CURATED EXPERIENTIAL DESIGNER
Make your vision something people feel.
Every organization has a story it wants people to feel, not just hear. I design the experience that tells it: the vision, the storyline, and a series of curated dinners that build on one another, so guests leave carrying your vision with them and return as the partners, funders, and champions who move it forward.
I work with a limited set of organizations at any given time. Currently, I have an opening to support one organization in 2027.
For organizations whose mission moves through relationships
When relationships drive your impact, how you bring people together matters. I design curated experiences, grounded in strategy and built to be measured, that deepen trust with the people who move your mission forward.
- Foundations and nonprofits deepening relationships with donors, sponsors and partners
- Innovation ecosystems and civic conveners bringing corporate, startup, nonprofit, and public leaders together
- Purpose-led brands and B Corps building community around their values
- Universities and cultural institutions engaging alumni, patrons and partners in new ways
Six moments organizations like yours reach out
To stand out in a crowded landscape
You’re tired of rinse-and-repeat. You want something people talk about and remember.
To shift from transactional to transformational
This isn’t about revenue only. It’s about belonging to a cause and driving exponential impact.
To combat customer and stakeholder fatigue
Let’s be honest: most events feel the same. We design for fueling fullfillment, energy, and alignment.
To build emotional connection
Investors, Customers, Innovators, and stakeholders don’t just want to know. They want to feel the impact.
To launch something new with power
When you're unveiling a policy, product, culture shift, or community initiative, we help it land with integrity and resonance
To expand vision with your community
People don’t want a pitch, they are tired of superficial connections and are craving depth. Your stakeholders want to see themselves in your story. We make that possible.
The Impact You Desire To Make Deserves to be met with Relationships that Carry Depth.
I join your team as the lead designer to curate intimate experiences. I’m there from the moment we connect your gatherings to your business model through to the impact they create. You get senior strategic leadership and a clear blueprint for bringing curated experiences to life that deliver direct, measurable impact for your customers, stakeholders, and investors.
From Strategy to Impact
- Experience strategy. How intimate experiences fit into your business model, which relationships matter most to your mission, and where they create the most critical impact.
- Storyline and guest journey. The narrative guests move through across the whole series, so each gathering reveals more of who you are.
- Curated experience design. Every element of each dinner: guest curation, arrival, seating, conversation design, sensory details and the close.
- Impact and measurement. Clear goals from the start, and a way to track the partnerships, funding and collaborations the experiences create.
- Team partnership. Playbooks, briefings and my presence at flagship gatherings, so your team executes with confidence.
"How you make someone feel is the infrastructure of everything you build."
— Dr. Payal Beri
From Vision to Lasting Impact
Every engagement moves through four stages, each one building on the last, so the experiences we create stay rooted in your strategy and grow your impact over time.
Listen
Vision & what must shiftWe begin with your vision and the impact you're working toward, then uncover what needs to shift, in perception and in relationships, to move that impact forward.
Design
Strategy in three layersStrategy is built in three layers: how the experience is woven into your business model for the greatest impact, the storyline guests will live, and the curated experiences and overarching impact they create together.
Equip
Your blueprintYou receive a complete playbook and strategic design, so execution runs seamlessly and your focus stays on keeping the experience true to your mission.
Measure
Impact over timeWe define success from the start and track what the relationships create over time: partnerships, funding, collaborations and champions for your organization.
What we learn shapes the next chapter of your story.
Built for Depth
What Happens When the Right People Truly Meet
Measurable impact from curated experiences, and the relationships that keep growing long after the evening ends.
people reached through leadership and culture experiences I designed
changemakers convened across sectors
countries where my programs have brought people together
- A nonprofit funded
- Changemakers hired
- A changemaker conference sponsored
- New cross-organization collaborations
The level of detail and intentionality behind how you made each piece so meaningful was so special. I go to a lot of high-end experiences. This was different.High-net-worth estate attorney, Washington, DC
“I met people who have become avid supporters of my nonprofit, and opened doors I didn't know I needed open. ”Founder & Executive Director, education nonprofit
“The level of vulnerability among strangers that felt so safe and so easy. That doesn't happen by accident.”Executive coach to women leaders in STEM
“I had no idea how much I needed to be in that room. And how much it would transform my perspective.”Public policy advocate, reentry & incarceration
“I have to have you bring this down to Memphis.”Obama Fellow & nonprofit founder
“When it comes to fundraising events, we wanted to do something completely different. Dr. Payal’s team put together the immersive experience as a unique way to bring the story of our work that happens in a prison to the outside world. Dr. Payal and her team are gifted storytellers who took the time to truly understand the work and our mission, which made the experience even more powerful.”Andrew Murphy, Executive Director, WIEA
Dr. Payal Beri
As a third culture kid raised across 18 cities, countries and continents, I learned early that belonging is something you create. For 20 years, as a psychologist, I’ve studied human connection and how cultures around the world gather, and I bring that global perspective into every experience I design. I’m the founder of The Empathy Storyteller’s Salon and the creator of The Relationship Economy, a framework built on a simple belief: experiences worth building begin with how you make someone feel.
My work lives where psychology, culture and experience meet:
- —Organizational psychology. Leadership, values and culture programs that have reached 50,000+ people at organizations including NASA, Google and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- —Experiential design. Immersive donor, partner and community experiences that bring the missions of foundations and nonprofits to life
- —Convening. The Empathy Storyteller’s Salon, bringing 100+ changemakers together across Chicago, DC and New York into rooms where partnerships are born
- —Thought leadership. Keynotes for audiences of up to 800, and the podcast Reframing Perspectives, exploring how relationships shape leadership, culture and lasting impact
This is the heart of The Relationship Economy, the framework behind everything I build: community as infrastructure, connection as strategy, and belonging as the engine of lasting change. Whether I’m shaping a leadership program for thousands or an intimate dinner for twenty, the question is the same: how do we want people to feel, and what will that feeling make possible?
As a former clinical therapist, I understand what helps people open up. As a designer, I create the conditions for it to happen. That combination is what turns a gathering into a turning point.
Not just advising on it.
Reframing Perspectives
I sit down with changemakers shaping culture, business, and social impact, exploring how relationships transform the way we lead, work, and live.
Listen inThe Empathy Storyteller's Salon
Underground social experiences for changemakers who know relationships are the real infrastructure for change. Hosted in Chicago, DC, and NYC.
Be invitedReal Impact is made through Relationships
Partner with me and let's grow the impact your organization has on its community.
Book a discovery call