Connection shouldn't be convenient.
It should cost you something.
Chris Schembra helps leaders and organizations do the dirty work of being known — because the relationships that transform companies are the ones you can't automate, shortcut, or optimize your way into.
Book Chris to SpeakWe engineered friction out of our lives and called it progress.
We replaced handwritten notes with auto-generated messages, dinner tables with Slack channels, and real questions with small talk. And now we're paying for it.
I call it Soul Poverty — the quiet devastation of succeeding at everything you were told to optimize for and still feeling empty. It's having 2,000 LinkedIn connections and nobody you'd call at 3 AM. The Surgeon General called loneliness an epidemic. The cause isn't technology. It's convenience — the quiet, relentless removal of every friction that used to build the muscles of meaning.
Many of our employees said this was the best 90 minutes they'd ever spent at Dell. It got deep and personal quick. The world is on fire right now and you're here to help them put out those fires.
Erik Day — SVP, Dell Technologies
From convenience to friction to earned connection.
A decade of hosting 800+ dinners, partnering with 400+ companies, and one simple question asked at 7:47 PM distilled into a methodology that actually works.
Convenience removes the cost that makes gestures meaningful. We reintroduce designed friction — the intentional, purposeful effort that signals genuine investment in another human being.
Not "what do you do" but "who would you thank?" The right question doesn't categorize — it reveals. It creates a container where people can exist as their full, contradictory, layered selves.
The moment someone chooses to be seen — not performing vulnerability, but actually risking being known. That's where connection earns its name. That's the moment everything changes.
A pot of pasta, a simple question, and ten years of proof.
It started in 2015 with a batch of pasta sauce that went wrong and a dinner party that went right. A simple question at 7:47 PM cracked open a room full of strangers — and I spent the next decade figuring out why.
What I discovered is that we're not suffering from a lack of technology, productivity, or information. We're suffering from Soul Poverty. And the antidote isn't another app, survey, or team-building exercise. It's friction. Purposeful, designed, human friction that makes connection cost something — and therefore mean something.
Today I bring that methodology to keynote stages, executive sessions, and intimate gatherings for companies like Google, Microsoft, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Navy. I'm the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Gratitude and Pasta, and my next book — Earned Connection: The Dirty Work of Being Known — is the field guide for what comes next.
Not keynotes. Experiences that leave marks.
Chris has a unique gift in connecting with others to help us be our best selves at work. His focus on gratitude fostered camaraderie amongst the Citi team, building true connections and a meaningful shared experience.
Morgan McKenney
Chief Operating Officer, Citi
On the battlefield I've seen the effect that energy and enthusiasm plays as a force multiplier. Chris brings a level of passion that permeates his audience and positively affects the morale of everyone he comes in contact with.
Colonel David Sutherland
Bronze Star & Purple Heart, U.S. Army
A completely new way to connect with our customers, prospects, and teams. Chris Schembra is the inventor of this type of human connection construct. Never before has this been deployed in the world of Enterprise Software.
Tony Safoian
President & CEO, SADA Systems
I don't give keynotes.
I create rooms where people actually show up.
If you're looking for someone to tell your team to "bring their whole selves to work," I'm not your guy. If you want someone to build a room where they actually do — let's talk.
Book Chris