SOCIAL WELL presents
RECONNECT
Hosts: Willa, Smitha, Raha
Social Well is hosting a 4-week virtual wellness experience to help you connect with yourself, others and the world. Designed to spark joy, authenticity, and connection, the series will feature programming around our three M’s: movement, mind and meet. Join us for group fitness, journaling & meditation classes, and curated conversations - think storytelling nights w/Shannon N, Thoughtlucks w/Emily H, and a very special Arrow Dating Salon. Through these sessions, we’ll explore what it means for each of us to live an authentic, fulfilling and joyful life.
Meet Your Hosts
Smitha Das
Willa Zhou
Smitha loves to spark new ideas, dance moves, and joy. She is on a journey to live a life of impact and connection and is excited to explore these themes with you all this month.
Her interest in impact sparked at a young age when she founded a water non-profit. After working in the public and private sectors, she is now an impact investor based in Boston, where she works to leverage the power of markets to scale social and environmental impact.
During this last year in quarantine, Smitha has been seeking new ways to create quality connection and build a sense of community in her life. She was inspired to co-host Reconnect to curate social wellness experiences for us all to connect with ourselves and one another. You can learn more about her thoughts on wellness and connection in a new podcast launching next week, called Seen & Heard.
Outside of the these hustles, you can find Smitha dancing or cuddling with her puppy, Finn. She looks forward to getting to know you all and finding meaningful ways to connect!
Willa's wellness journey goes back to college. She'd gained the freshmen 15, and was personally motivated to figure out how to take better care of myself. That led her to write her junior thesis and senior theses at Harvard on the social influences of health & wellness, and how collegiate athletes are influenced by their teammates.
Her research made it clear that surrounding yourself with a healthy community meant you were far more likely to maintain strong mental and physical health. Inspired, she started a preventative public health program in San Francisco that brought outdoor cardio dance classes and healthy cooking classes to the public, chaired the wellness committee for my section at HBS, and led growth for WeWork's wellness startup. Now she's an independent consultant, specializing in comms, culture, and OKR’s/alignment/performance.
Each step of her journey has shown her how joy, social connection and wellness are interlaced and build on each other. That’s why she created Social Well and Arrow, to spark joy, authenticity and connection through social wellness experiences.
She couldn’t be more excited for our upcoming Reconnect Experience. She'll be joined by many dear friends: co-hosts Smitha and Raha, fitness instructor extraordinaire Siri, Thoughtluck founder Emily, and many more. Willa hopes you will join us for this special experience designed to help us all reconnect with ourselves, our friends, and the world. <3
Raha Francis
Raha’s journey is one driven by curiosity about her inner and outer world. Raha is a Canadian who worked in intellectual property law in New York City, and strategy consulting in DC. Raha eventually moved countries, coasts and careers to Vancouver, to now work in the impact world, and lean a little more into her community, dancing and doodling.
A lifelong dancer, Raha spent 13 years in a cultural dance troupe in Toronto before heading to law school, where she met Willa while choreographing performances at the business school next door.
Years later, Raha and Willa recently bumped into each other (virtually!) while discussing logistics behind an online dance class. One lovely conversation turned into another, and you can now hear more of her, Willa’s and Smitha’s thoughts on redefining connection in their upcoming podcast, Seen & Heard. She’s so excited to co-host Reconnect with these lovely ladies— and meet all of you!
