Building my UX Portfolio – Where to find Users to Interview?

I have been interested about a career in UX/UI for a long time and even had a chat with some working UX professionals about their jobs previously. It really sounds like the way to go for me.

So recently, I decided to pivot my career from a frontend developer to a UX/UI designer. This is my top goal for 2022!

At the moment, I am building up three UX/UI projects for my portfolio. Specifically, I am in the user research and interview phase. I asked a few friends already for some of these questions, but I realized that I should get a more diverse sample size!

What's a good approach or good place to go to find users to interview for UX/UI projects?

However, I wanted to get a better representation of users instead. Where would you recommend I go to find users to interview for my portfolio projects?