What is life like as a Spinster in 2019?

Get to know some of our ladies who lead!

Amy Tam, Public Relations Co Chair

How do you define a Spinster, specifically Spinsters of SF (SOSF)? Back in October 25, 1929, SOSF formed with a commitment to create a social network of strong, independent young women. Later, the group developed a passion for making a difference in the Bay Area through volunteering and fundraising.  90 years later, SOSF has continued to evolve. Spinsters are traditional with a progressive twist, nurturing and rebellious in nature, and leaders in advocating for a bigger voice for women in the community. Today SOSF is made up of a diverse group of 200+ unmarried women, ages 21-35 who lead different lives outside of the organization.  What is life like outside of SOSF for Spinsters? We asked three of our members to tell us about the lives they lead and share their advice with us.

SOSF Member, Cynthia Miranda

“You’re young.  Slow down.” “Pay your dues” before trying to rise ahead.  These were common remarks Cynthia Miranda, a third-year member of SOSF and a first-generation minority, heard throughout her career.  Cynthia is a communication analyst at the Judicial Council of California. What Cynthia is most passionate about in her career is pushing for more female leaders in her field.  In her own experience, Cynthia's female peers have advocated for her while she learns to navigate her male-dominated workplace. She feels that recognition for skilled women’s contributions and opportunities to grow should start at the top with senior leadership.  SOSF is proud to have women like Cynthia pushing for more female representation in government in our ranks! Outside of work, Cynthia strives to find balance in her life by traveling, reading for fun, dancing, especially salsa, listening to music, and eating all the delicious food SF has to offer.  She hopes to be able to travel more and manage her own schedule as a communications consultant in the future.  

SOSF Member, Amber Bissell

Another one of our “ladies who lead” is Amber Bissell, a second-year member of SOSF and one of the Co-Chairs of Professional Development of SOSF.  At just 31 years old, Amber is a Partner at Bain Mazza & Debski LLP, a law firm that specializes in labor and employment in California. Although she has always known she wanted to become a lawyer, she decided to pursue her Master of Science in Gender and Social Policy before going to law school.  Off the beaten path of what most would advise her not to do, pursuing her masters actually helped her specialize her law practice. Amber started her law career working at a small law firm in a male-dominated field. Afterward, she worked at another law firm founded by women before becoming a Partner at her current law firm.  So far in her career, she witnessed a few challenges for women in particular; women sometimes did not support other women in the field. The older generation held onto their positions of power and did not act as mentors to build up future legal leaders. Further, it was hard to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Currently at her law firm, Amber is grateful that her colleagues embrace cooperation and collaboration while supporting a healthy work-life balance.  Apart from her stressful yet fulfilling career, she enjoys fine dining, traveling, hiking, cooking, hosting, and getting creative with ceramics and writing. Something Amber hopes to share with other women is to trust yourself because there will be many people who will tell you that you should not pursue what you want to do. Thank you for encouraging us all to use our intrinsic motivation to achieve our goals!

SOSF Member, Xanadu Bruggers

“Don’t turn down opportunities to meet someone new,” said Xanadu Bruggers. Xanadu is a fifth-year in SOSF who served as Vice President and Philanthropy Director over the course of two years. She is currently a Board Member of the San Francisco Opera BRAVO! Club and longtime volunteer at Muttville.  Coming from a musical theater education and career background, Xanadu always felt her path was clear, but after a decade in performance, she lost her identity and wasn’t sure what would come next. After parting ways with theater, Xanadu began her career as an Executive Assistant (EA) at Pixar Animation Studios. Today she is an EA at the gaming live streaming platform, Twitch.  Joining SOSF initially seemed foreign to Xanadu as she was never in a sorority and did not know much of what the organization was about. But after a former President of SOSF encouraged her to join the organization, Xanadu found a community of women that has helped her find a new life purpose: volunteerism and nonprofit work. Currently, Xanadu is exploring graduate programs in nonprofit administration and aspires to work in nonprofit management to contribute every day to the causes she is most passionate about.

Interviewing Cynthia, Amber, and Xanadu, I learned that we are not that different in this organization.  While we all have different stories, challenges, and passions, we are able to create a powerful learning community with each other through SOSF.  Personally, SOSF has allowed me (Amy) to expand upon my creative ideas and foster leadership skills. In my non creative career, I rarely have opportunities to pitch an idea and see it unfold.  It gives me a lot of joy contributing to this organization because I’m able to see the end result of something I’ve worked hard on. Further, this organization has provided a safe space for me to feel loved, valued, and to be vulnerable.  A big city seems less lonely when you have a community that you’re a part of. Even though I’m not sure what everyone’s story is in joining, I can confidently say that there is a community for any women in their walk of life with SOSF. As Melinda Gates wrote in her book, “The Moment of Lift”, “maybe our best selves are not our polished selves.”  Looking at our members like Cynthia, Amber, and Xanadu, it’s clear that our best selves appear when we are able to share our passions, doubts, challenges, and advice with each other. 

Interested in learning more about SOSF and becoming a member? Email recruitment@sfspinsters.com and we’ll keep you in the loop. Save the date for our new member info session on February 5th! Check back for more details and other meet and greet events here!.  

Ladies Who Lead - The top 3 things we learned from Spinsters Professional Development

SOSF PR CO-CHAIR

LAUREN DREWNIANY

One of my favorite parts of Spinsters is the opportunity to network with accomplished women across every industry at all different points in their careers. When I first joined the organization, I served on our professional development committee to help plan events for our members to connect with one another and grow in their careers. Participating in the Committee made me fall in love with Spinsters even more than I already had. I’ve always been passionate about professional development (so much so I even work at LinkedIn!), so I jumped at the chance to integrate it into the Spinsters community.

“We wanted to continue to grow the supportive community within Spinsters where women can learn, share, and embolden each other professionally.”

— Ellyn Gray and Linda Loi, Professional Development Co-Chairs

Now in its third year, the professional development committee continues to grow and put on more skill-building events for our members and the Bay Area community to enjoy. This year’s co-chairs, Ellyn and Linda, had a vision going into each professional development event this year; “We wanted to continue to grow the supportive community within Spinsters where women can learn, share, and embolden each other professionally. We decided to host a range of different kinds of events, from intimate book clubs and Q&As to larger, impactful panels and workshops.”

This year, professional development took on a whole new challenge - a large format panel open to the public to hear from a group of accomplished ladies who lead. Four inspiring women reaching impressive heights in their careers participated in the panel: Samantha Von Hoene, Chief Legal Officer at Enjoy.com; Nafy Flatley, Founder of TERANGA; Karen Walker, former Chief Accounting Officer at Pandora; and Heather Burns, Strategy Director at Walmart. They came together to discuss what they learned throughout their professional journeys so far and offer advice to our members. One piece of advice that really resonated with the attendees came from Karen Walker. It’s our first take away from professional development this year:

1. Don’t overly prescript your path - be open to unforeseen opportunities that cross your path, and keep in touch with people from different phases of your career to maintain your network.

Hearing this from Karen, someone who achieved real professional success by following this advice herself, was liberating. Too often in pursuit of success, we compare ourselves to others or think we need to be somewhere by now that we are not. It’s inspiring to know that by staying open and being intentional about maintaining your network, that you can succeed in ways you never thought possible.

For any aspiring entrepreneurs out there, you’ll want to know more about the the Inspiring Side Hustles event the Committee hosted for Spinsters members only. The small group workshop featured two Spinsters alumnae, Rachel Connors and Madeline Maguire, who turned their passion projects into full-fledged careers. Rachel is the founder of Yellow Leaf Hammocks which sells hand woven hammocks with a positive social impact. (Psst, their hammocks are on Oprah’s favorite things!) Madeline is the founder of Baby Savvy Co., a private postpartum doula practice empowering new parents.

Spinsters alumnae, Rachel Connors (left) and Madeline Maguire (right)

Each Spinnie entrepreneur shared their story, how they took calculated risks, what struggles they encountered (and continue to surmount in their businesses) and identified the most valuable lessons they’ve learned both personally and professionally as a result of striking out on their own ventures. As a group, we then discussed a design thinking strategy championed by Tom Chi’s design thinking strategy called rapid prototyping. What Maddie and Rachel shared tied in perfectly with what we learned about rapid prototyping, which is a technique of rapidly developing and testing new ideas to maximize the rate of learning and grow quickly. It was inspiring to consider how we could apply this in many aspects of our lives and see how these entrepreneurs employed it to achieve hard-earned success in their new businesses. This realization leads to our second key takeaway of the year:

2. Allow yourself to fail fast and fail forward. Learn faster to quickly reach your success.

Spinsters at our Inspiring Side Hustles workshop

Spinsters at our Professional Development bookclub potluck

In addition to events where we have the chance to engage with badass female professionals outside of our active Spinsters membership, the Committee also puts on quarterly events where our members can come together and connect. One of the most popular gatherings is our quarterly book club, where Spinnies connect over a bottle of wine and discuss their thoughts on the latest book club pick. Most recently we read, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-lived, Joyful Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.The group reflected on design thinking strategies and grappled with how we go about exploring our interests without feeling pigeoned-holed into defining an exact passion. From that we discovered our third take away from the year:

3. Implement design thinking strategies and look at situations from a new point of view to help you design a life that makes you your happiest self.

Navigating your career can be stressful and confusing to say the least! On the days where I’m on the border of having a breakdown and questioning my career goals, I am so thankful I have the women in this organization to lean on. They have been there countless times to offer advice on a problem I’m dealing with at the office, to make an introduction, or to lend a listening ear when I just need to vent. That camaraderie of female professionals empowering one another is something I feel lucky to have experienced because of the Spinsters of San Francisco and I hope that you have an opportunity to experience yourself as well.

Interested in learning about joining Spinsters and more of our professional development events? Join us at our prospective new member happy hour at Off the Grid at Fort Mason this Friday, June 14th! There, you can ask questions and learn more about our membership process.

Redefining what it means to be a Spinster

SOSF PR CO-CHAIR

Lauren Drewniany

Cheers to the new year, Spinsters!

2018 marked the 89th year for the Spinsters of San Francisco. While the organization has evolved over the last 89 years, one thing remains constant - our dedication to bringing together amazing young women in the Bay Area.

Spinsters members gather for a meeting and a phone bank to fundraise for KQED in the early 90s

Before I bring you up to speed on where the organization is going, let’s take a moment to look back on how we got started. The Spinsters of San Francisco came to be on November, 6 1929 with the very first meeting taking place at the de Young house, at 1919 California Street. At that point, the Bachelors of San Francisco had already formed and the young women of the Bay Area were eager to develop an organization of their own.

Since that day, the Spinsters of San Francisco has been a place for young women to come together and support one another socially and professionally while making a positive impact on our community.

On the left, Spinsters members put on a charity benefit fashion show in the 90s. On the right, today’s Spinsters raise funds at our annual Legacy Benefit in the Swig Suite at the Fairmont, San Francisco.

So what exactly is it about Spinsters that has helped this group stay an important and thriving community in the Bay Area for so many years? The best people to speak to that are our new members who joined Spinsters last summer.

When asked why she was interested in becoming a part of Spinsters, Karen Datangel shared,

– “ –

I went through a lot personally and professionally within the last year and was looking to get more involved socially and in my community. I love that Spinsters holds so many fun events throughout the year and is also deeply involved in charity work. It was perfect for me because it was the best of both worlds! I simply love surrounding myself with amazing women who love to have fun, but also care about giving back to the world and advancing themselves professionally.

Karen Datangel is a first year member of Spinsters.

Another new member, Amy Tam, said she was drawn to Spinsters because she was seeking to build a strong community of driven women within the San Francisco Bay Area.

– “ –

Since joining Spinsters, I’ve met a lot of amazing, career oriented women.

Amy Tam is a first year member of Spinsters and our talented resident photographer.

For me (Lauren) personally, I joined Spinsters because I wanted to be a part of a group of women who would challenge me and introduce me to new ways of thinking. I am so glad I did! The women I have met in Spinsters continually inspire me with all that they accomplish and their diverse range of interests. I can confidently say I am a more open minded and well-rounded individual because of Spinsters.

With that said, no matter what your interests or goals are, Spinsters has something for you. I believe that is why Spinsters continues to attract so many amazing women throughout the years because everyone can find a way to advance themselves personally, professionally, socially, philanthropically or however else they wish in this organization. Because of this we used our 89th year as an opportunity to refresh our brand to convey who Spinsters are today. Check out a brief video of our journey to our new brand below!

Learn about our journey to SOSF's new visual brand.

Interested in redefining what it means to be a Spinster? Join us at our Prospective New Member Info Session on January 31st. There, you can ask questions and learn more about our membership process.


We cannot wait to embark on our upcoming 90th year as an organization, and we hope you’ll join us in making it Spinsters’ most impactful and unforgettable year yet!