Community ties: Worcester Gay Professionals offers opportunity to connect – Worcester Telegram
WORCESTER — When city resident Wade Tenney started the Worcester Gay Professionals Networking group in June 2015, he wasn’t sure what to expect.
“I wanted to give people a venue to socialize, exchange ideas and do some networking at the same time,” said Tenney, having seen the success of similar groups while on a business trip in Florida.
The meetings, held on the second Wednesday of the month, started small, with some months having fewer than 10 people in attendance.
The last meetup of 2022, this past Wednesday at The Woo Bar and Grill on Shrewsbury Street, saw attendance of at least 85, with some events this year having included as many as 100.
“It grew exponentially” over the last couple years, said Tenney, who suspects this is in part due to the pandemic.
In the year prior to COVID-19, the group could reliably expect about 40 to 50 people most months, he said. When it returned to regular meetups, “people were just ready to do something,” he said.
Jimmy Nguyen, a teacher in the Worcester Public Schools, was one of those who started regularly coming during this period. “Every single year has gotten bigger,” he said, “but this year alone, every month has been more and more.”
Networking — a nebulous phrase
Networking means different things to different people, but the common denominator is connections and building a community, said Charlie O’Donnell, whether those be professional, social or somewhere in between.
“No matter what kind of profession you are, it’s important just to find local friends and a chosen family to spend your time with,” said O’Donnell, who along with his husband, Nick, discovered the group during Worcester Pride Week 2021.
“We had never breached into that part of the community before so we wanted to stop in,” added O’Donnell. “We went and had the most amazing time — met some of our best friends at that event who we see almost every day of the week now.”
“Networking means seeing our friends and family in a safe and inclusive place — I love seeing the whole community come out,” said Stacy Lord, who, along with Laura Marotta, is a co-founder of Creative Hub Worcester. The two of them have been coming to these events for the last six years.
“This kind of setting is especially good for people who are professionals in either the nonprofit or arts and culture world,” said Marotta, “where we can meet other people who [Creative Hub Worcester] would love to support.”
The group is important to them not only professionally but also personally.
‘Around your own people’
“A lot of us in the community have chosen family, and our chosen family is at times a lot stronger and more supportive than our blood family,” said Marotta. “I look forward to this every single month and put it in our calendar every time I see it. It’s one of the few safe spaces that we have in the city.”
“It’s good to feel safe with the people you’re around,” said Chris Gelormini, a Worcester resident who works in Auburn as a stock manager at a vehicle parts warehouse, “especially nowadays. We’re almost in 2023 and there’s still hate towards the gay community and it’s despicable. Good to feel safe around your own people.”
Gelormini, who has been attending for the past five years, falls into the more social camp (he heard about the networking group from friends of friends), but said, “I have met my friend Jai Santora, she’s a local mechanic in Oxford, so that’s where I take my car now.”
Added Tenney: “There’s a professional level but even just in terms of the friendships I’ve seen grow. I’ve seen lots of groups of friends that have developed from these — someone who met a group there and now I see them out and about in the city all the time with that same group.”
Spotlighting local businesses
The event locations rotate monthly through local bars and restaurants. Tenney said he hopes he can introduce people to businesses where they haven’t been before.
When considering a location, Tenney said he scouts it out ahead of time, going on a Wednesday and ordering some drinks and food and speaking to the owner to see if it would be a good fit. Now, business owners approach him about hosting the monthly meetings, as they’ve shown they can be good for business.
“We jumped at the chance when we met Wade and chatted about what he was doing and what the group was about,” said Jon Pittsley, owner of Woo Bar and Grill, which first hosted the group in August 2021, and has done so four more times since.
Business visibly improved after the first event, he said.
“We feel it’s important for the community to have a safe space to gather and meet others and feel welcomed,” said Pittsley, who runs the restaurant with his husband. “The Woo Bar offers such a space.”
O’Donnell said gay-owned businesses are very important in the Worcester area, “but there is not a lot of light shone on that — in our community, there is not a lot of opportunity to get our information out there.”
Reflecting the community
As Worcester continues to grow, group membership will rise with it, said Tenney.
“We have had people move here from Boston because of the growth that’s happened,” he said. “Housing is cheaper and they feel they’re still getting access to culture with the arts and restaurant scene.”
As the city population grows and becomes more diverse, so will its need for different community representation. “Worcester is pretty diverse in general,” said Nguyen. “Networking events should reflect that.”