to interview your role models for your newsletter, podcast, blog, or community. By giving first, you build genuine connections, strengthen your personal brand, and gain real experience for your résumé. This strategy costs nothing but can dramatically expand both your network and your net worth. I'm currently a founding team member at Start Your Fashion Business Academy, where we help driven women leave their 9-5s and start fashion empires. These three tips collectively advanced my career in ways I never would've imagined.
CNN
04-05-2025
- General
- CNN
Macho, alpha males are everywhere. Men's circles are modeling another way to be a man
Tyrone Marsh felt a void in his life. He was in his 40s and married with two kids. A self-described extrovert, he socialized often. But living in New York after years of moving around, he realized his existing relationships lacked a certain level of depth. His conversations with other men tended to revolve around sports or romantic pursuits, and he longed for more substance. In other words, he wanted real friends. In 2018, in search of connection, he came across a Meetup group that he thought was a book club. It was something else entirely: The ManKind Project, an organization offering intensive retreats and support groups to help men improve their relationships with themselves and others. Intrigued, Marsh decided to join one of the organization's men's circles, or structured spaces in which men gather regularly to talk. At his first meeting, he found what he had been missing all his life. 'I can sit there with this group of men and fumble through whatever these thoughts are that I'm having,' he says. 'And those men hold the space for me and ask questions, and I don't feel like I'm being judged.' Marsh's quest for connection underscores a major challenge that many men currently face. While men and women alike are experiencing a rise in loneliness and isolation, men struggle especially to form deep friendships — a trend that scholars and researchers warn has serious implications. Socially isolated men are creating more work for their wives and girlfriends; they're falling prey to an online pipeline of misogyny; and in severe cases, they face heightened risks of depression, suicide and domestic violence. At a time when some men are finding community in toxic parts of the 'manosphere,' men's circles offer another, more positive model of masculinity. Experts say there's a growing appetite for these groups across the US, UK, Canada and Australia — and Marsh and others who participate in them say they're challenging deeply entrenched ideas about what it means to be a man. Through years of participation in men's circles, Marsh — who is currently ManKind Project USA's co-chair for intercultural competence and belonging — has built a network of close friends he can rely on. That, in turn, has taught him a lot about himself. Now if he's unsure about something at work, he admits it, instead of spiraling internally about not being good enough. He lets himself cry in front of his children so they know it's okay to show emotion. He makes an effort to think before he speaks. 'We're taught as men to suppress our feelings, to just do it by ourselves, man up and be strong. I know for me, that was isolating,' he says. 'These circles flip the script.' We're taught as men to suppress our feelings, to just do it by ourselves, man up and be strong. I know for me, that was isolating. Tyrone Marsh Men's circles run by trained facilitators tend to follow a similar structure. First, the facilitator sets some ground rules for the meeting. Attendees then introduce themselves and check in with each other about how they're feeling. They might engage in another icebreaker before eventually sharing what's going on in their lives, discussing everything from relationship issues and career challenges to a health crisis. The men take turns listening to each other and offer each other feedback. Finally, the meeting closes with some takeaways, or perhaps just acknowledgement or gratitude for what was just accomplished. These gatherings can help men strengthen social skills and their relationships with other men, says Pasco Ashton, co-founder and executive director of the UK-based organization Men's Circle. 'Men don't really have the tools,' he says. 'They haven't learned the same tools that I think women do in social situations: to have the small talk, to connect deeper emotionally, all the emotional intelligence that is part of what we practice.' That realization is what led Ashton to start a men's circle in 2020. He felt helpless after losing two friends to suicide. He also wanted to work on himself after conversations with female friends about #MeToo. And generally, he felt lonely and unable to confide in most of his male friends. That gathering of a few friends in a London park eventually grew into a larger organization spanning across the UK, with some participants in Europe and the US. His organization also offers workshops, retreats and more casual meetups. Ashton says that while many men who attend circles come looking for social connection, they leave with much more: In an informal survey conducted by his organization, participants reported gaining mutual support and life perspective, as well as improvements in their emotional regulation, self-awareness and other key skills. The reason so many men seem to lack deep connections isn't because of some innate biological difference, says Niobe Way, author of 'Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture.' Rather, it's a culture problem. In studying adolescent development for more than four decades, she's found that boys do want intimate friendships. But as they get older, the pressure to man up results in what Way calls a crisis of connection. Marsh felt that acutely growing up. He was raised in the inner city of Nashville with an incarcerated father and an abusive stepfather, in a home where 'there was no such thing as emotional intelligence.' Any hint of perceived softness was met with harsh discipline, treated as something to be stamped out. Marsh tried to model another way for his two children, letting them know their feelings were valid and that their voices deserved to be heard. But some ingrained ideas proved hard to shake. Before Marsh started attending men's circles, his son Kapila, 20, says he felt that he and his older sister were sometimes held to a different standard when it came to showing emotion. 'At times, my emotions were valued, but her emotions were 100% of the time valued,' he says. 'For me, there needed to be an extra step of 'This is how you're feeling, but what are you going to do with this?' rather than 'This is how you're feeling' and being able to sit back.' Kapila says he internalized that pressure growing up, feeling like he needed to prove himself to be taken seriously. But he started to notice changes in his father once he got involved with the ManKind Project. Marsh began asking his son more open-ended questions, trying to get to the root of why he felt a particular way. It took Kapila some adjusting to — he was used to following his dad's advice, and it felt like his dad wasn't interested in giving it anymore. Kapila now realizes that his dad was training him to trust his intuition and move through the world on his own. In Kapila's eyes, it made him a better parent. Rick Fortier, 63, has felt the crisis of connection, too. For most of his life, he says he felt safer around his female friends. 'I'd always had a feeling of being judged walking on eggshells around other men most of my life: Was I saying the right thing? Were they doing the right thing? Was I man enough?' he says. His first experience in a men's circle challenged those norms. The environment was open and nonjudgmental, and the attendees pushed each other to be honest and authentic. And though it took some trial and error to find a circle that felt like the right fit, Fortier says his current group — which he's been attending for eight years — is helping him figure out the kind of man he wants to be. The six or so members meet biweekly, and the issues that come up run the gamut: They talk about negative self-image, romantic challenges and the pressures they feel as men to act a certain way. Two members passed away in the last year, so feelings around death have also become a major topic of discussion. 'It's deep in our soul to have a brotherhood, and we don't know how to do that in our society other than through sporting events, drinking, going hunting or whatever might be typical of accepted men's behavior,' he says. Even as men commit to improving themselves, they don't always get it right. As Ian McElroy wrote in 2021 for The Cut, 'these groups are still run by men, men with all their baggage and acculturation and gazes.' Plenty of groups end up reinforcing stereotypical ideas about who men should be, says Angelica Ferrara, a developmental and social psychologist whose research focuses on masculinity and gender. 'Some men's groups work by saying that a 'real' man is emotionally vulnerable and a provider not just through finances, but through emotional support to others,' she wrote in an email to CNN. 'These frameworks still imbue men with value (and status in other men's ideas) solely on what they provide to others—that's a big problem.' The ManKind Project and other men's organizations also lean on initiation rituals and specific archetypes to help men get in touch with themselves — stemming from their roots in the 'mythopoetic' men's movement, which in the '80s and '90s brought men into the woods to rediscover their innate masculinity through drumming circles and chanting. The ManKind Project's circles, for example, use the labels 'king,' 'warrior,' 'magician' and 'lover' (an apparent reference to Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette's 1991 book that defines four essential aspects of manhood). Its weekend retreats, which reportedly involve cold showers and blindfolding, invoke mythologist Joseph Campbell's 'hero's journey.' While Marsh and others have found these frameworks empowering and transformative, some critics note that they can present an outdated and limiting view of masculinity. Still, Ferrara says it's important not to let perfect be the enemy of good. The most promising men's circles, in her view, 'explicitly name patriarchy and stringent ideas of masculinity as the root of men's suffering, rather than something to be reconfigured or revived.' But even if Ferrara sees flaws in some of their approaches, men building emotional intelligence and deeper community stands to benefit them and everyone in their lives — and she hopes that as a result, more men might start to question traditional ideas around masculinity altogether. Since President Donald Trump was said to have leveraged corners of the manosphere to help him win the 2024 US election, there's been a lot of discussion about the resurgence of more problematic ideas around masculinity. The recent Netflix series 'Adolescence' also sparked conversations about the pressures that boys face to adhere to certain norms. In particular, many younger men seem adrift and more drawn to macho, traditional models of being a man. With hyper-masculine influencers on their social media feeds promoting self-improvement through extreme workout and diet regimens, the idea of sitting in a circle and talking about feelings might sound less appealing. It's a major challenge men's circles are up against: They're not reaching the people who might need them most. In their current iteration, men's circles and similar programs typically attract men in midlife. The ManKind Project does run a specialized version of its flagship retreat for men 18 to 35 (that also costs $995 to attend), and the organization says its overall age range has widened over time — still, Marsh says it struggles with getting younger men involved. Knowing the difference men's circles made for him, Fortier says he's frustrated that so few young men seem interested. At 63, he's one of the younger men in his current group. Over the years, he says some guys have shown up eager to discuss current affairs or sports. When encouraged to dig a little deeper, he says they seemed uncomfortable and often didn't return. Dismantling generations of preconceptions about men is a daunting task, and men's circles are just one intervention in the broader project of reconsidering what it means to be a man. But whether through men's circles or something else, Fortier says men need to step up and take accountability. 'We've created this situation,' he says. 'It's up to us to fix it.'
Boston Globe
30-04-2025
- Lifestyle
- Boston Globe
How do I find other single, child-free women to hang out with?
However, most of my friends have significant others now. Our get-togethers have changed to accommodate kids and partners. I'd like to meet other single, child-free women to do fun stuff with. Suggestions are welcome! – Looking A. The cool thing is that in my experience, single women do lots of stuff. They go to clubs, readings, and events. They volunteer. Really, if you sign up for anything that involves audience participation and hands-on work, you'll probably find a bunch of women having a good time. Advertisement Bookstores host events that are designed for this (in Boston, consider the Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Strangers who go to these events probably don't mind being approached. Try to look for other people who are alone—or anyone who seems friendly. (Worth noting, whenever I go to a brewery, I do see many men in their 20s and 30s.) Another thought: You said you're not happy with app dating, but online community might feel different. To prepare for this column, I googled 'Where are men in their 30s in Boston?'—just to see what came up. Advertisement What rose to the top was an old Reddit thread that evolved into something more focused on friendship. One person asked where the men are and people responded with guesses. Then a person wrote, 'This thread has made me laugh. As a 31-yr-old single woman, new in Boston and newly recovering from a breakup and surgery — this is all the laugh and honest responses I needed. Can I be your friend?' The response to her comment: 'Oh girl now we're more than friends, you have to be my new wing-woman now! Send me a dm.' Hopefully that connection happened in real life. There are ways to use the internet for good. – Meredith READERS RESPOND What about that Meetup app that always gets mentioned on here, but not to meet dates, but to meet people? Don't limit yourself to just making friends with women; that might be part of your original issue! LUPELOVE Activities you like — hiking, sailing, rock climbing. MMOLIBERTY It sounds as if you'd prefer to have the single and child-free women friends and THEN go do fun stuff with them, and that is all well and good, but maybe go do the fun stuff to MAKE the friends and then do more fun stuff with them. Maybe that is where all the single females without kids are, already out there doing fun things and to meet them you might need to be brave and join them alone first. KWINTERS1 Your letter is a laundry list of things you don't do. Don't drink. Don't date. Don't wanna be around kids. Nothing about what you like or enjoy. I humbly suggest that attitude is what's keeping you from making friends. STRIPEYCAT Advertisement You are in the 'Dead Zone' for dating and friends. They are coupled, breeding, and chasing promotions. You'll hit your stride when all the divorces happen around mid-40s! BIGAIRBOY Listen to the new season of the
