Rolling Stone & CNBC Columnist | #1 WSJ Bestselling Author | Keynote Speaker on Leadership, Belonging & Culture | Unlocking Human Potential in the Age of AI
Brooklyn, New York, United States
59K followers
500+ connections
About
Bullish about helping people connect around the dinner table.
It started on July 15, 2015, with 15 strangers, a pot of pasta sauce, and one question: "If you could give credit or thanks to one person in your life that you've never thanked, who would that be?"
840+ dinners later, I've learned something the efficiency economy won't teach you: the opposite of loneliness isn't addiction, it's connection. And connection can't be optimized. It has to be earned.
I'm a speaker, author (Wall Street Journal bestseller Gratitude Through Hard Times), facilitator, and founder of 7:47, a gratitude-based leadership development company working with 400 major organizations including Google, Microsoft, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Dell, and branches of the U.S. military. We've facilitated hundreds of transformational experiences across six continents.
We've set tables in Times Square, under the Tower Bridge in London, in boardrooms worldwide. We led marketing on "Just a Common Soldier" (20M+ views, 2 Emmy Awards, more shares than "likes"). We launched Gratitude in the City™, transforming 4,000+ NYC screens 3x years in a row into calls for connection for millions.
We believe:
- Human Potential Requires Human Connection.
- Presence Is the New Luxury.
- In the Age of AI, Humanity Becomes the Scarce Resource.
- We Are Dying of Disconnection.
- The Future Belongs to Communities, Not Audiences.
I've led marketing on Emmy Award–winning content, led Broadway productions, and helped build schools in Uganda. But I measure my life in dinners hosted and people held, in moments where someone stopped trying to impress and started being real.
Our mission: unlock human potential one question, one story, one connection at a time. Somewhere in your life is someone you've never properly thanked. Let's fix that.
Known, held, whole. That's the thesis.
Articles by Chris
Activity
59K followers
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Chris Schembra 🍝 shared thisFor the 300th episode of Gratitude Through Hard Times, I got to interview my dad. He has spent nearly 50 years on Hilton Head Island building businesses, helping families realize their dreams, creating life-learning tools with my mom, and giving back through sports philanthropy. But the conversation was less about his résumé and more about the principles underneath it all. As a young man, Dad lost his football career to a shoulder injury. It hurt deeply, but he made a conscious decision: learn from the setback, accept it, and move on without letting it become a burden. He took the lessons of sports; preparation, positive mental attitude, self-image, motivation, teamwork, and belief in others, and carried them into business. In his first year in sales, he finished third on the East Coast for Boise Cascade. His advice in sales was simple: get out of your own world and into your client’s world. (as Scott Harkins says "darken the doorstep"). Listen intently. Learn what matters to them. Ask about their family, their interests, and their hopes. Make people feel safe enough to be themselves. At the start of the podcast, I asked him our Gratitude Question, he named my mom. She encouraged his big ideas even when others thought they were crazy. She reminded him: “The worst thing that can happen is have a lot of fun, meet a lot of people, and move on.” That kind of partnership has shaped a life of income, passion, philanthropy, and family. Dad’s reminder for all of us: if you stop learning, you stop growing. But success is not success if it comes at the cost of the people you love. Pretty cool way to celebrate 300 episodes. Video is here: https://lnkd.in/gvMRTef9 Audio here: https://lnkd.in/gKDdRff9
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Chris Schembra 🍝 shared thisSunset last night was unreallllllll….stay safe today NYC. Molly Sovran
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Chris Schembra 🍝 shared thisWhat the heck does a Negroni have to do with Human Connection!?!? The Slow Food Movement began in Rome in 1986, when a McDonald’s opened near the Spanish Steps. Italian journalist Carlo Petrini saw more than fast food, he saw fast life. So he began a movement defending local food, long meals, and human connection. After 40 years, his message couldn’t be more important. This week is international Negroni week, which serves as a charity fundraiser for the slow food movement. Go to happy hour tonight with some friends and enjoy a nice Negroni and think about the slow life. Or maybe hosted dinner party with six friends and eat some slow food and ask some questions.
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Chris Schembra 🍝 shared thisHappy Friday Ya'll. I'm sharing my buddy Shola Richards keynote speaker reel right here, for ya'll inspiration and enjoyment. He did not ask me to. He did not send it to me. I googled it (maybe out of fomo, anxiety, awe). And I cried. His story is amazing. His vision is what we need. And yeah, hopefully it helps ya'll feel something on this crazy friday afternoon. https://lnkd.in/g5KbXwD3
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Chris Schembra 🍝 shared thisHere are our top three predictions for late Fall / Winter 2026. These are talk tracks and executive-level insights we’ve been co-creating with our clients all summer, speaking at 22 events and interviewing 21 CEOs for our podcast since June 1st. Here’s what we’re seeing: 1. Human connection is about to become a competitive advantage. The companies that win won’t treat belonging, trust, and social well-being as employee perks. They’ll treat them as operating strategy. Like freaking creating incentives, structures, rewards around human connection. 2. We are going to become radically more efficient, and dangerously less available to one another. AI, speed, and optimization will give us more capacity. The question is whether we reinvest that capacity into people, or simply cram more work into it. Think Jevon's Paradox, and Workday's findings that 43% of employees surveyed believe Ai has FREEd up more time, but only 28% are using it on human connection, team strategy, cross-functional collab. 3. The more answers machines can give us, the more valuable distinctly human skills will become. Attention. Curiosity. Better questions. Gratitude. Remembering people. Sitting in a small room and actually listening. Those won’t become less important in the age of AI. They’ll become the differentiator. I don’t think the future belongs to the most optimized humans. I think it belongs to the ones who remember how to be human. Photo taken by Joslyn Muré while I was speaking at Caravus Benefits Beat last week in St. Louis. More stories on that to come, and the GENIUS opener they did for the conference with J.J. Flotken leading America's Got Talent audition....more on that.
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Chris Schembra 🍝 shared thisYes.....ChatGPT made this image. It's a placeholder while I find an artist to draw this for me. This is my reader. Our team has been working on our third book diligently since January, 2026. Hours, days, weeks grinding, writing, editing, sparring, throwing things out, putting them back in. But I didn't want to wait until the book came out to introduce you to our mascot. The person we're writing for moving forward. The person we want to punch in the face with this book just hard enough to get him to wake up. Btw I'm using masculine language in the post because I'm poking the bear, metaphorically. He's called the Almond Man. (again, ANYBODY can be the Almond Man) And he is me. Maybe you know him. Maybe you are him. Almond Man is ambitious. Disciplined. Responsible. Focused. He gets shit done. He's always going somewhere. Usually quickly. He's got his AirPods in. Coffee in one hand. Phone in the other. Backpack over his shoulder. Twelve tabs open. Claude Code to the max. Three podcasts queued. A workout scheduled. A meeting starting in seven minutes. He loves goals. Metrics. Progress. Growth. Optimization. What's next. He has become extraordinarily good at getting somewhere. And somewhere along the way, he's forgotten how to be where he is. He treats time as scarce and speed as the solution. He consumes information faster than he can integrate it. He mistakes a full calendar for a full life. He can become so focused on the destination that he loses his peripheral vision. He notices what's missing before he notices what's already here. He knows how to hold other people. He's less comfortable being held. He likes certainty. Control. Answers. Forward motion. He knows how to ascend. (ego, individualism, status) He has forgotten how to surrender. And here's the important part: I don't hate the Almond Man. I love the Almond Man. Most people do. He has armies cheering him on. His ambition isn't the problem. His discipline isn't the problem. His desire to build, achieve, grow, contribute, and become something isn't the problem. The problem is range. He knows how to go fast. Does he still know how to go slow? He knows how to narrow his focus. Does he still know how to look around? He knows how to climb. Does he still know how to get small, accept, receive, grieve, release, surrender? That's where we're taking him. Not permanently. I'm not trying to turn him into a monk who throws his iPhone into the Hudson and moves to a yurt. Maybe a few hours a week. Maybe a few hours a month. Long enough to remember that part of himself still exists. If we can get him to Slow Down, Look Around, Surrender....just for a few moments in time. He'll be able to go back out in a new sustainable direction. That's the Almond Man. And yes...as I mentioned above. I am he. The Almond Man.
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Chris Schembra 🍝 shared this10 years ago today, we hosted a 16-person dinner in the middle of Times Square. And it was one of the most calming/quiet dinners we've hosted. By then, we had been hosting our gratitude dinners every week, for free in our home, for about 14 months. Same idea every time: gather a small group, cook together, sit around one table, ask one meaningful question, and see what happens. One day I was sitting in my buddy Damian Santucci’s office at the Times Square Alliance, looking down at Father Duffy Square, and I said: “I want to host one of our dinners down there.” So we did. We got a film permit. Rolled in the pots, pans, pasta, wine, amaretto, tables, chairs, all of it. And then we changed absolutely nothing about the dinner. Thousands of people were walking around us. People stopped to stare. People took photos. Tourists wanted selfies. Billboards were flashing overhead. And somehow, the crazier it got around us, the more present we became with each other. As you'll see in the carousel of photos, we cooked. We folded napkins. We passed bread. We drank wine. We talked. We cried. For a few hours, one of the loudest places on Earth became incredibly intimate. I think I learned something that night that I’m still trying to practice 10 years later: You don’t need a quiet world to be present. You need something worth paying attention to.
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Chris Schembra 🍝 shared thisFive years ago, someone Joe Cardini was connected with liked one of my videos on LinkedIn. Joe watched it. He clicked connect. And we kept watching each others content from afar. For five years. Then February 1st, 2026, Joe saw another video of mine and something clicked. He went to our website, answered our Gratitude Question, and within the next few days we were able to connect via phone. We only blocked thirty minutes, but ended up talking for two hours, me walking through the streets of NYC while Joe told me his story. Joe is the CEO and President of Bristol. And he's one of the strongest people I've ever known. He carries the weight of the world quietly. He's told me stories about the redwood trees in California, how they stand 300, 400 feet tall, splintered all over from swaying in the wind. How that splintering is what creates the healing and the strengthening. Last week I flew to California to keynote for his company. The keynote was at the Hotel del Coronado, which has a special place in Joe's heart. For years, their elevator operator was a man named Andrew, born with cerebral palsy, hunched over in pain every single day, but you'd never know it. Andrew connected with every guest who stepped into that elevator. He remembered names. He asked real questions. He gave a damn. Joe told us that after a family trip to the hotel, Joe's 11 year old son was sitting at the dinner table on his phone. Joe was about to say something. Then he looked closer. His son wasn't scrolling. He was researching Andrew the elevator man. Out of the beach, the pool, the rooms, the beauty of that entire trip, an 11 year old boy only wanted to know more about Andrew. Andrew passed away about two years ago. Bristol commissioned a life size sculpture of him at their Phoenix headquarters and created an employee award in his name, listing Andrew's characteristics as the criteria. The Andrew Award. That tells you everything you need to know about Joe's company. And about Joe. During one of our many multi-hour phone conversations over the last few months, Joe said, "I'd rather be a good man than a great man." He also said, "You haven't seen the most beautiful sunset you're ever going to see." An event may change an evening. A relationship will change a life. Thank you for changing mine. Still here. Still gathering.
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Chris Schembra 🍝 liked thisChris Schembra 🍝 liked thisAnother great day in NYC - finally got to meet Diana Wu David at ServiceNow HQ to talk about the state of futures thinking in the world and scheming on what we will do at TED 2027 in San Diego. Also got to record a conversation on The Hope Engineer's Playbook (link to purchase in first comment) that will be out soon. Stellar conversations and views of NYC on a beauty of a day. Brian Solis you were missed.
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Chris Schembra 🍝 liked thisChris Schembra 🍝 liked this30 years ago today we did this little thing...who would have guessed what it would become. Thank you to everyone who supported me along the way. Too many people to name! Congratulations to my partners too David Balot Kevin Tupy Scott Tollett
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Chris Schembra 🍝 liked thisChris Schembra 🍝 liked thisHad a truly wonderful time with my great friend Justin Wren in Austin. Happy that he will be in the room when I speak today. He is a true force of kindness.
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Chris Schembra 🍝 liked thisChris Schembra 🍝 liked thisYesterday, I had the honor of kicking-off the National Recreation and Park Association's (NRPA) annual conference...and it was BANANAS. And by "bananas", I'm referring to the incredible energy that happens when 5,000+ humans gather in a convention hall for the shared purpose of making the world a better place. Parks & Rec professionals are not only the best of humanity, but they're also some of the most underappreciated too. Their job is *literally* other people's joy. When the whole community gets to chill (for example, the long weekend, summer break, and major holidays) that’s exactly when they're running the hardest. And sadly, they're rarely thanked for their efforts. And on a deeper note--these folks run, arguably, the last truly public, free, everyone-welcome spaces left in American life. In a country that is busy sorting itself into silos, it's the park, the pool, the rec center, and the trail that remain as the places a 4-year-old of any background still plays with any other 4-year-old. Seriously--it's worth pausing and acknowledging how important this is. In other words, these folks are the stewards of one of the last places in America where everyone walks together. To pour into these folks with a message of kindness was sincerely the honor of a lifetime. Huge thanks to the incomparable Kristine Stratton for your leadership (and as I mentioned to you, we are officially fam for life), and for your team putting on a mind-blowing event. The journey to a kinder world continues, and these humans are the ones leading the way ❤️. #NRPAConference2026
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Chris Schembra 🍝 liked thisCongratulations, Ryan, on taking the mainstage at MSP Summit. Your ongoing commitment to ESET, cybersecurity education, and the MSP ecosystem is helping shape the future of the industry. Grateful for your leadership and the value you continue to bring to partners and customers alike.Chris Schembra 🍝 liked thisThis morning Ryan Grant took the mainstage at MSP Summit for a keynote panel speaking about "Selling Cybersecurity to MSPs — What's Working, What's Not, and How AI Is Changing the Game" alongside MacKenzie (Mac) Brown, Gagan Singh, and Robert Johnston. During the session, Ryan advised MSPs that, “MSPs don’t need to build a new AI practice. Instead, they can extend their existing cybersecurity, governance, and access controls to AI tools, treating AI like another employee. You can’t take your hands off the wheel. AI requires human oversight.”
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Chris Schembra 🍝 liked thisChris Schembra 🍝 liked thisUnexpectedly, I find AI adoption is increasing corporate interest in human connection. I was pleased to present my research at the Building a Pro-Human Corporate Culture event in New York City. I shared the results of a recent study with Sarah Wright about how people are turning to AI for social support at work and the implications for long-term loneliness in organizations (HBR article: https://bit.ly/4lZ3BNj). Many thanks to the co-sponsors of the event: the Foundation for Social Connection and the Human Change Foundation. My fellow speakers shared warnings, ideas, and examples to inspire positive change: 🤝 Margarita Louis-Dreyfus (Chairperson, Louis Dreyfus Holding B.V.) 🤝 Dr. Gaia Bernstein (Professor, Seton Hall University School of Law) 🤝 Carrie Varoquiers (Chief Impact Officer, Workday) 🤝 Sara Quist (President, The Cigna Group Foundation) 🤝 Alexia Gallagher (VP of Philanthropy and Executive Director, NFL Foundation) 🤝 Adam Edgerton (Director of Philanthropic Partnerships, Fathom) I also want to thank the Corporate Working Group convened by the Foundation for Social Connection for the brainstorming session we held over lunch. Our goal is to study human connection at work via interviews, experiments, and case studies—and then spread the word about best practices to other corporations. Jillian Racoosin Kornmeier, MPH, Jane Randel, and Toby Graff put together a great action agenda for us. ➡️ BTW, I’m the group’s Scientific Chair – please reach out to me if you are interested in exploring research collaborations with us! Read more here about the Building a Pro-Human Corporate Culture event: https://lnkd.in/e992hsGr
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Chris Schembra 🍝 liked thisChris Schembra 🍝 liked thisWhat a great gift I had yesterday! The venue was stunning, the Steinway & Sons piano was amazing, the production was flawless and the crowd was super super special. Thank you HID for inviting me to your leadership conference and for allowing me to be part of such a special event. One more event with A-Speakers, thank you for your partnership. Amazing picture by Justin Wren - Thank you my friend.
Experience
Education
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National Outdoor Leadership School
Expedition Leadership in Patagonia
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Expedition Leadership Studies in Patagonia, Chile.
The focus of leadership NOLS-style is on leading small groups in the wilderness, but the lessons transfer to your life when you participate in groups at school, in sports and at work.
Setting goals, planning, efficiency and teamwork. Whether you're climbing Denali or embarking on a new business venture, these are the skills that will get you to the top. Planning, preparing, performing… it's a formula that applies not only to the…Expedition Leadership Studies in Patagonia, Chile.
The focus of leadership NOLS-style is on leading small groups in the wilderness, but the lessons transfer to your life when you participate in groups at school, in sports and at work.
Setting goals, planning, efficiency and teamwork. Whether you're climbing Denali or embarking on a new business venture, these are the skills that will get you to the top. Planning, preparing, performing… it's a formula that applies not only to the wilderness, but to the expedition of life.
Expedition leadership is situationally appropriate action that directs or guides your group to set and achieve goals. Great leaders create an environment that inspires individuals and groups to achieve their full potential. -
Hilton Head Preparatory School
High School
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Licenses & Certifications
Volunteer Experience
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Former National Philanthropic Board of Trustees
Easterseals
- 2 years
Easter Seals has been helping individuals with disabilities and special needs, and their families, live better lives for nearly 100 years. From child development centers to physical rehabilitation and job training for people with disabilities, Easter Seals offers a variety of services to help people with disabilities address life's challenges and achieve personal goals.
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New York City Executive Board
Save a Child's Heart
- 1 year 1 month
Children
Save A Child's Heart (SACH) is one of the largest undertakings in the world, providing urgently needed pediatric heart surgery and follow-up care for indigent children from developing countries. Based in Israel, our mission is to improve the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children from countries where the heart surgery they need is unobtainable.
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Board Member
Save a Child's Heart
- Present 11 years 5 months
Children
Over $155,000 raised through our 2nd Annual Lucowsky Brookman Golf Outing at Trump National Golf Club in Colt's Neck, NJ.
Corporate Honoree: Spartan Capital
Sports Honoree: Steve Weatherford, Super Bowl Champion, New York Giants -
Host
Save a Child's Heart
- Present 10 years 11 months
2015 Event, "Shop Your Heart Out", raising $40,000 to provide pediatric open heart surgery and aftercare for children in developing countries.
Skills
Publications
Projects
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From Passion to Profit in 18 months.
- Present
See projectHow I turned my passion project into my full time job.
Honors & Awards
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2x Emmy Awards
National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
Lead all marketing efforts for viral tribute campaign, "Just a Common Soldier". We had 950,000 participants, generating over 20 million views on social media.
Won Emmy Award for Best Community Service PSA, and Emmy Award for Best Host.
Organizations
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Business Council of New York State
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Recommendations received
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