When Craig James W83 moved to Boston from New York, he saw an opportunity to tap into skills honed in his day job as a CEO coach to help fellow alumni in his new city. That was the start of the Wharton Boston Business Exchange, an organization within the Wharton Club of Boston. Since 2008, through recessions and the pandemic, the group has met monthly in a round-table style, with participants sharing what’s on their minds. Though the group was inspired by a “Leads Council” James ran at the Wharton Club of New York, he intended to take this new venture a step further.
“I wanted to add another dimension here,” says James. “Not just have it be about sharing leads, which can get a little bit tired, but really to engage the alums in conversations and discussions about things that are going on in their lives.”
Ken Davis WG68 has been attending from the beginning and provided the meeting place — his office building in Needham, MA, outside Boston. The early days of the group coincided with the Great Recession; James and Davis recall barely being able to fit everyone in the room. Attendance spiked again during the pandemic, when they moved the meetings online.
Like James, Stephanie Hessler WG89 is an executive coach and a Boston Business Exchange regular. Clients with her firm, Stephanie Hessler Coaching, are mostly women looking to move into the C-suite. There are layers of benefits to Hessler’s attendance with the group: It has increased her business revenue by way of referrals, and she has grown as a coach by observing how James facilitates the group.
“It’s a compounding effect,” Hessler explains. “Somebody will realize, ‘Oh, I’ve got all this brain power here. Why not take advantage of it?’”
Jeff Coleman W94, who became a regular attendee when he moved to Boston five years ago, did just that. Ahead of a meeting with a prospective client, the CEO of his company told Coleman, the VP of marketing, that he wanted to run Google Ads in-house, throwing a wrench in Coleman’s pitch. “As a solo entrepreneur, you get in your own head,” says Coleman. “‘What do I need to do? Do I have to lower my price for this to make sense?’” When he shared his dilemma with the Business Exchange, the advice was unanimous: Don’t lower your price. “It helped me be so much more confident going in,” says Coleman, who closed the client soon after. “The group was invaluable that way.”
The members span industries and roles, says Mary-Jean Fanelli WG88, who works in biotech. “I’ve met different people who have different approaches to their work,” she says, adding that she asked the group about an HR issue she was dealing in the first three weeks of a new role. “Even though they weren’t in my industry, that depth of business experience helped me frame what I had to do going forward. And then I learn from the other cases that people bring up. It really is a forum to exchange ideas and problem-solve.”
Although many members rotate on and off in the group, a new core of regulars is forming. Kitty Sahin WG97, who started attending about a year ago, enjoys the “welcoming, friendly, respectful, and constructive community” that James and Davis have formed.
Hessler would agree: “One of the real benefits of the group is that people don’t sugarcoat their feedback,” she says. “It’s always respectful. Nobody throws anyone under the bus, but people will be very direct about what they really think. And that’s what we need, right? That’s why it’s so powerful.”
