Meet Annelie, community extraordinaire at Rise

We sat down with Annelie Chavez, one of the community mangers at Rise, and talked with her about what it takes to build a strong and engaged community. Annelie has been with Rise since the beginning when it launched in NYC last July. Less than one year later, her expertise, along with that of the team, has grown Rise into a bustling space at the heart of the NYC tech scene. It's home to the Barclays Accelerator (powered by TechStars) and an amazing selection of FinTech startups.

Before Rise, she came from San Francisco to NYC to as the NY Community Manager for Campus, a co-living startup. It was a new market for them and she was tasked with doing everything from biz dev to customer acquisition. As a complete newcomer to the Big Apple, she had to hustle her way from zero. She took the challenge head on and made her own connections in the city. Surely but slowly, she became the go-to resource for people looking for an apartment or who just wanted to be part of a cool community.

She draws upon what she calls a trifecta of balance, patterns, and timing. Balance means settings up the framework to enable a community to grow organically. Patterns mean making processes consistent so people know what to expect, and can feel comfortable. Lastly, with timing, you must expect things to happen on human time. She equates the role of a community manager to that of an orchestra conductor. She enables everyone to work together harmoniously but is not totally in control of the outcome; it's still up to the each individual to make things happen.

When she's not running the day to day at Rise, she's still plugged into community manager circles, such as the Community Manager Breakfast meetup. There, Annelie created a safe haven where people who run communities can exchange ideas with their like-minded peers. Topics range from what platform to use for social media, to how to set community-driven goals.

Annelie is excited to be part of the team here at Rise, where being able to meet folks at the cutting edge of tech is an everyday occurrence. At her core, she is a connector- constantly gauging what people's needs are and helping to set them up for success.

With Croissant, you can meet Annelie and work from Rise coworking space in Flatiron! Become a member today to start checking in to beautiful workspaces around your city.