Creating Networking Opportunities For Diverse Groups

Pro tip if you want to get ahead in life: build your relationships through shared, purpose-driven activities. I’ve found that some of the most powerful relationships in my career, ones that have led to real revenue and meaningful opportunities, didn’t come from a “networking mixer.” They came from volunteering, or from being shoulder-to-shoulder with others at a philanthropic event. The FIRST article I ever read when I invented my own pasta sauce ten years ago was in the Harvard Business Review (linkedin in bio) that showed that shared activities, whether it’s volunteering, serving on a nonprofit board, or even something as simple as playing a weekly sport, create deeper and more diverse connections than traditional networking ever could. It's called the Shared Activities Principle. They unite people from different backgrounds around a common purpose, rather than clustering like-minded peers in the same echo chamber. At our dinners, we would get people to work together to create the meal, essentially inventing a container for shared activities for strangers to meet, to serve others. HBR wrote that if more than 65% of your network is made up of people you introduced yourself to, your network is probably too homogenous to bring you new ideas or opportunities. Shared activities break that pattern. When you volunteer, you’re meeting other people who also have a giving mentality. They’re givers by nature. Which means when life or business gets tough, those are the people most likely to show up for you. That’s not something you often find in a transactional cocktail-hour exchange of business cards. So here’s my invitation: Instead of another “networking event,” try joining a fundraiser, a Habitat for Humanity build, or a nonprofit board meeting. Invest your time in something that matters. You’ll not only serve a cause you care about, you’ll build a network rooted in generosity, trust, and shared purpose. For the leaders reading this, try sponsoring a volunteer day for your team. An entire day where your team still gets paid, but gets paid to do good. Bonus points if you can get folks from different teams that normally don't talk, to volunteer together. That's when cross-functional creativity, innovation, and mentorship occurs. P.S. If anybody has any ideas for volunteering in NYC, my DM's are always open. Me, Andy Ellwood, and John Vatalaro love volunteering on Saturday's at a Food Pantry in nyc, but would love so many more opportunities, please!

Networking needs to be more accessible. Being in a large room of people all talking at once and (hopefully) wearing nametags doesn't work well for me as a deafblind person. How am I supposed to find meaningful and relevant connections? Participating in large conferences requires a lot of energy for me, and I usually don't make as many connections as I could have or as a nondisabled person can make. One challenge is that it’s hard for me to recognize faces even if I know someone online, so I can miss people in the space that I actually would like to meet. With my narrow field of vision and hearing disability, 1:1 conversations are what work best for me, but that isn't always effective at events where people gather in groups. One thing I started doing recently is taking a photo of the nametag of every person I speak to. This takes the pressure off of me having to remember their name or take notes. Another best practice I like is organized networking with matchmaking. At the WITS Travel Creator Summit by Wanderful, creators make profiles and can request meetings with brands. Brands set up 10-minute appointments with us and we have a dedicated time to do these appointments. While this could be further improved, it helps me have many valuable conversations in a short time frame. For future conferences, I’m thinking about how I can adapt to large networking events and what feedback I have for event organizers so I can help these experiences be more accessible for others. How could networking be better for you? #Networking #Accessibility #Conferences #EventPlanning

I cracked the code on tech's $1B blind spot Uncomfortable truth: 87% of tech professionals only collaborate with people who look like them. The result? Homogeneous thinking. Stagnant innovation. Missed opportunities. The lesson: Your biggest breakthroughs don't come from networking with people who think like you—they come from connecting with people who think differently. The Corporate Data That Changed Everything McKinsey proved it: Companies with diverse leadership outperform homogeneous ones by 36% in profitability. Boston Consulting Group found that companies with diverse management teams report 19% higher revenue from innovation. Yet corporate diversity initiatives focus on executives while ignoring the pipeline—Gen Z. The GenZtea thesis: Apply corporate diversity principles to Gen Z collaboration—cultural diversity AND diversity of thought. Most tech events mirror their host's demographics. GenZtea events look like a mini United Nations across both culture and industry verticals. From AAPI heritage celebrations to deep tech innovation summits to consumer product launches—I've cracked the code on cross-industry, cross-cultural density. My Unfair Advantage As a civil engineering pre-med student turned African American tech community builder, I've lived diversity of thought firsthand—bridging STEM disciplines before bridging cultures. From The Group Chat Queen's global reach to GenZtea's IRL gatherings spanning healthcare to consumer tech, I've cracked cross-cultural AND cross-industry engagement through engineered processes. Why This Scales For Gen Z founders: When sponsors see themselves represented at events, partnerships become inevitable—the same principle that drives Fortune 500 boardroom decisions. For attendees: Cross-cultural AND cross-industry collaboration rewrites problem-solving, driving the same innovation that powers corporate success. For the industry: We're building the diverse leadership pipeline that tomorrow's companies desperately need. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." - Galatians 3:28 This isn't just mission—it's systematic competitive advantage. The takeaway: Stop optimizing for comfort zones. Start optimizing for productive friction. Whether you're building a startup, hosting an event, or assembling a team, ask yourself: "Who's missing from this room?" The answer might be your next competitive advantage.

✨ What’s the best way to have a meaningful conversation with a bunch of strangers? The first two Spark No. 9 salons invited people from vastly different arenas to come together for an evening of conversation. We weren’t sure it would work. Would people really show up just to talk? The answer: a strong yes. Here’s what we learned in our first two experiments that we will take forward to future salons: → Cast the net wide. Our first salon, An Audience of One, was ostensibly about how technology has pushed us toward narrower and narrower targeting. But while our room had a fair number of digital marketers and audience specialists, it also included people in theatrical production, founders, filmmakers, angel investors, technologists, and storytellers. The conversations in each group were wide-ranging, and I think people were surprised at what they had in common across industries and disciplines. → Curate. Each conversation group was carefully constructed from the list of confirmed attendees. Each group had something in common—maybe everyone worked for a large organization—but we also thought like matchmakers. Who might be able to help each other? Who did we think would have a crazy-good chat? → Create structure. Each conversation group had a different question to discuss and a coordinator who provided gentle facilitation. Giving people a topic totally circumvented the awkward small talk that happens at networking events. In fact, in my group, people didn’t even introduce themselves! They just started talking about the topic and over time revealed relevant info about themselves. Of course, we had a hiccup or two. For example, somehow our no-shows all came from one or two conversation groups, which made for a scramble as we tried to resize. We’ll be better at that next time. In any case, our guests were so gracious that they just rolled with it. It’s funny—most of us spend every day as practitioners. We’re targeting audiences or innovating (the topic of our second salon), but we rarely zoom out and think about the culture that we operate in or the challenges that we share. It turns out that a salon is a great way to create a space for broader conversations and to build real connections among people from diverse fields.