After a sellout evening, Friends With Her x HerCanberra is back!

Posted on 27 May, 2024

When we teamed up with the amazing team at Friends With Her to host our first co-branded collaborative networking and friend-making event in April, we were nervous.

Would anyone come? Would the vibe be relaxed? Luckily, the sellout event went brilliantly. Across 90 minutes a group of 30 wonderful people chatted, networked, laughed, compared Hinge profiles (#singlecanberranthings) and, hopefully, made some new mates.

Sound like your vibe? We’re doing it all again on Thursday 27 June at Highball from 6 – 7.30 pm, and as always, tickets are completely free. You just need to register to secure your spot via Eventbrite. Please note this event is open to people of all gender identities, not just those who use her/hers pronouns.

For those wondering – what on earth is this event? Let’s take it back a step.

Friends with Her, a casual and free networking event series focused on creating connections in a relaxed, small group setting was founded in 2023 by Claudia Harrison McKee and Madeline Bonfini after the pair – who met at university – reconnected in their graduate days and realised they had more in common than they ever thought.

“We quickly realised we were very like-minded and we started catching up monthly to chat about our ambitions, passions and ideas,” says Claudia.

“The monthly catch-ups also enabled us to have that accountability and space to celebrate the career wins we had. These were conversations that we didn’t often have with friends and family, and we were excited to be able to bounce ideas off each other.”

“It made us think, there must be other people out there who would love to be able to do the same. We wanted to create a community where people can support each other throughout career. The value proposition to many people can mean different things, at different stages of their career.”

Friends with Her is about encompassing various elements of that. Whether that be a career change, friendships, hobbies, or fitness. It’s about bringing together interesting people to have interesting conversations and be a space where others come to meet fascinating individuals

Having worked in consulting and Defence respectively, Madeline and Claudia were also familiar with large professional networking events and identified a gap in the market.

Taking place every couple of months, the evening is a casual, unstructured mingle where, as Claudia and Madeline put it, you’ll find “interesting conversations with people you know or want to know”.

With dates now released for the rest of 2024, we hope that if this sounds like your cup of tea (or should we say cup of daiquiri?), we’ll see you at an event soon.