Reinventing Conversation With The Founders Of Schefs
Lola Lafia and Pedro Damasceno launched Schefs early this year. The two rising juniors from Columbia University transformed the simple concept of conversing and eating, into a transcendental experience. A mission driven space where young individuals can share their passions and interests, as well as push past their existing social circles, through the simple act of conversation. In today’s article, we discuss everything about Schefs, from its birth story to its depthful community building mission.
Illustration by Kassia Karras (@purifiedsmoke)
B&A: Welcome guys and thank you for joining us! To start off, can you give us a quick introduction about yourselves
Pedro Damasceno (PD): Hello, I’m Pedro. I just finished my sophomore year of university and I am studying comparative literature with a focus on the romance languages. However I am currently taking a gap year. I am originally from Brazil, but I have kind of moved around my entire life.
Lola Lafia (LL): Hi, my name is Lola and I’m also a rising junior in Columbia University. I am majoring in Computer Science and Architecture, and I am currently taking a gap year as well. I was born in San Francisco and lived there for a couple of years, and then I moved to New York and have lived there ever since. However, right when school started online, I realised I didn’t want to do it and decided to move to California. I am now living in a house with twenty other women from across the country. Everyone here has their own projects and I’m working on Schefs from here.
B&A: Can you explain to us a bit of what Schefs is?
LL: Schefs is a mission-driven social platform for young people, specifically college students, to create community through conversations that are focused on particular topics. Currently, the way that our platform functions is through students that sign up to host or attend an event which is facilitated by themselves, or other students. Each event is open to a small group of five to eight individuals that have signed up for it. This way, Schefs becomes a passion driven space of things people care about, and a push against the passive, superficial and asynchronous kind of connections and interactions that we tend to have with one another on existing social networks. [Through Schefs] We can represent ourselves as holistic, on a new network that creates a meaningful community through conversation, which is the root of everything in this world.
B&A: Tell us how was Schefs born!
PD: Okay, so here is the Schefs’ birth story. Lola and I met in freshman year of college. We both lived on the same floor and she always had to pass by my room to get to the bathroom. Every night she would knock on my door and we would share ideas and make plans for the future, or simply just complain about things that were happening in our lives. Lola told me she had created this project with her younger brother, where they would cook in New York residences– a catered experience in your own home. I helped her a bit with the graphics for that project which went really well. After that, she came up to me with an idea similar to that start up. A project that was accessible to everybody. And that is sort of how Schefs started. It is based on the idea that anybody can host their own event in their dorms, covering a cool topic, meeting new people and expanding past their traditional social circles. The thing is, after freshman year, everyone is in their own circles and no one really moves out of the same four or five people that they see everyday. So, as a way to invite new people into your intimate space, through cooking and conversation, we launched the idea in January. We had thirteen in-person experiences, where students invited other students into their spaces and hosted them. We quickly realised that people cared about this project, and that it was a fun way of bringing students together.
LL: Just like Pedro said, Schefs ended up being a platform for any college student to create some kind of experience that revolved around food, in a dorm room. And this seemed to couple really well with a new need that we were seeing. A need to meet new people in college, especially after students have already created their own social circles and were looking for something different and exciting
Lola Lafia and Pedro Damasceno, founders of Schefs
B&A: Amazing! We also would like to congratulate you on such an innovative contribution to the world of communication. What are the challenges of conceptualizing an idea of this magnitude as a student?
LL: From our perspective, it’s pretty easy to run Schefs now because we are both taking a gap year. We chose this project over school, which is quite exciting. But in terms of what is hard about running Schefs, is that we are introducing a behavior that is completely new to the world. The concept of getting people together who have never met before on a call, asking them to talk to each other for an hour and share personal experiences is kind of crazy, right? And we know it’s amazing, because the ones that have already been a part of it loved it. But it can be quite hard to convince people to be a part of something so uncommon as Schefs. We have to push people out of their comfort zones, which I personally find to be very positive. Encouraging students to be brave is so important, and once they attend the first event, the concept becomes very clear and they realise how wonderful it is. So, the hump of telling people to do something they have never done before is the part that we focus on the most. We make sure to promote Schefs on our social media as much as we can, not necessarily as something that we are, but as something that we work on. Something we would love for everyone to join and be a part of.
PD: Taking it back to when we first started, during our very early days when we were still at school, I would always compartmentalise the things that I was working on and would not let them overlap very much. But something that I learnt from Lola that she really embodies so well, is that she really lives her passions. That is how I slowly started to really live the Schefs’ mission. In terms of time, Lola managed so well school and getting the word out [about Schefs] at the same time. From meeting people in a bar, to just ordering a meal, she would immediately advertise our project and be like “hey, there’s this really cool thing I’m working on, you should check it out!”. And that is what contributed to the very first month of setting the foundation for Schefs. It’s about not being afraid to take what you are working on and let it present itself first in terms of your social media or in conversations. I feel like we all have a fear whenever we are working on something new, especially something no one has done before. We think that it won’t work or that we might be ridiculed because of it, yet it ends up becoming the best idea ever, by living it. It’s been a snowball effect, and every month I get even more excited about everything that is happening regarding it. I think that starting it in school was perfect because it made us live it early on.
B&A: The concept of Schefs was born in a pre-corona world, how has Covid affected the schefs experience?
PD: Going back to what Lola mentioned earlier of stripping the main things that happen around a table. What do you do? You eat obviously, but you talk. And what does that talking do? What does that conversation do? Essentially, that conversation and community that is formed around a table is a connection of friendship and ideas. So we had to shift our model and get rid of the in person events. We had no idea for how long it was going to last. At first, I was very against doing the events online, but Lola convinced me. Slowly as we started making more events, we started to receive more feedback and we realized that people were more interested in attending the events that had to do with a specific idea, topic or theme, instead of the food. So, from there we retained that meal time idea, the table as a metaphor, but really shifted the focus from meals to ideas. Because that is the core of what Schefs is, ideas.
LL: And some people have asked what is the point of being called Schefs, since it isn’t about food anymore. But I really believe in origin stories and that you should always acknowledge how something started. We still firmly believe in what a chef is, sort of curator of an experience. Someone who creates a space for people to come together and converse and engage. So we move away from food yet it still is the foundation of what Schefs is.
B&A: What is the process for formulating the monthly Schefs experiences?
LL: Anyone, as long as they have an email associated with an undergraduate school in the world, can sign up to host an event. That means that you have to create an event, upload a picture related to it, and a somewhat lengthy description of what your conversation will be about. That’s it. The process is usually self-selective; we haven't really had any issues with our events.
B&A: Would there be any topic of conversation that Schefs would say “no” to. Why?
LL: Probably, topics that are too professional or networking related. Or a subject that is blatantly racist, homophobic or derogatory in any form. The topics have to be aligned with Schefs’ vision. If it is a very controversial topic, it is important to have representatives for both sides present, in order to have them mediate the content.
PD: Definitely hate speech is something that we would say no to. However, we have also gotten a lot of topic proposals that just aren’t specific enough or that are too professional. And the reason why we are so picky with professional events is because we want them to be specific and personal. Whenever someone suggests a broad topic, we definitely get back to them. It’s just how Lola said, anyone can host a Schefs event. But sometimes it just takes a bit of further poking and editing the subject that they want to cover.
B&A: Would you both agree that Schefs experiences can be seen as a benchmark for what is important to our generation at a certain time? Let’s talk about it!
LL: We think that would be a complete dream and that is exactly what we strive to be. A space that gets what people our age are interested in and what fills them with joy. We believe this will become possible the more people join us, because how else could we know their interests unless they join. So yes! This should be a space for people to tackle whatever topic they care about, at any moment, and be able to explore issues with individuals outside of their immediate circles. Schefs is a parallel to whatever it is people’s passions and interests!
Illustration by @schefs.us
B&A: What event has been your favourite Schefs event so far?
LL: Two of my close friends hosted an event last May called the Philosophy of Quantum Physics, which was based on a class they took. They basically gathered everything they had learned from this class, whipped up a presentation and led an event on it. I had wanted to take this class for so, and all of a sudden I got to attend a mini version of it! Some of the people who showed up were interested in Philosophy, some were interested in Physics. And that is what happens you cover the intersection of two topics, you get both perspectives. Another one of my favourite events is the one that I hosted, called Experimental Dining: The Synergy of Food and Art. Six people that I didn't know showed up! We talked for two hours, and by the end I had this huge list of new different things to look into. It was just so cool to prove the concept of taking something that I am interested in, and putting it out there to see who is also attracted to it, and then have a jam session about it. A kind of rock and roll exchange of thoughts around a particular topic.
PD: One of my favorite events was called The Problems Left To Solve in Mental Health. The host founded an app called Wellnest, which is dedicated to mental health. He had a logistical perspective on how to solve mental health problems, and how to talk about it through his app. Six people joined the event, from all over the world. It was so mind blowing for me, on a whole different level. We ended up getting very close and talking about our personal experiences. We even talked about how therapy and mental health are perceived all over the world. For example, how in Argentina everyone speaks very openly about it, but in other places in Latin America is a taboo subject. Tommy, the host, even convinced me to get a therapist! He believes that everyone needs one. It was great and it really left a big mark on me.
“The Schefs Method, changing the way people think and interact with each other. An empire of young, motivated individuals that are passionate about having meaningful conversations, just like we are doing right now. ”