Building in Community: An Interview with Cynthia Coulbourne of Women in AI Colorado

Empowering creative intent through connection, collaboration, and co-creation

Many people think of AI as something that replaces human connection—a chatbot answering questions, an algorithm making decisions, a tool that does what a person used to do. But what if AI could actually bring people together?

It’s a counterintuitive idea, especially at a time when research from Pew indicates widespread concern that “AI will erode [rather] than improve people’s ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships.” Yet that’s exactly the challenge one Colorado group has taken on.

“We’re in a loneliness pandemic,” says Cynthia Coulbourne, co-leader of Women in AI Colorado and founder of AI consultancy Gray Horse Group. “There [are] a lot of people searching for connection.” Coulbourne co-founded Women in AI Colorado in 2024 with Susan Adams, a learning strategist focused on AI integration in educational settings. The two met at a Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group meetup and then started building with many others what would eventually become Women in AI Colorado, the first official gathering of which was in May 2024.

Through connection, collaboration, and co-creation—what Adams and Coulbourne call their three Cs—the group’s mission is to “empower women’s creative intent with AI to shape our futures.”

Women in AI Colorado hosts monthly meetups, typically on Tuesday evenings, with 40-50 attendees, to discuss topics like how to use emotional leadership with AI transformation and navigating your career with AI agents. The group also runs Women in AI Labs for more in-depth, hands-on learning.

Both settings are intentionally designed to feel more accessible and welcoming than traditional tech meetups—attendees are encouraged to let their guard down, share their anxieties, and reflect deeply about their relationship with AI.

“If you think about the world we’re in right now, there’s a lot of uncertainty, which leads to anxiety,” says Coulbourne. “And it’s hard for people to keep up with so much change.” As a result, Coulborne and Adams are creating a different kind of community, one built on trust and curiosity rather than on hype and achievement.

Fostering Connection

At a learning lab in Summer 2025, Coulbourne and Adams carved out time for a “mini-salon”—modeled after Renaissance-era European salons where women gathered to engage in lively, intellectual discussion. At this particular event, the conversation centered around feelings of fear related to AI: how the technology was disrupting roles, personal conceptions of value, and confidence at work.

Initially, the women talked about external solutions—the need for stronger AI regulation or for tech companies to eliminate algorithmic biases—but eventually, with gentle pressing from Coulbourne and Adams, the conversation shifted. “We kept asking ‘What should we do about this?’” The discussion, Coulbourne recalls, “evolved and expanded into how the women could help each other, and the broader community, learn and create ethical, human-centered AI solutions for the good of all humanity.”

This evolution and similar breakthroughs are possible because of the experience Coulbourne and Adams design when they bring people together. All Women in AI Colorado events start with unstructured time for participants to meet and catch up. Coulbourne and Adams also introduce themselves to new attendees and help facilitate connections with others in the group.

Once official programming begins, honesty and vulnerability are paramount. “We set some pretty strong ground rules; there are no dumb questions… There is no blame, [no] shame, regardless of where people are,” explains Coulbourne. “We’re here to support women moving from curious to confident with AI.”

As co-leaders, Adams and Coulbourne model vulnerability themselves, speaking candidly about their own knowledge gaps, anxieties, and questions. “We’re saying, we haven’t figured [this out],” Coulbourne explains. “We’re trying this. We’re experimenting.” With their candor, Coulbourne and Adams inspire others to lean in and then build on their connection with the group.

Encouraging Collaboration

The next step, Coulbourne explains, is having women work and learn together in smaller groups. That’s where learning labs come in: Coulbourne and Adams offer multi-hour, hands-on instruction for project-based work around a specific topic. The goal of these sessions is to “facilitate the space such that women can grow and accelerate their curiosity, experimentation, and play,” says Coulbourne.

In each lab, participants are encouraged to pick challenging but achievable projects, like building an AI task assistant or synthetic team. They then partner with another person who serves as a sounding board and fellow problem-solver.

This pairing practice creates valuable learning opportunities. Women watch each other work, share their approaches, and discover techniques they wouldn’t have thought of alone. One person might reveal how they structure their AI conversations, another might demonstrate a shortcut or workflow that changes how everyone else approaches their projects. The labs intentionally let insights and approaches emerge organically rather than prescribing a single “correct” method, which creates moments for curiosity to surface and opportunities for women to discern what they really want to pursue.

Supporting Co-creation

While participants in Women in AI Labs partner with each other, they’re also learning to partner with AI itself. During the labs, Coulbourne, Adams, and other volunteers act as coaches who help attendees learn to engage in back-and-forth with AI, using it to test ideas and explore alternatives as they build. These coaches, above all, are there to help reframe mistakes and misfires. The reaction should be, “‘Yay, you failed!’” explains Coulbourne. “‘Now you know what doesn’t work. That’s a learning moment. Celebrate and share it!’”

The learning labs help participants discover that working with AI doesn’t have to mean surrendering their creativity or agency. Instead, when approached thoughtfully, AI can become part of the creative process—amplifying human vision rather than replacing it. Through these experiences alongside their human partners, participants explore new ways of building with AI that keep them firmly in control of their work and their vision.

What’s Next for Women In AI Colorado

Last November, at the Grace Hopper Celebration, Coulbourne, Adams, and others from Women in AI Colorado shared what they were doing with other women in tech and invited people to follow along. By the end of the conference, over 300 women had signed up with an important question on their minds: How do I bring this community to my city?

Coulbourne was blown away. “Our focus on addressing the human side of AI within a trusted network of women really touched hearts,” she says. “We are designing an approach to accelerate the ‘human-centered idea to impact’ process with AI as a creative collaborator.”

Women in AI Colorado isn’t offering a blueprint that every community should follow. Coulbourne and Adams are the first to admit their approach is simply one way of doing things, shaped by their particular context and the women who show up each month. “We call it ‘Community is the Curriculum,’” says Coulbourne. What works in Colorado might look different in another city or with another group. But their model demonstrates that intentional community can provide support as we collectively define our relationship to a technology in flux.

The group itself is still very much a work in progress. Coulbourne and Adams are actively exploring how to scale their three Cs framework, working with mentors to figure out what expansion might look like without losing the intimacy that makes their programs work.

And they’re wrestling with questions they don’t yet have answers to: How do you maintain trust and vulnerability in larger groups? How do you replicate the learning lab experience when demand outpaces capacity? What does it mean to give other cities the tools to start their own chapters while honoring each community’s unique needs?

However the group evolves, though, Coulbourne and Adams promise one thing won’t change: Whatever comes next, Women in AI Colorado will be figuring it out with their community.