Boston While Black is showing off — and building — the city's vibrant Black culture

Boston While Black connects the city’s Black professionals, entrepreneurs and students with networking opportunities, cultural events, and resources as they navigate through the city and build their lives and careers.

On July 20th, Boston While Black hosted their fourth annual Family Reunion event at the Seaport’s Lawn on D. Inspired by the historical tradition of Black family reunions, the event featured live music, food and activities to celebrate Boston’s vibrant Black culture. Shortly before the Family Reunion, GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath spoke with Sheena Collier, the founder of Boston While Black about her organization’s work for The Joy Beat. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: To start off, before we talk about the Family Reunion, tell us about Boston’s All Black. How did it get its start and what inspired it?

Sheena Collier: Well, like many, I came here for graduate school 20 years ago. I think also, like many folks, planned to come here, get my degree and leave. When I got here, I quickly recognized the lack of community and connection that I and other Black people often experience in this region, which I know is a huge factor in people ultimately not always choosing Boston as their lifelong home.

Fortunately for me, I was able to connect to some great job opportunities and so I wanted to figure out how to build out the rest of my life. I spent well over a decade building community for myself through networking, volunteering and knitting together a vibrant social life — and by extension, I started to do that for others.

I also, after I’d been here for a number of years, started to work in the business community and recognize how having a strong sense of belonging was the solution to attracting and keeping a diverse workforce. We know that when people can bring their whole selves, they are healthier, they have more vitality, and they feel more connected to a place.

So all of this became the foundation, after being here for 15 years, for launch in Boston While Black as this membership community in 2020.

Rath: I love that you when you got here and didn’t find it, instead of leaving as planned, you decided to build it yourself.

Collier: Yeah, I actually did sneak out once. I went to school for education and, as you know, Boston is a great place for a lot of industries, particularly K-12 and higher education. So I was able to elevate really quickly, professionally, but was really struggling to fill in those other pieces of my life. And so I left at one point for a job opportunity to go to D.C. I saw it as a place where it seemingly had what I was looking for. I didn’t have the community that I had already built in Boston, and so socially, it did feel more in line with what I was seeking out.

But when I went to get another job, I realized that — just like Boston — it’s really a place of relationships and who you know. So I came back and when I came back for that second time, I decided, you know what? This is clearly somewhere that I’ve been able to access these great professional opportunities. How can I really invest more of myself in the city, civically and socially, to make it what I want?

Rath: Now tell us how Boston While Black does it. How do you build community?

Collier: Yeah, it’s shifted a lot since we’ve launched. We launched in July 2020. So we’re at the height of the pandemic, we are weeks after George Floyd was murdered and so it was really important for us to be a fully digital community — which wasn’t my original plan. I’m very much an in-person type of convener, but had to learn really quickly how to build strong community virtually. Then, it was also was really important for us to be a safe space for Black people in a time when there was a lot of unrest happening.

So we have since shifted, as the world has shifted, to being more of this mix of digital and in-person. We have an app and a digital platform, which is just for our members, and we host events all throughout the month that are exclusive to our members: social, professional and civic events. From the beginning, it was also really important for us to not only have this membership, but partner with the corporations, universities and institutions who power the region.

I had done, as I mentioned, work in the business community and really believe that the institutions here have a role in changing the brand, the perception, and the reality of Boston, particularly as it pertains to the Black experience. That’s always been core to the way that we build community.

In addition, related to events like the Family Reunion, we build community across public spaces in Boston. We want to highlight the Black culture that exists here, and also showcase Boston as a vibrant destination for Black people to live, work and visit.

Rath: What have you heard back from members about how Boston While Black has affected them, or helped them, in various ways?

Collier: So we’ve grown really quickly. We launched July 27th, 2020 — so our anniversary is coming up in about a week — with 100 founding members. We’ve since grown to more than 1,400 members.

We’ve heard many things. We’ve gotten amazing feedback from members: from transplants, including people who didn’t grow up here, who have said they were on their way out and then decided to stay because they now can see Boston as their home. They have a set of friends. They’ve been able to figure out the places to eat or other places to be able to tap into.

Not even just Black culture in Boston. I think in general, people sometimes have a challenge with navigating all that Boston has to offer. We also have members who have been hired at our partner companies. As I mentioned, we partner with a number of corporations across the city to provide access to Boston While Black for their Black employees. They also look to our members as potential talent. So people have been hired at companies. We’ve seen members who have started businesses together.

I think there’s a really important way that we have impacted the culture here — particularly for Black people that have grown up here. I think Boston While Black, on the surface, people understand it as like: “Yeah, of course, if you move somewhere, this is an important resource.” But almost half of our members have actually grown up in Boston. I think that what they experience out of it, and what we’ve heard from them, is that they feel really proud to be part of Boston While Black because of the impact we’re having on highlighting the culture that already exists here and helping to create culture.

So overall, I think we’ve seen how this social connectedness that we provide enhances the quality of life and even health of our members.

Rath: What’s in store for the Family Reunion event this weekend? I have to imagine, having launched during the pandemic, it looks different this year.

Collier: Yeah, the first one was in 2021, so this will be our fourth. We were probably one of the first big events to come back after being in the pandemic. So just that year, we had 3,000 people. We had almost 8,000 last year, expecting upwards of 10,000 this year.

And really, the goal from the beginning has been to bring together Bostonians, as well as visitors from across neighborhoods, hometowns and generations to celebrate Black community and culture here in Boston. The concept of it is just building on this historical concept of a family reunion, which has always been really important for Black people to celebrate our resilience, to preserve our cultural traditions and build a strong sense of community.

Specifically at BWB’s Family Reunion, we see it as a way to better connect people to the culture that already exists in Boston. So people will find games, activities, music and experiences that bring up nostalgia — as well as people creating new memories.

So now, because we’re going into year four, I now know people, both adults and kids, for whom this is an annual tradition for them. When they look back on their childhood, they’re going to say, “Oh, I remember going to a BWB Family Reunion every year.”