NGNM United We Are: Empowering & Emancipating Women Through Cycling
As part of Women’s History Month, we’re featuring four different women’s clubs with a strong presence on Zwift. We start with Milly De Mori giving us insight into the cycling brand/club she founded, No Gods No Masters (NGNM).
Looking to join a women’s club? See our Women’s Clubs on Zwift post!
When was your club founded?
No Gods No Masters as a cycling apparel brand was founded in 2017, our first collection hit the market in 2018. Soon after we started running women-only local rides in Europe supported by a network of ambassadors. Moving our rides onto Zwift felt like the most natural step, as I’ve been a long term advocate of indoor cycling and training. The Women Crush Wednesdays group ride on Zwift was born in early 2019.
The NGNM United We Are Zwift club followed as soon as clubs became a feature on Zwift, I believe it was 2020-21.
How did your club come to exist?
NGNM was founded combining two core ideas: offering high-end apparel for women (rather than entry level products, which were the norm back then), and building an empowering international community of women cyclists. These were, and still are, the pillars of the brand. Cycling offers a powerful space to grow physically, mentally and even spiritually, having the support of an encouraging, like-minded community makes this journey stronger and more meaningful.
Have any/all your club members ever met up IRL? If so, please tell us about it!
It’s a mix. Some members first met through our Zwift rides and later connected in real life by joining our United We Are cycling events in Italy. Others discovered the community through our IRL rides or UWA events and then continued to train and ride with us online throughout the year.
I met my co-ride leaders Mim Taylor and Nan Deardorff McLain via Zwift. All of these United We Are activities wouldn’t be possible without them, I’m very grateful to have them by my side in this journey!
I also love this cross-pollination between RL and Zwift and vice versa. Zwift makes it easy to keep the community connected year-round and to offer multiple ways to ride and train together. This is what I love about Zwift: it enables my vision of a truly borderless community of women, united by a shared love of cycling.
That’s also why we named both our events and our Zwift Club United We Are.
It’s also the opening line of one of our brand mantras: United We Are, Lifting as We Climb.
Do most/many/any of your members also ride outdoors?
Most of our community rides outdoors as well. I would say that just a minority is strictly riding indoors on Zwift.
What do you see as the biggest hurdle for women to start cycling?
There are many hurdles to starting cycling, including the investment of time and money, and concerns around safety.
But in my opinion, the biggest barrier is the lack of other women to ride with. Especially at the beginning, riding alone, or only with men, can feel intimidating rather than enjoyable. There’s a lot to learn, and without the right support and role models, it’s easy to feel out of place, talked down to, or simply left behind.
This is something I care deeply about, and it’s one of the reasons behind the name No Gods No Masters, a mantra about becoming our own masters and pursuing our goals within a loving, supportive environment.
A strong female community is the best way to start and progress in this sport. It helps remove many of the other hurdles mentioned above and replaces them with confidence, belonging, and shared motivation.
That’s why, after offering local group rides, challenges, and structured workouts on Zwift, the natural next step was to create our IRL cycling events, United We Are. They allow women to experience this supportive mindset firsthand, while adding a sense of discovery and adventure. Italy, where I’m originally from, is a particularly powerful setting for that.
Is the answer the same for women starting cycling on Zwift?
Not entirely. Zwift makes the introduction to cycling much easier. Today, there are many women-only rides, teams, and communities that make it simpler to get started, feel welcomed, and learn the basics quickly.
For women who live in places with few cyclists, or where winter or summer conditions are extreme, Zwift is the perfect platform to bridge that gap. It offers choice, structure, and a genuinely rewarding experience, regardless of geography or season.
That’s why I love it so much: it lowers the barrier to entry while making cycling feel accessible, social, and fun from day one.
Do you have thoughts/ideas/dreams for how we (we as a collective humanity, not necessarily Zwift – but it can include Zwift if you want) get more women riding?
I believe it starts when we, as women, place a little less pressure on ourselves to be the perfect everything, and begin to unlearn the conditioning that tells us to always put others first, to multitask endlessly, and to serve before honoring ourselves.
Being a woman today can feel like a complex game of Tetris, constantly trying to make everything fit, and I truly believe we’re capable of it. What matters is allowing ourselves to also honor our own needs, and to consciously carve out time that is just for us. That’s often the first step toward finding the space to ride.
From there, one of the strongest activators is word of mouth. Seeing other women ride, hearing their stories, and feeling personally invited into the experience makes cycling feel accessible rather than intimidating. Community grows through shared experiences, not perfection.
Cycling can feel time-consuming, but once invested in the right setup at home, most of us can find one hour to jump on an indoor trainer and join a Zwift group ride or workout, often more easily than fitting in a trip to the gym.
Outdoor cycling adds another dimension: discovery, presence, and a kind of meditation in motion. Even a short one- or two-hour ride on the weekend can become a powerful way to disconnect, reset, and tap into that flow state that comes from being outside and close to nature.
What is a fun fact you’d like to share about your club?
Two fun facts:
No Gods No Masters traces back to a motto used by women activists in the early 1900s, particularly in the United States, as a call for equal rights both at work and at home. Funny enough, and perhaps telling, more than a century later, we’re still fighting for many of the same forms of recognition.
It felt like the perfect name for a women-first brand in a traditionally male-dominated industry. That said, the progress we’ve seen in recent years has been incredible, across many fronts. The Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is just one powerful and very visible example of how things are changing.
The Zwift racing team CrushPod was born out of NGNM’s weekly group ride, Women Crush Wednesdays. The founding members met through these rides and quickly went on to create a fantastic women’s team that truly rips on Zwift races. Many of the CrushPod racers still ride with us every week, and it’s a pleasure to host them at our United We Are cycling holidays in Italy.
If you had a magic wand to change one thing about the Zwift product OR the Zwift community, what would you wish for?
If I had a magic wand, I’d love to see full control functionality built into the Companion App, so it truly works as a remote control. For example, if I forget to pair my Zwift controllers, I currently have to do it directly on my Mac rather than through the Companion App.
In my setup, the computer is far from my bike, which means stopping, losing the group I’m riding with, walking over to the computer, pairing the device, and then jumping back on the bike. Having these basic actions available directly from the phone would make the experience much smoother and more rider-friendly.
On the community side, for the Clubs feature, I’d also love the option to upload a custom club image instead of using a generic one 🙂.
Follow NGNM:
- Zwift Club: zwift.com/clubs/19908def-e39c-466b-9737-4db8bb40e503
- Zwift Events: zwift.com/events/tag/ngnm
- Insta: instagram.com/ngnm_cycling
- Strava Club: strava.com/clubs/nogodsnomasters
- Facebook: facebook.com/ngnm.cycling
- Website: nogodsnomasters.life
