After finishing up a teaching stint in South Africa, Christina Kane was planning to fly home to Pittsburgh when her sister, who was living in Hamden, convinced her to take what would turn out to be a life-changing detour.
“She said come to New Haven. Just type in BDL (when booking the flight),” Kane recalled. That was 15 years ago.
Today Kane, 36, plays a key role in nurturing the Elm City’s innovation economy as director of culture for The Grove, the well-known co-working space and incubator founded by entrepreneurs Slate Ballard and Ken Janke in 2010.
Kane, who is also an artist and ballroom dance instructor, said when she arrived in New Haven, she immediately fell in love with its arts and cultural scene. “It’s a great city. It’s small enough that you can actually make a difference here.”
That’s what Kane strives to do at The Grove, where she runs the day-to-day operations with a team of five work-exchange volunteers. The communal office space started with about a dozen members in a 1,200-square-foot location on Orange Street. Today, more than 150 innovators, entrepreneurs and freelancers share a space 10 times that size at 760 Chapel Street.
Kane’s job is part-events planner, part-facilitator, part-matchmaker, as she fosters a culture of collaboration and support – both for the established entrepreneurs and for people walking in the door with little more than an idea.
“I’m kind of a translator. I’m introducing them to the language (of the startup culture),” she said of the newest members. “Someone will say to them, ‘What’s your pitch deck look like?’ and they’re like, ‘A pitch deck? What is that?’ ” she said, referring to the five-minute presentation entrepreneurs make to potential investors.
Kane also connects the co-working professionals – who she says hail from just about any industry imaginable – with each other and others who can help them, so they can learn from each other and fill each other’s business needs.
“The art of introduction is the main part of my day,” she said. “People will say, ‘Hey, do you know anyone who’s a notary, a private investigator, an IT lawyer?’ You name it,” said Kane.
Kris Tonski, owner of Fusion Design, a New Haven-based graphic design service, said as a web designer who formerly worked from home, she had few New Haven contacts before meeting Kane at The Grove.
“My network of people in New Haven is mostly due to Christina and the way that she has about her,” Tonski said. “She’s very in tune to the things people have in common, and even if you don’t know what that is, she’ll bring it out of you.”
Kane, a finalist for Community Builder of the Year at the 2017 CT Entrepreneur Awards, also hosts weekly networking sessions such as Wine Down Wednesdays, where, as the name implies, members can relax and discuss their work day over a glass of wine. On Tuesday mornings, she cooks pancakes for Digital Media Sync, which features weekly talks by social media professionals.
Originally from Greensburg, Pa., Kane spent much of her teens traveling abroad. At 16, she took her first service trip to Mumbai, India, and was so inspired she decided to graduate high school early to keep traveling, earning her diploma through homeschooling and community college courses.
By 19, she was leading her own trips, teaching English in India and Columbia and sex education in South Africa before landing in the Elm City. She held jobs as a bank teller, dance instructor and wedding coordinator and spent several years in the insurance industry before earning a psychology degree at Southern Connecticut State University in 2013.
Although she wouldn’t work there full time until 2014, Kane had a hand in The Grove from the start. She took part in the early brainstorming sessions with founders Ballard and Janke (Ballard’s wife, Rachel, was one of the first people Kane met in New Haven) and she furnished the original Orange Street space “on basically no budget” by scoping out and upcycling free furniture.
When not at The Grove, she enjoys spending time at her art studio, Studio i, in Fair Haven’s Erector Square, where she also teaches ballroom dancing. Her specialities are cartooning, portraiture and paper design.
Natalie Missakian can be reached at news@newhavenbiz.com
