Get Together

“The journey is not so much about how many people respond. You can just impact one person and they can impact you back.” - Bruce Muchelule When Bruce became a dad, he wasn’t quite sure how to know if he was doing things right. He reached out on Twitter to see if there were any support groups or places for dads to find peer mentorship. He couldn’t find one, but he did receive DMs from many fathers looking for a community like Bruce. DADing Different began as a space for young and first-time...

“It's way better if members are passionate and loud than dispassionate and quiet. The fact that they care enough to yell is really a gift.” - Evan Hamilton Reddit is the mothership for sub-communities known as “subreddits,” each of which covers a different topic from ask historians to cats standing up. Subreddits are each managed by a team of volunteers. Thus as the Director of Community at Reddit, Evan Hamilton doesn’t have just one community to cultivate. He has hundreds of thousands of...

“If you're going to go to your community and build with them, realize that you're going to have to support and prop them up. It's not a part-time job. It's a full-time thing.” - Todd Hansen In the Spring of 1987, a group of music fans and journalists organized a small live event in Austin, Texas. Around 700 people showed up. By 2019, South by Southwest (SXSW) had become a 10-day conference and festival with over 28,000 attendees heading to Austin each March. Each year the conference...

“The question is ‘how do I keep my volunteers on track?’ because they're hugely motivated.” - David Lyford-Smith If you spend a lot of time working with spreadsheets, you know they have a special power to rule the world. You can do almost anything with them from creating a shopping list to financial planning and analysis. Spreadsheets' powers lie in the fact they are accessible to people who aren’t programmers and coders. But if even just one cell is wrong, it can wreak terrible...

"We are a part of their success. We are a part of their team.” - Ashley Hackworth BTS is a seven-member South Korean boy band. They became the fastest-growing group since The Beatles to earn four US number-one albums, doing so in less than two years. The rise of BTS is in part thanks to a huge leaderless web of dedicated fans who call themself A.R.M.Y. People like Ashley Hackworth host accounts that serve as informational and even emotional hubs for millions of fans. They don’t just love...

“Let's bring designers together and first talk about your wellbeing. Then let's talk about the next steps forward for you as a designer.” - Lewis Kang'ethe Lewis Kang'ethe was first championed as a community leader in primary school when his teacher asked him to spearhead the mathematics club. When the teacher asks, the answer is either, “yes or yes.” Now, Lewis works as a product designer in Kenya. When he’s looking for jobs outside of Africa he often gets asked the question, “are you...

“The email that I would receive after every single town hall was, ‘I thought I was the only one.’” - Claire Wasserman By 2016, Claire Wasserman was fed up with men not taking her seriously in the workplace. For years, she’d internalized this marginalization as somehow her fault or her problem to struggle through alone. It was time for that to change. With a friend, Claire brought together 100 women in a town-hall style event to talk about money and power in the workplace. Out of those...

“I tell all my staff to have your hearts, your minds and your ears open to new ideas. It doesn't have to come from you to be a great idea.” - Adam Bedoian Margaritaville isn’t just a state of mind, it’s a real place. Seniors can live out their Buffett-inspired retirement dreams at the three Latitude Margaritaville retirement communities in Daytona Beach and Watersound, Florida, and Hilton Head, South Carolina. When moving into a retirement community, people care greatly about what their...

“The strategy is the questions. You have to ask the right questions. If you don’t, you can be walking away from a smile.” - Chris Turner When Chris Turner was 12 years old he got a metal detector and fell in love with looking for history. Over the years, he would be on the beach or in a park and get approached by a frantic couple looking for their ring. Within minutes, he was often able to help them recover their ring. These rings represent stories and relationships, and when they are...

“Society is losing something when we don’t share our weirdness with one another. You're losing something when you have someone at your table and they don't share what makes them different. One of the purposes I have in life is to create spaces where people will share what is interesting about them, and why they are different.” - Sophie Mona Pagès As a Moroccan immigrant growing up in France, Sophie Mona Pagès grew up feeling a bit “weird” in her complex identity. She craved a space infused...

“As the community grows and people come back, they start wanting to know more about us and where we're coming from. We wanted to make that really clear--the origin of all of these recipes and of our family.” - Sarah Leung The Woks of Life has opened the door for many families to connect over the food and memories they love. The Leung family, Bill and Judy, and daughters Sarah and Kaitlin started the blog to document their favorite Chinese dishes and family memories in 2013. Food has been a...

“Everyone has that thing that makes them super excited they can just talk endlessly about it. When you’re interviewing you're feeling around for that geyser. You don't know what's going to make them light up. As you find it, you can feel that flow and the change in their voice.” - Maggie Zhang Maggie Zhang and Bailey sit down to reflect on Maggie’s learnings so far as a “Get Together” correspondent. Maggie’s approaching her 10th episode on the podcast. She’s brought us the stories behind...

“The hallmark of Toastmasters is making things fun because we want people to come back. We can have the best education in the world but if you're not coming back, it's of no use.” - Joe Smith Toastmasters was founded on October 22, 1924 (97 years ago!) at a YMCA in Santa Monica, California by a man named Ralph Smedley. Ralph set out to offer a functional value--creating a space for members to improve their public speaking. What continues to keep people coming back decades later is the...

“We really managed to create a community of doers. Our people always look at how they can impact the world, how they can impact change.” - Colombe Cahen-Salvador In 2016, Colombe, Laura, and Andrea were devastated by the UK's decision to leave the European Union. Colombe is French, and Andrea and Laura are Italian. For them, the E.U. is a symbol of a more open and global society. In response, the team completely changed their lives to organize. Colombe and Andrea started by creating Volt,...

“Stop using the word community. We all know community is magical but doesn’t come together by magic. It’s magical because it’s this elusive thing. So take the ambiguity out of it. Stop using the word and get more specific.” - Kai Elmer Sotto People & Company’s theme of our last year was to refine the process we use to teach community building. How did it go? What did we learn? What will 2021 hold? Kai, Kevin and Bailey sat down with our friend Marjorie Anderson, “Get Together”...

“In creating a home, I'm creating sustainability. And I'm creating excellence within the people that I'll be housing.”- Ceyenne Doroshow Ceyenne Doroshow is an author, activist, and the founder and executive director of G.L.I.T.S., an organization dedicated to creating sustainable housing and healthcare for Black transgender people. Ceyenne has become “the parent that she desperately wanted as a child” for people around the world. At an early age, Ceyenne identified as transgender and...

“You don't have to be a celebrity or a mega influencer to take action and host an event. A hundred people or a thousand people don’t have to attend. It can be five people. That impact is still impact. ” - Nicole àBeckett Just after the 2016 U.S. election, many people were saying, “I want to do more to get involved but I don’t know how.” Nicole àBeckett and her brother, David, knew there had to be a better way to bring people together for action on issues that matter. They started SameSide...

“Leadership is actually the first few followers, not the crazy first person to stand up on stage.” - Anna McAfee In May 2017, Anna McAfee put up a simple post on LinkedIn to see if anyone living in her hometown of Coffs Coast, Australia wanted to get together. She had just returned after years of living abroad and wanted to “get to know the people behind the profiles” in her area. Anna included the hashtag #LinkedInLocal. Fifteen people made it out to the first Coffs Coast event, but the...

“We're not going to give up in-person gatherings, but at the same time, virtual tables have been so meaningful. Post-COVID probably will be a ‘both and’ community.” - Carla Fernandez In November, we hosted a live interview with Carla Fernandez and Mary Horn in front of an intimate audience. For both women, their work with The Dinner Party is personal. “We know what it’s like to lose someone and we aren’t afraid to talk about it,” their website states. When COVID-19 arrived in March, Carla,...

Note: we will discuss sexual assault in this episode and advise our listeners to practice discretion in tuning in. “Everybody's story is valid. The fact that people feel they cannot speak up about their own pain is my motivator.” - Onyango Otieno At twenty years old, Onyango Otieno was the victim of sexual assault and found he had no where to turn. In Kenya, as in many other societies, the patriarchal structure turns a blind eye to the sexual experiences of men. Men are socially...