COMMUNITY

Community

Meetups I run, clubs I've called home, and the communities that make Charlotte worth showing up for.

Stride City Run Club

I started running with Stride City Run Club during the pandemic — at a time when outdoor hangouts were basically the only hangouts. What I didn't expect was finding one of the most genuinely welcoming communities in Charlotte. A weekly run, good people — it became something I didn't want to stop doing.

The club meets within walking distance of my house, and the route passes right through my neighborhood. I ended up building the club's website along the way. My daughters come along too — they bike the route instead of running. After every Wednesday run, we end up at Edge City Brewing — it's as much a part of the week as the run itself. Follow along on Instagram if you want to see what we're up to.

stridecityrunclub.com

Charlotte Devs

Charlotte Devs is a monthly meetup for developers in Charlotte, and I'm the one keeping the lights on. We get together once a month outside at OMB LOSO — good beer, good conversation, and a crowd of people who spend too much of their time thinking about software. If you're a developer in the area, come say hi.

Charlotte Devs on Meetup

Hackerspace Charlotte

Hackerspace Charlotte was a community workshop for makers, builders, and tinkerers in the Charlotte area — a physical space where hardware met software and people came to work on things that didn't have a job description. It's no longer active, but the community carries on through Makerspace Charlotte, which is continuing that legacy today.

Chess Dawgs

I founded the Chess Dawgs my freshman year of college with a dorm mate. The premise was simple — show up every week with boards and play. We started in the honors dorm, just the two of us and whoever wandered in. Consistency turned out to be the whole strategy. The club gradually grew, and eventually we moved to the Tate Student Center.

From there it took on a life of its own. I made the logo, put up fliers around campus, and built the club's first website. We made a short video, hosted tournaments, and put together a traveling team. There were some genuinely good parties after our victories. It was my first real experience building something from nothing — and it taught me more about showing up and sticking with it than anything else I did in college.