About

Marilyn Bekolo is a social impact leader with 10+ years of experience within the intersection of community, technology, and diversity. She began her community management journey supporting Google’s Global Ministers of Education initiatives. She has continued her passion for serving as a global community strategist through her work with startups, VC firms, nonprofits, and creators in emerging markets. Currently, she serves as a Principal Partner at Communitus.xyz which is a community management agency supporting global brands. Marilyn is a Detroit native and proud alum of Howard University (B.A. Pre-Law Communications/Culture) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.S. Nonprofit Leadership). You can find her on linkedin.

Victoria Cumberbatch has a decade of flavorful know-how in bringing engaging, invigorating, and resonant experiences to life. She firmly believes in the transformative power of connection, creativity and community with a mission to create spaces where people can connect, grow, collaborate, and confidently take action toward their dreams. She founded adventuresOFcommunity to fulfill her mission through transformation coaching, workshop design & facilitation, and hosting myriad events. You can find her through her site, newsletter, or linkedin! Grace Clapham has forged a unique, non-linear path at the intersection of business, technology, and community building - challenging the status quo at every turn. Her diverse experience spans continents and industries, from propelling startups to collaborating with Fortune 500 giants. As the former Director of Community Partnerships, Programs, and Products at Meta APAC, Grace honed her expertise in fostering both in-person and digital communities at scale. Her entrepreneurial journey has led to the creation of multiple businesses and communities, engaging over 30,000 members worldwide. Grace's insights, shared at prestigious events like TEDx and SXSW, have been featured in BBC Asia and Forbes. Grace showcases a remarkable ability to navigate complex business landscapes while driving innovation through community-centric approaches. Today, Grace serves as an executive leader, strategic advisor, and board member, offering both full-time and fractional expertise. She specializes in community-led growth strategies, ecosystem development, and strategic partnerships across APAC and the UAE. Her work extends to building safe online communities, fostering collaborative networks, and mentoring the next generation of innovators at accelerators and universities.

Kt McBratney is obsessed with disrupting the status bro. In their role as Head of Community at Renew VC, they works shifting how we invest in and build companies to put more good in the world. Kt is also the board chair of Hand, Heart + Soul Project, and previous roles include cofounder and chief community officer at OwnTrail (acquired 2023) and CMO at Seed&Spark. They are also a parent, writer, and artist who believes there is no such thing as too many books.

Max Pete has been on an interesting career journey so far, and is grateful that it has led him to discover a passion for community building. During the early days of the pandemic, Max found himself at a crossroads due to job burnout and longing for meaningful connections. After a decade in marketing and advertising across music labels, agencies, and freelancing, Max uncovered his true calling within the community space. Max has been dubbed the "community cheerleader" and always strives to be a supportive person. Max is an avid writer and speaker, as well as an amateur DJ and playlist curator.

Erik Martin serves as the President of the Community Club. He has worked on a wide variety of community-powered businesses including Reddit, Depop, Nike, WeWork, Teal, & Commsor. He’s currently the Head of Community at Midjourney. He's an amateur history nerd with a particular obsession with early 1900s church cookbooks & other communal projects. He's also currently an advisor to Belongly, a professional community for mental health providers. You can find him on hueypriest.com *Kim Hackmann is the COO of Commsor and currently serves as the Secretary and Treasurer of The Community Club. Prior to joining Commsor, Kim worked as an Operations Partner at Levy and AbstractOps, providing back-office operations support to a number of early stage start-ups. *Non-voting Officer

The Community Club was founded in 2020 by Mac Reddin. It was initiated as a part of a project that eventually evolved into the company Commsor, a community software builder. Commsor and its team members invested significant time and resources into the Club, to help support the emerging community profession. In 2023, Commsor realized that the best thing for the Community Club was to "release it back into the wild" and restructure it as an independent nonprofit. Commsor established the independent entity and provided the initial funding and logistics to help the "rewilded" Club and its community find a sustainable path for the future.

Since creating the Community Club, Commsor’s software product focus evolved toward different customer markets, moving away from communities and community professionals. As a result, it no longer made sense for the company to continue investing in the Community Club. However, they were reluctant to shut it down or let it gradually go fallow. So, they devised a creative solution: transforming the Club into a completely separate nonprofit entity.

Commsor also hopes that “rewilding” the Community Club will serve as a model for other companies to follow if maintaining their created communities no longer makes business sense. While there have been instances of companies doing this, like Honeybook spinning out the Rising Tides community, many more companies have simply shut down vibrant communities when it no longer made “business” sense. To learn more about Commsor and their tools to build a strong and engaged network, visit https://www.commsor.com/

As community professionals we believe that communities are living, breathing ecosystems and hope to share any learnings from this rewilding process with other companies and communities.