Convene

Twelve HR leaders seated in a loose circle in a warm light-filled room, mid-conversation, one laughing with eyes closed, another leaning forward with both hands around a mug, shot from slightly above with shallow depth of field

Monthly · Confidential · 12 Members

The room where HR leaders stop performing and start healing.

A curated circle of twelve. Monthly. Off the record. For the people who hold everyone else together.

Reserve Your Chair Hear the story

12 seats

3 open this cycle

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How Convene Came to Be

Chapter One

The Sunday night I couldn't get out of bed.

In 2019, after leading a company-wide restructure that eliminated 140 positions, I sat in my car in the parking garage for forty-five minutes. I had just delivered the news to the last team. I had cried with them, absorbed their fear, held the room — and now there was no one to hold me. That was the moment I understood that HR leadership was the loneliest job in any building.

I had coaches, mentors, a therapist. None of them had ever sat where I sat. None of them knew what it felt like to grieve alongside the people you're responsible for releasing.

Renata Osei

Founder, Convene · Former CHRO

Empty conference room with late afternoon light streaming through tall windows, a single chair pulled back from the table

"There was no one to hold me."

Chapter Two

Six strangers in a borrowed conference room.

I called five colleagues I trusted — people I'd met at conferences, exchanged knowing glances with across boardroom tables. We met on a Thursday evening in a conference room someone's company had lent us. No agenda. No facilitator. No deliverables.

By 9pm, we had cried, laughed until our stomachs hurt, and said things we had never said inside our own buildings. One woman said: "I didn't know other people felt this way."We all nodded. That was the beginning.

Original members

Borrowed room

We didn't notice pass

Six people seated in a circle in a warmly lit room, mid-conversation, leaning toward each other, coffee cups on the table

"We didn't know each other. By the end, we knew each other better than our own teams did."

Chapter Three

The missing infrastructure.

We realized that peer truth-telling wasn't a luxury — it was infrastructure. Every HR career had a gap at the top where honest conversation should have been. The executive above you doesn't understand. Your team looks to you for stability. Your coach means well but has never eliminated a department.

Convene exists to fill that gap.

Small group of professionals gathered around a table in a light-filled space, papers and mugs, genuine conversation

From six strangers to twelve trusted peers. Every month, for five years.

The format hasn't changed. The trust has only deepened.

The Practice

This isn't networking. It's a practice, built from pain.

Every session follows a structure born from five years of iteration. Not a therapy group. Not a mastermind. Something quieter and more honest than either — a circle of peers who have agreed to stop performing.

The Opening Round

Each member answers one question: what are you carrying into this room? Not a report. Not a metric. The actual weight. We go around the circle and no one interrupts.

The Unsayable

One member brings something they cannot say anywhere else. The group listens without advice, without solutions. Sometimes the most useful thing is being witnessed.

Peer Counsel

The group offers perspective — not answers. We ask questions that open rather than close. We draw on our own scars, not textbooks.

The Closing

Each member names one thing they're taking with them. Not a to-do. A shift. Something that changed in the room that they'll carry back into their building.

Hear it from a member

Maya Chen

VP of People · Series B startup

First session, 2024

"I walked in thinking I'd be the most composed person in the room. Within fifteen minutes I was describing something I'd never said out loud to anyone. And nobody fixed it. They just... stayed with me in it."

2:47

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12 members

Gathering size

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Monthly

Frequency

⏱

3 hours

Duration

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In-person

Format

Held under Chatham House Rule

What is said in the room stays in the room. Members are free to use the information received, but the identity of the speaker is never shared.

Who Belongs Here

You carry the organization. Who carries you?

Convene is not for every HR professional. It's for the ones at the top of the function — the ones who have run out of people to tell the truth to.

Professional woman with warm expression, natural light, thoughtful gaze

Archetype: The Carrier

The CHRO at a mid-market company

"I'm the only person in my company who knows everything — the restructure coming in Q3, the executive who's about to resign, the team that's quietly falling apart. And I can't tell anyone."

Responsible for 400–2,000 employees. No peer inside the building. Carries organizational truth that can't be shared down or up.

Professional man leaning forward, hands clasped, engaged expression, warm office light

Archetype: The Builder

VP of People at a scaling startup

"The founder thinks culture is a slide deck. I've been trying to build something real while the company grows 40% a year and burns through people like kindling."

Series A to C. Sole HR leader. Expected to scale culture while the company outgrows every system she builds.

Professional woman with kind eyes, natural light, slight smile

Archetype: The Absorber

Senior HR Director at a nonprofit

"My staff are trauma-informed practitioners. They absorb everyone else's pain. I absorb theirs. There is no one above me who has any idea what that costs."

Mission-driven organization. Underfunded HR function. Absorbs secondary trauma from a workforce that absorbs primary trauma.

If you recognized yourself in any of those three — you belong here.

Reserve Your Chair

The Threshold

The chair is waiting. It's yours to take.

Each monthly session has one open seat for a first-time guest. We ask one honest question before you arrive — not to screen you, but to begin the work of trust before you walk through the door.

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You'll receive a confirmation and a short note about what to bring — yourself, and nothing to prove.

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Pricing is shared after submission. We do this to filter for sincerity over convenience.

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Location is shared 48 hours before the session. A quiet room in a trusted venue.

"The question they asked before I arrived — I sat with it for two days. By the time I got to the room, the work had already started."

— Darnell Whitfield, HR Director · Children's Advocacy Nonprofit