I’m a natural connector, so I think I truly have the best job in Philadelphia. I am Vice President of Ecosystem Development for the Philadelphia Science Center and Executive Director of Venture Cafe Philadelphia. I see my job as an opportunity to convene and galvanize the innovation ecosystem.
I spent the first few months in my position having literally hundreds of conversations with people, trying to understand the Philadelphia ecosystem. I certainly had my bias having lived in Philadelphia for over 25 years, but it was great to be able to survey the community to see what the needs were. Something that came out of that was this idea for an opportunity and a place to bring folks together. There are a lot of great things that are happening, but people aren’t getting the chance to talk together. So if there is a central place, there is an opportunity to leverage the great work that other teams are doing–to bring it to life. And that happens through Venture Cafe.
Venture Cafe is a global nonprofit whose mission is connecting innovators to make things happen. The hallmark of Venture Cafe is something called The Thursday Gathering. Every single Thursday, we bring together folks from across the innovation ecosystem. It’s come as you please, it’s free and the premise is really that if you bring together different people with different thought processes and different experiences, that they’re going to be able to make magic happen.
We came up with an acronym, which is our guiding tenets, and the four letters are CAFE:
Creating a community
If you know what’s happening, then you know the right people to talk with. But if you aren’t currently playing in this ecosystem, it can seem very intimidating and you don’t necessarily know who those right people are to make that connection. So the goal of the Venture Cafe is really to foster those connections, but also to make people feel comfortable so that they can come in and explore. Then six months later, their great idea may happen. So they don’t necessarily have to feel like they’re coming with an “ask.”
I really feel like it’s my job, and my team’s job, to facilitate those connections. We’re still small enough that I can chat with as many folks as I can. For example, last week there was a guest who was an investor in a consumer product and there was a panel of fitness entrepreneurs who had presented earlier in the day before this gentleman got there. So I made a special point of making sure that I facilitated a connection between those folks to get the juices and conversations flowing.
Attracting a diverse group of presenters as well as participants
We have lots of different content in our learning sessions. A big thing for us is making sure that we have a balance of names that draw people in and that people recognize, but also folks who have great content and can share their stories. We’ve had people like renowned urban theorist Richard Florida who talked to us about growth, but we’ve also had a local entrepreneur lead us in chair yoga.
By having the opportunity to bring together diverse folks every week, our hope is that we will grow innovation in Philadelphia which will be a source of economic development. It’s about bringing together entrepreneurs and startups, but I’m also very focused on bringing folks together from the creative economy and folks who are focused on social impact.
Thus far, about 70 percent of the people who come each week are brand new. And we have an incredibly diverse audience–about 50 percent are not caucasian. We’re not at 50/50 for a women to men percentage, but we see this as an opportunity to create programming and partnerships that get women to come to Venture Cafe.
Fostering inspiration
The commitment my team has made to everyone who joins Venture Cafe is that they will walk out feeling inspired. Every single week you should have learned something new, met someone interesting, read an article that stimulated you to think differently or have had a conversation that is causing you to rethink how you approach your day the next day.
Engaging the ecosystem
I created a think tank and it includes nine different industry priority areas for the next year and we make sure that we are regularly providing content in those areas for the Philadelphia ecosystem. It was an opportunity to say, through the hundreds of conversations that I had, where are the areas of strength in Philadelphia and where are the areas of opportunity? Where are things that are happening in the broader innovation sphere that we make sure we’re not losing sight of?
For example, there is a gaming presence in Philadelphia and we need to make sure that everyone knows about it and is familiar with it, but I wouldn’t say that’s an area of strength. Whereas things like science and bio-tech, we’re doing great things in University City and in the broader region. How do we make sure we’re continuing to leverage those? A lot of times folks who are in the science sector are not interacting with folks in say the nonprofit sector or the ones in the creative economy. So we have to make sure that we’re curating some of those serendipitous interactions that might not be happening otherwise.
This work really gets to both sides of my personality: the side interested in the bigger strategic picture of, “What’s the vision and how do we create this vision?” and the side that enjoys dealing with people one-on-one. Having the ability to be able to make personal connections but then laddering that up and saying, “How are those connections going to make Philadelphia a stronger, better, more vibrant place for people to come live and grow?” is incredibly satisfying for me.
Captured Spring 2019
Images Curtesy of Tracy Brala.