Team Building Professional in New York City

It’s part of my job description, right at the top actually. It’s the term I use in response to the age-old question, “what do you do?” As such, I could even go so far as to claim that it’s part of my identity, right there alongside husband, father, and NYC corporate event entertainer.

But seriously, what does “team building pro” MEAN?

It’s one of those professions you don’t hear about as often as, say, “lawyer,” banker,” “teacher” or “office manager,” yet you kind of understand what it is the person does…right? Well, I’ve given it some thought, and determined that no, this seemingly comprehensible job description needs a bit of an explanation to go along with it. So, let’s dive right in and answer the question as to what it is I and those in similar professions actually “do,” which allows us to lay claim such an unorthodox moniker.

First things first, there is no official definition for this line of work. There is no professional degree or track of study, no guild, no union, not even any national professional organizations as far as I can tell. It’s one of those jobs which kind of just is what it is, hovering somewhere between human resources, training/professional development, and consulting. It’s a field of expertise entirely unto itself, and those of us who practice it come from a myriad of places.

In my case, my formal education lent itself strongly to a job in this field. I majored in psychology during my college years at Tufts University just outside of Boston, where I took both undergraduate and graduate-level courses in everything related to the study of human behavior: personality development, cognition, physiology, social interaction, conflict negotiation, experimental design, statistics and more (I even spent a semester injecting lab rats with morphine – not sure that had any bearing on my current job, but it was pretty cool at the time). This gave me a basic foundation in the nature of what drives people to do things, how we work together, and an understanding of ways to improve group collaboration, communication and teamwork.

I then attended grad school at NYU, where I completed a master’s degree in music & entertainment business through a joint program between the Stern School of Business and the Steinhardt School of Education. My coursework here included core B-school classes such as managing organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, and accounting, but also specialized classes related to the entertainment industry including concert/event production, artist management, entertainment law, ethics, marketing, publicity and more – I also took some electives in communication, including active listening skills and persuasion. Not too many people get this sort of focused education on the business side of entertainment, which has proven to be extremely valuable to me when I craft group bonding activities and entertainment events for employees in New York City and beyond.

Several years later, I enrolled in an 18-month graduate certificate program at Columbia University’s SIPA (School of International and Public Affairs), focusing specifically on professional organizational leadership. It was here where I learned about how companies and teams are structured to produce the greatest results, as well as how teams are motivated to work effectively and efficiently together.

As far as real-world experience, my first job out of college involved training sales reps for a mid-sized pharmaceutical company, and was the first time I was paid to stand in front of a room full of strangers and command their attention. From there, I worked for two years at large PR agencies in Manhattan, which was my first experience in client service. In addition to working directly with the people who were paying my large firm large fees, I was tasked with representing their brands in the media, as well as at various events throughout the city and country.

From there, I went on to spend six years in program development at the 92^nd Street Y, the legendary cultural & community center on the Upper East Side. First as an associate and eventually as director of all adult education programs, I planned and produced over 500 annual classes, events and lectures for diverse groups. As you might imagine, this provided me with enormous experience with not only event curation – for audiences as small as 5 to as big as 1,000 – but also people management, supervising about 100 part-time instructors and interacting daily with lord knows how many patrons.

During my time at 92Y, I also maintained two side gigs: one was hosting a weekly pub quiz night, my first foray into the world of live trivia events; the other was producing/hosting corporate scavenger hunts in NYC for one of the city’s best-known companies specializing in this sort of thing. It was here that I REALLY got some great firsthand knowledge of what it means to create “teambuilding events,” as I did everything from running initial planning meetings with clients, to researching/crafting customized content, organizing staff, and eventually executing the gig itself.

I spent over two years running scavenger hunts for office groups all over the city, and really loved it – but I also felt the limits of just how tailored the experience could realistically be to individual groups/goals. That’s part of the reason I launched TrivWorks several years later, in direct response to the financial crisis: trivia questions allow for extreme customization, making for an experience which is highly memorable, impactful and fun.

And so, after all of that, I am now what I refer to as a pro in this rarefied vocation. I’ve additionally spent the last four years doing this full-time, which has provided me with even more unique experience and expertise in this area. If you tally it all up, that’s over 15 years of experience working directly with people in a customized events capacity, backed up by nearly 8 years of relevant university training.

While this just happened to be my journey, there are clearly so many other ways my fellow group bonding experts arrived here. Are you one of them? Please share your story below, I’d love to hear!

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