What Happens When Women in Tech Actually Get in the Same Room

Two events. A lot of honest conversations. And a small, deliberate act of asking better questions.

Over the past few weeks I attended two Women in Miami Tech (WIMT) events: the monthly happy hour and a co-working session, both hosted in Miami. Between the two of them, I left with a handful of new connections, a few ideas worth sitting with, and a clearer sense of what I want to do differently the next time I walk into a room full of women in tech.

Table of contents

What Is WIMT?

Women in Miami Tech was started in 2016 by Maria Derchi Russo, who also serves as Executive Director of Refresh Miami, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to educating, inspiring, connecting, and growing South Florida’s tech and startup ecosystem. What Maria built with WIMT is now a community of over 3,000 members, with monthly events that bring together founders, engineers, product managers, investors, and women from parallel fields who are all navigating the tech world in one way or another. The events are women-only by design, which creates a particular kind of atmosphere that’s hard to replicate in mixed settings.

The Happy Hour

What I noticed immediately was how naturally the conversations moved. They’d start with the usual introductions: where are you from, what do you do, how long have you been in Miami? And then, almost without anyone planning it, they’d shift into something much more interesting. Startups, job markets, which companies have been rooted here for years and which ones are just arriving, what projects people were excited about, where they saw gaps. It’s the kind of conversation that happens when everyone in the room actually has something to say and isn’t performing for an audience.

The women ranged across ages and backgrounds, which made it genuinely interesting. You’d move from one table to a completely different worldview: different industries, different countries of origin, different career stages. And yet there was a common current running through almost every group conversation I drifted into, which was how difficult it still is for women to navigate the corporate world.

I’ll be honest. Part of me was surprised by how universal that thread was. I came in expecting it to be a lighter, mostly networking-focused evening, and I walked away thinking that this particular conversation hasn’t gone anywhere in 2026, regardless of how much progress has been made on paper. The experiences being shared weren’t abstract. They were specific, recent, and came from women at very different points in their careers. That’s worth paying attention to.

At the same time, I noticed something I’ve noticed before in spaces like this: conversations about challenges can, if you’re not careful, become the whole conversation. And I wanted more than that. Not because the challenges aren’t real, but because I think the most useful thing a community like this can do is move from shared recognition toward shared action. The event absolutely fulfilled its purpose, bringing women into the same space and generating genuine connection. But it also sparked something in me about what I’d want to organize if I ever hosted something myself: something more structured around solutions, learning, and concrete next steps rather than an open forum for venting, however valid that venting might be.

One thing I did deliberately at every table I sat down at: instead of waiting for the conversation to arrive somewhere interesting, I asked each group the same question. What are the last three things you’re proud of, professionally or personally? Or, for a few tables, a slightly sharper version: what’s your biggest achievement, the one you’re most proud of?

The answers were remarkable. Not because they were dramatic, but because of how varied they were, and how clearly they reflected the fact that women often don’t lead with their wins the way others might. There’s a tendency toward humility that, in group settings, can quietly translate into downplaying your own presence. Asking that question directly short-circuited that. People lit up. And listening to each answer reminded me how much invisible momentum exists in a room full of women who are genuinely building things, even when it’s not immediately visible on the surface.

One personal realization I came home with: I’ve rarely had experienced women in tech around me at work. Mentors who’ve faced similar situations and come out the other side. Attending events like this makes it very clear that those women exist in much larger numbers than my day-to-day work life has reflected. Actively building relationships with them, and finding ways to offer value in return, is something I’m thinking about more seriously now.

The Co-Working Session

The co-working event was held at The LAB Miami in Wynwood, a space I’ve mentioned before and one that keeps earning its reputation. The LAB is where Miami’s most relentless founders, technical talent, and startup operators come to build, and that energy comes through even in a quieter, heads-down session. It had a different texture to the happy hour overall: more focused, more intimate, and in some ways more revealing.

What struck me in the conversations I had that day was a gap between the AI hype that dominates every feed and newsletter, and what’s actually being adopted at the ground level. A lot of the women I spoke with, from startups and established companies alike, are using AI to some degree, but the ceiling is much lower than the discourse would suggest. There’s significant room to go deeper, and the limiting factor isn’t access to the tools. It’s clarity about where to start, how to evaluate what’s worth adopting, and how to separate genuinely useful platforms from the noise.

One conversation that stuck with me: someone mentioned that the sheer volume of AI tools and frameworks had become paralyzing. Every week brings a new agent runtime or a new model claiming to change everything, and the decision fatigue that creates is real. I think this is an underappreciated problem. The hype benefits the people already fluent in the space. For everyone else, it creates a kind of analysis paralysis that keeps them from experimenting at all. I’ve been turning that over in my head since, thinking about what a practical, low-noise framework for evaluating new AI tools might look like, and whether that’s something worth writing about.

More broadly, the co-working session reinforced something I believe pretty firmly: upskilling yourself and your team in AI is not optional anymore, but it needs to be done thoughtfully. Adopting new technology without a clear understanding of the risks and trade-offs is its own kind of problem. The balance between staying ahead of the curve and doing thorough analysis before committing to a new tool is a real skill, and one that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.

The Bigger Picture

What both events made clear is that Miami has a genuinely growing community of women who are curious, technical, entrepreneurial, and interested in each other’s work in an unusually sincere way. The atmosphere at WIMT events is welcoming without being performative about it. People are actually interested in what you’re building, what you’re excited about, and where there might be overlap.

That matters more than it sounds. The tech scene nationally can feel like a very particular kind of monoculture, and events like this are part of what makes Miami feel different. The diversity of backgrounds and industries in the room at every WIMT event is a real differentiator.

I plan to get more involved going forward, and I’d genuinely encourage any woman in or around Miami who works in tech or adjacent fields to show up to the next one. Come alone or bring someone. Stay for an hour or stay for all of it. The conversations are worth having, and the community is worth being part of.

Looking forward to the next event from WIMT. Recommended 9 out of 10.

Women in Miami Tech is organized through Refresh Miami. You can follow upcoming events at lu.ma/womeninmiamitech or through refreshmiami.com/wimt.