Social Connection Summit

At Fabrik, we believe social connection shouldn’t be left to chance.

That’s why we’re excited to invite you to our second annual, Social Connection Summit on Thursday, July 16th at Fabrik DUMBO.

Join community builders, researchers, founders, and advocates who are working to create a future where connection, belonging, and community are treated as essential parts of a healthy life.

Throughout the evening, you’ll hear from leading voices in social wellness, participate in interactive breakout sessions, and connect with others who care deeply about building a more connected world.

Ready to get back together IRL? Join us as we build the social wellness movement together at Fabrik, a network of social spaces designed specifically for community, connection, and finding a sense of belonging.

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Agenda:
4:00 – 5:00 PM: Welcome To The Summit! Enjoy light bites, drinks, and facilitated mingling
5:00 – 5:30 PM: “Structuring your Meetups for Connection” with Odile Beniflah & Saba Ahmed
5:45 – 6:15 PM: “Rooted in Community: Creating Belonging through Place” with Mitch Bach & Mario Hernandez
6:30 – 7:00 PM: “Impact-Oriented Local Community Building” with Lenny An & Rakeea Chesick Gordis
7:30 – 8:00 PM: “Social Connection for Health: Tangible Skills” with Phil Chu & Jackie Ourman
8:15 – 8:45 PM: Fireside Chat with Gwen Wiscount & Susan McPherson
9:00 PM onward: Block Party at Fontainhas

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Our Speakers:

Susan McPherson is a serial connector, angel investor, keynote speaker and corporate responsibility expert. She is the founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, a communications consultancy focused on the intersection of brands and social impact. She is the author of The Lost Art of Connecting (McGraw-Hill). Susan has 30+ years of experience in marketing, public relations, and sustainability communications, speaking regularly at industry events including Massachusetts Conference for Women, BSR, DLD, Worth Women and Techonomy, and contributing to the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Forbes. She has appeared on NPR, CNN, USA Today, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times.

Susan is the recipient of Forbes magazine’s 50 over 50—Impact 2021, Worth Media’s Worthy100, and the 2026 Women in Sustainability Leadership Award and currently serves on the boards of The 19th News and the US Chamber of Connection.

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Saba Ahmed is a social wellness advocate and the cofounder of Tiny Dinner, a community for dinner parties with friends of friends in people’s homes. Their members have hosted over 300 dinners in homes across New York, Miami, and LA

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Odile Beniflah is a growth strategist and community builder who has spent over 20 years helping startups such as Meetup and Duolingo scale through community-led growth and international expansion. Passionate about bringing people together in real life, she champions a future where technology strengthens human connection and helps organizations build more meaningful, connected communities in the age of AI.

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Jackie Ourman is the founder of the Social Connection Collective (SCC), a growing global community dedicated to combating the loneliness epidemic. A licensed mental health counselor and executive coach based in New York, she brings a deeply relational lens to her work, shaped by years in clinical practice at Values Aligned Therapy, an earlier career in HR within investment banking and equities, and leadership experience in the nonprofit sector. She is also a founding member of the AI Mental Health Collective. Jackie’s work sits at the intersection of clinical care, social health, and the rapidly evolving fields of AI and human connection.

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​Lenny An channels his community building between two worlds, his Chinese heritage and his love of local civic engagement. He is the founder of Dumpling Dude, with a mission to showcase his love of his Chinese culture through in-person dumpling making, mahjong teaching, and Chinese cultural events. He is also an avid local political junkie. He previously worked as the Deputy Campaign Manager for Yuh-Line Niou’s congressional campaign in 2022, and he currently serves as an appointed representative to his local Community Board (shoutout Brooklyn CB2!). He has found his political home with New Kings Democrats and CAAAV (Communities Against Asian American Violence) and hopes to help others learn how they can impact their local neighborhoods and communities through civic engagement as well.
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Rakeea Chesick Gordis (she/her) serves as the Foundation for Social Connection’s Associate Program Manager for Community Initiatives, supporting the Action Guide for Building Socially Connected Communities.

Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia (K’emk’emeláy), she has travelled far and wide to foster her passion for community-building, grassroots organizing, and solidarity networks.

Holding a B.A. in Religious Studies from McGill University and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution and Coexistence from the Heller School at Brandeis University, Rakeea has always been fascinated by what forms of meaningful connection bring people together. She has explored this question through her work as a mediator and dialogue facilitator.

Rakeea lives in Somerville, Massachusetts (on the colonized homelands of the Massachusett tribe) surrounded by community. She loves to sing in big groups, go on long bike rides, and do the crossword.

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Phil Chu is the founder of Seen, a company building tools and training to make relational fitness—the ability to build trust, navigate conflict, and deepen connection—as accessible and normal as physical fitness. He believes connection isn’t a personality trait, it’s a trainable skill—something he learned firsthand building skills in the workplace that transformed how he showed up with family, friends, and his partner Sammy.

Before Seen, Phil spent over a decade in startups—most notably at Springboard, where he launched the B2B business and helped scale the company from 6 to 300. He’s also a co-founder of ShelterTech, a nonprofit building technology for homeless and housing-insecure communities.

Phil’s core belief: social health is the next mental health. He splits his time between San Francisco and Mexico City and loves snowboarding, cooking, and hosting monthly philosophy salons. Learn more at joinseen.com.

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Mario Hernandez is a professor of Sociology at Mills College at Northeastern University. His book Bushwick’s Bohemia: Art and Revitalization in Gentrifying Brooklyn examines the complexities of one Brooklyn neighborhood grappled with building belonging in the face of radical change.

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Mitch Bach is the CEO of TripSchool, a global school for place-based storytellers, and Tourpreneur, a business incubator that helps 23,000  entrepreneurs around the world design place-based experiences that change cities and towns. He’s recently founded Placeful.org, a non-profit focused on creating placed-based storytelling activations to build a sense of belonging in local communities.

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