With Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

Leaving an unhealthy, toxic, or misaligned work environment is not just about walking away. It's about creating a new path forward, and unlearning the ways we were taught to equate urgency, over-functioning, and exhaustion with success. Drawing from twenty-five years in design, public service, and social work, Rachael explores what it means to leave with care, integrity, and purpose. You’ll explore how inherited work patterns shape your sense of worth, how the harm of those patterns accumulates, and how to begin rebuilding a more sustainable relationship with work and with yourself. 

You'll learn:

• How to recognize and release patterns of urgency, over-identification, and self-abandonment that keep you stuck
• What it means to ‘leave well,’ grounded in clarity, boundaries, and care for self and others
• Why embodied awareness matters in transitions and how accumulated workplace harms show up in our bodies
• How to restore alignment and purpose after leaving, using care, ethics, and community as your compass 

With Dan Mall

In this Real Talk™conversation, designer and entrepreneur Dan Mall shares the one simple reason you’re not making more money. It’s not the market, economy, or your clients. Dan will show you what it is and how it helped him grow a 7-figure agency for a decade with only two full-time employees and eventually sell it.

You'll learn:

• What’s really limiting your business’ potential and how to expand it
• A simple formula for pitching anything to anyone
• How much to charge every time (and it’s not “it depends”)
• How to address the biggest budget objections from clients

With Vivianne Castillo

Hope isn't a feeling that arrives fully formed, it's a muscle you strengthen with every choice to keep building the life you want, even when fear tells you to stop. If you're tired of staying stuck but terrified of what leaving might cost you, this talk will show you why walking out isn't reckless: it's the only rational response to a job that's dimming your light.

As someone who walked out herself and has spent years helping professionals construct profitable offers and transition from corporate roles to independent work, Vivianne knows firsthand that hope without a plan is just anxiety with a smile. You'll learn what transforms hope from wishful thinking into sustainable action: not blind optimism, but a plan, a community, and something meaningful and profitable to build toward.

You'll learn:

• Why hope is a practice and the daily choices that strengthen it (even when staying feels safer)
• The real cost of staying (and why it's always higher than the cost of leaving)
• What hope actually needs to survive your transition into entrepreneurship (hint: it's not motivation or a perfect plan)
• Why hope needs something concrete to build toward (and what that something is)

The three of us go there and are answering your unspoken questions. You know the questions: the ones you Google at 2am and the ones you feel like you can't ask your manager, your partner, or your colleagues. And we’ll answer them honestly.

No corporate speak.

No toxic positivity.

No "just believe in yourself" hoopla. 

Questions like:

• How should I be thinking about money and how much to have in savings before I leave? What's realistic vs. what's just fear talking?
• How do you stop feeling like a fraud when you charge clients more than your old hourly rate as an employee?
• I grew up poor/working class. Leaving a stable paycheck feels like betraying my family's sacrifices. How do you reconcile that?
• Do I quit first and then build, or build on the side until I can quit? What did you do and what would you do differently?
• I'm terrified of being seen as a failure. How did you deal with the fear of leaving a “good job”?
• How do you handle health insurance? That's the thing keeping me stuck more than anything.
• I've invested X years building my design career. If I leave now, doesn't that mean I wasted all that time?

This isn't a sanitized Q&A, this is the conversation you wish you could have with someone who's been exactly where you are: terrified, stuck, and wondering if wanting something different makes you weak or brave.

We'll tell you what worked, what didn't, what we'd do differently and what we'd do exactly the same.

And we'll tell you the truth: leaving is scary, staying is scarier, and you're not crazy for wanting out.

With Dan Mall, Founder of Make More Money

No slides. Just one big FigJam with assignments and exercises that we’ll all climb into and workshop the first few steps of a successful business. You won’t just learn how; we’ll actually do the work together. Your job after this workshop will be to continue what we started.

During this workshop, you’ll:

• Know what to focus on at every step of your business journey
• Find the numbers that will drive your business
• Send your first Hot Outreach message
• Plant the seeds for your unique positioning

If you are a designer ready to niche down, raise prices, and build a business that runs on purpose, then this is for you.

With Vivianne Castillo, Founder of Choose Courage Inc.

Most people leave corporate and accidentally recreate it: overworking, undercharging, saying yes to everyone, and abandoning their values for revenue. In this workshop, you'll build a profitable offer that pays well AND protects your peace. You'll learn how to construct an offer that honors your boundaries, attracts aligned clients, and proves that "profitable" and "ethical" aren't opposites, they're the same thing when done right.

During this workshop, you’ll:

• Build one complete, profitable offer with built-in boundaries that protect your peace.
• Price it based on value AND your cost of freedom (not just market rates).
• Create your values filter aka attract the right clients, repel the wrong ones.
• Map your 30-day validation plan: test it before you bet everything on it.

If you are a UX or creative professional who wants to build a business that pays well, feels good, and protects your peace without burning out or selling your soul, then this is for you.

With Rachael Dietkus, LCSW, Founder of Social Workers Who Design

You’ve decided to leave, or you’re preparing to. Now what? In this reflective and hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to define your own ethical stance and emotional boundaries through a framework inspired by social work’s scope of practice. Together, we’ll explore what it means to design a practice that honors your values, protects your energy, and sustains your capacity to care. Through guiding reflections, writing, and conversation, you’ll begin to map your unique ‘field of care’ – the unique space between what you are responsible for, what you can influence, and what is beyond your control. 

This process helps you understand that the inherited ways of working that no longer serve you, recognize what restoration and sustainability look like for you now, and imagine the conditions you want to create in your future work. You’ll leave with a clearer sense of direction and the beginnings of a care practice rooted in clarity and purpose. 

During this workshop, you’ll:

• Examine the patterns, pressures, and inherited ways of working that have shaped how you’ve worked and led
• Translate the social work concept of a scope of practice into your own context to clarify what you hold, what you don’t, and where your limits, responsibilities, and values live
• Create a personalized Field of Care Map that defines your purpose, boundaries, and conditions you need for restoration and sustainable practice 
• Craft a short Practice Statement to guide future decisions, collaborations, and the kinds of work you want to build next 

If your work shapes experiences, communities, or systems – and you want to do work with more care, integrity, and purpose – this workshop is for you. 

Whether you register today or the day before the event, you pay the same price.

We're not manufacturing urgency through pricing tricks because the urgency is already real: it's the years you're losing staying in a job that's dimming your light.

And unlike a lot of design conference, we believe it's important to practice the values that the UX industry prides itself on ... like being human-centered💙

Whether you register today or the day before the event, you pay the same price. We're not manufacturing urgency through pricing tricks because the urgency is already real: it's the years you're losing staying in a job that's dimming your light.

Why $149?

Because we remember what it's like to be stuck: wanting out so badly but feeling like every "investment in yourself" is another luxury you can't justify while golden-handcuffed to a corporate salary you resent.

$149 is less than:

• One day of your salary
• The Figma subscription your company pays for so you can make buttons slightly better
• What you spend not thinking about it for another month

For us, this isn't about money or pricing tickets so that we make as much money as possible.

It's about creating a safe space for you to bet on yourself.

We priced this so that if you're seriously considering leaving — even if you're scared, even if you're not sure when — you can say yes without agonizing.

We believe that choosing yourself shouldn’t come at the expense of others ... it should create more possibility for everyone. That’s why 20% of every ticket goes directly to two organizations doing life-changing work in these unprecedented times:

💙 The Greater Chicago Food Depository: connecting our neighbors with healthy food and addressing the root causes of hunger.

💙 The National Immigrant Justice Center: providing advocacy and legal support to keep families together and protect the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers.

This is what regenerative commerce looks like: care that circulates. Your investment fuels not just your next chapter, but someone else’s chance to either continue or begin theirs.

You can learn more here.