The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters

by Priya Parker

Rachel Greenberger, an administrator at Babson College in Massachusetts, hosted a weekly meeting for students. She didn’t want to call this time “office hours,” because it sounded like an obligation as well as a one-way deal: The student comes to the professor for help and guidance. But Greenberger was running a food program and wanted to help students connect to one another, not just to her, and so she decided to call the weekly hour Community Table. Over time, the gathering has grown into the name; students now turn up with baked goods as well as notebooks. And in a way she couldn’t have planned, the Community Table idea she began has now been transplanted to New York, where every month entrepreneurs, academics, activists, and students interested in food engage together around a table, giving and exchanging ideas and building a community.