My personal network developed quite innocently in Beecher’s handmade cheese kitchen; this is where my college girlfriends and I began to discuss our careers. It started with my request for advice about a difficult coworker during a girls’ night get-together in what became our safe haven, a room of our own. The Cellar, their wine and cheese cave, to this day envelops us like a secret hideaway and the shared plates encourage conversation.

In our late twenties and at the dawn of our thirties, our careers blossomed. No longer green shoots fresh out of school, we had earned the larger responsibilities and our professional decisions felt weightier. Our discussions also became weightier, talking through how to manage teams for the first time and exploring what we each fundamentally want from our careers.

Together we’ve faced setbacks and disappointments, we’ve faltered and then carried on. Through it all, we’re growing in our respective fields: banking, law, consulting, and marketing. Most recently, we gathered to toast a new job (congrats, Mairead!) and a promotion (that one was mine).

I am proud of these women, and ever so grateful for their support and advice. I wish for everyone a tight, trusted network that provides a place to vent, to find encouragement and honest advice, and to learn from one another. You can cover a lot over a good glass of wine and some of the “world’s best” mac and cheese.

While she’s almost an official New Yorker, now that she has spent the past eight years working for a large investment bank in New York City, Jean Blosser still cherishes her Midwestern roots, growing up in Columbus, Ohio. She is an alumnus of Boston College and enjoys her whiskey neat.