One Year of Women Talk Design

A little over a year ago, Christina Wodtke launched a GoFundMe campaign that completely altered the course of Women Talk Design.

Christina started the website in 2013 as a way to highlight women speakers who give talks on design-related topics. She often spoke at design and tech conferences and was dismayed at how few women she saw on stage. She was tired of excuses from conference organizers that they couldn’t find enough women to speak at their conference. So, she created Women Talk Design to be a place she could point them — where organizers could discover women speakers and invite them to their next event. The site lived on over the years as Christina added more speakers in between the countless other things she already did.

Original Women Talk Design website

Women Talk Design transformed last summer when over 100 generous donors gave to a GoFundMe campaign that allowed Christina to hire two student interns, Jennifer & Melissa, to research and redesign the Women Talk Design website. I joined in the fall as CEO to continue the work they started, and grow Women Talk Design into an impactful and sustainable organization.

Today, Women Talk Design is a social enterprise dedicated to getting more diverse speakers on stage. We’re elevating women and nonbinary speakers on our website, offering helpful articles and advice for conference organizers, and providing training, events and community to new speakers.

A lot has happened in the past year (thanks to volunteers, mentors and a wonderful community), and I’m excited to share what we’ve done, and what’s to come.

• In November (2017), we launched our first speaking workshop. With the support of our GoFundMe campaign, we led 13 attendees in a weekend workshop to craft a compelling talk and present with confidence. Since that first workshop, we’ve trained 60+ women and nonbinary people on public speaking.

Photo from our first workshop, courtesy of Nikki Ross.

“Women Talk Design’s weekend workshop provides the exact supportive, playful, safe space needed to prep your first talk and prepare to incorporate public speaking into your work.” — Speaking Workshop Attendee

• After our first workshop we started a private Facebook group for new and experienced speakers. The group is intended to be a safe space for women and nonbinary speakers to ask questions, offer advice and share upcoming speaking opportunities.
• In December, we hosted our first Lightning Talks event. This event gives new speakers an opportunity to practice a 5-minute version of a talk in front of a safe, supportive audience. We offer this event quarterly in San Francisco and are expanding to other cities.

Photo from one of our recent Women Talk Design Lightning Talks events.

“Last night was transformative! I now have the public speaking bug and will be actively pursuing speaking opportunities.” — Lightning Talk Speaker

• In February, we hosted our first event in Seattle. “Women Talk: Conferences” features local women speakers sharing their experiences speaking at events. We’ve since hosted this event in Los Angeles, Durham, Washington DC, Austin and Boston. We’ve had over 350 attendees participate in our various events (across seven cities!), that are designed to inspire and empower more women and nonbinary speakers.
• In February, we also hosted our first corporate training program. In addition to financial sponsorship, this will be an important revenue stream to keep Women Talk Design sustainable. It will also allow us to continue to provide free and low-cost programming to our community. Interested in learning more? Contact us!
• In June, we offered a new format of our speaking workshop in partnership with AIGA/SF for San Francisco Design Week. Through partnerships with groups like AIGA, Ladies that UX, seaDUXX, LAUX and more, we’ve been able to expand our programming to new communities.

Instructor Eleanor Reinholdt leading a group in warm up exercises during our “Public Speaking for Designers” workshop at SF Design Week

“Thanks for organizing! I really enjoyed this event and it made me feel more confident public speaking.” — Event Attendee

• As of today, we have 250+ speakers on Women Talk Design. We’re continuing to grow our database and are working with dozens of organizers to make sure it can be a resource.

What are we working on?

We’re currently scheduling follow up events and trainings in those seven cities, and working with some pretty wonderful groups to expand our programming and reach.

We also have some exciting news to share about the Women Talk Design website.

After we launched the new site last fall, we heard a lot of positive feedback and also learned more about what organizers and speakers need. As we’ve expanded what Women Talk Design offers (through training, events and resources) we also want to make sure our website reflects that. We’ve been very grateful for the opportunity to work with the team at Wordpress to design and build a new version of the Women Talk Design site (with a new visual identity, thanks to our friends at The Label Collective) that we’re excited to share this fall.

Finally, we’re continuing to explore how best to support women and nonbinary speakers, and conference organizers seeking to design more inclusive events. We’re committed to constantly improving and we look forward to speaking with you, our community, to incorporate your diverse experiences and thoughtful input into what we’re doing.

Thanks to everyone who has (and will) become part of this community.

A special thank you to our partners at Facebook Design, whose ongoing support has enabled us to continue to grow.

We can’t wait to share more soon.

Danielle

CEO, Women Talk Design