South Florida continues to attract entrepreneurs, executives, creators, business owners and people looking for their next opportunity. But even in a region built on relationships, meeting the right people can still be surprisingly difficult.
Carla Facciolo, Danielle Tortorello and Chantel Ingrassia believe there is room for a different approach. Their new company, CDC Collective, is being developed as a network of events, experiences, business relationships and media connections stretching from Palm Beach through Broward and Miami.
The concept begins with bringing people together, but the founders are thinking beyond the traditional networking mixer. CDC Collective is intended to become an ongoing community where entrepreneurs, executives, professionals, creatives, influencers, brands and people expanding their circles can meet repeatedly and develop relationships that continue long after an event ends.
The company plans to use dinners, networking events, outings, entertainment, private gatherings and other experiences as ways to create those introductions. Over time, the goal is for the network itself to become valuable — a place where one introduction can lead to a client, partnership, referral, collaboration or simply another worthwhile relationship.
Three Different Backgrounds, One Network
The founders arrive at CDC Collective from very different professional worlds, giving the company access to networks that might not ordinarily overlap.
Carla Facciolo is the most immediately recognizable of the three. Her years on VH1's Mob Wives gave her national television exposure and experience inside the entertainment business. That background also placed her around media personalities, producers, entrepreneurs and people whose relationships extend well beyond South Florida.
CDC Collective gives Facciolo an opportunity to use that experience in a different way. Rather than simply attaching a recognizable name to events, she is helping build a company whose central product is relationships — connecting people who may have business, social or creative reasons to know one another.
Danielle Tortorello brings a particularly broad entrepreneurial background. Her experience has crossed fashion, grooming and pet care, health and fitness, wellness, consumer products and online commerce.
Tortorello co-founded fashion brand ALGND, giving her firsthand experience with branding, product development, e-commerce and building a consumer audience. Her business background has also included grooming and pet-care products, along with health, fitness and wellness ventures sold and promoted through digital channels.
She also understands entertainment from direct experience. Tortorello appeared on Animal Planet's reality competition series Groomer Has It, adding television and entertainment experience to a résumé already built around entrepreneurship and consumer products.
That combination is relevant to CDC Collective's larger plans. Tortorello understands what it takes to build a business, put a product in front of consumers and develop an audience around a brand. She also understands the media side of getting attention for those products.
Chantel Ingrassia brings another perspective entirely.
Ingrassia works privately as an interior designer serving the Palm Beach market, where relationships, aesthetics and discretion often go hand in hand. Her design experience, however, extends well beyond private residential work.
Earlier in her career, she worked on store design for major retail companies, giving her firsthand knowledge of how large brands translate their identities into physical spaces. Store design is not simply decoration. It involves understanding how customers experience a brand from the moment they enter — the environment, presentation, movement through the space and overall impression left behind.
That experience has obvious relevance for a company planning events and experiences of its own.
Ingrassia has also been an entrepreneur herself, having owned clothing stores and worked directly in fashion and retail. Her combination of interior design, major retail-store development, fashion and entrepreneurship gives CDC Collective another set of relationships and another way of looking at how people interact with brands and experiences.
Together, Facciolo, Tortorello and Ingrassia are not bringing a single contact list into CDC Collective. They are combining several different worlds.
More Than a Networking Event
The founders want CDC Collective to become something people participate in repeatedly rather than occasionally.
A person might meet someone at a CDC cocktail event in Boca Raton, reconnect with that person over dinner in Palm Beach and find themselves working together after another gathering in Fort Lauderdale or Miami. Those repeated interactions are important because meaningful business relationships rarely develop from exchanging a business card once.
The company therefore plans to mix traditional networking with a broader calendar of social activities and experiences. That could include business gatherings, dinners, entertainment, outings, private events, destination experiences and programming centered on particular interests or industries.
The idea is to make professional connection feel more natural. Someone might attend because they are looking for clients or partnerships. Someone else might want to expand a social circle after moving to South Florida. Another person might be looking for investors, creative collaborators or introductions into an industry.
Those objectives do not have to be separated.
The network becomes more useful as more of those people begin knowing one another.
Connecting Brands, Media and Influencers
CDC Collective is also developing a media component that could eventually become an important part of the business.
The concept is to connect companies and consumer brands with influencers, creators and personalities capable of introducing those products to larger audiences. Rather than operating solely through digital influencer campaigns, CDC could potentially combine online promotion with the physical network being built through its events.
A business could participate in a CDC event, introduce a product to attendees, establish relationships with creators in the network and then extend that exposure through social media and digital content. Influencers could gain access to brands looking for partnerships, while businesses could gain a more direct route to relevant audiences.
That places CDC Collective at the intersection of networking, events, media and commerce — with the physical community supporting the digital one and vice versa.
The First Event Starts in Boca Raton
CDC Collective's first public event, Connect & Collab, takes place Sept. 17 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at SBR Brow Studio + Beauty Suites, 9181 Glades Road #125 in Boca Raton.
The inaugural gathering is focused on women and is designed around meeting new people, building business relationships, developing collaborations and generating referrals. Admission is $20 and includes complimentary appetizers and drinks.
The first event's audience should not be confused with the larger company.
Connect & Collab is a women's event. CDC Collective is not a women's company.
Future CDC programming is intended for a broader professional and social audience throughout South Florida. The Boca Raton gathering is simply the company's first opportunity to begin assembling the network in person.
Guests at the event will also be encouraged to scan CDC Collective QR codes placed throughout the venue. Those codes will direct attendees to the company's website, where they can join the network and provide information about their businesses, industries, interests and the kinds of people or opportunities they hope to connect with.
That information is intended to help CDC Collective move beyond random introductions. If the company understands who is in its network and what those people are looking for, it can begin connecting individuals with relevant businesses, events, partnerships and other people.
What CDC Collective Is Building
New networking organizations launch regularly. CDC Collective begins with one advantage that cannot be manufactured quickly: its founders already operate within established but different professional circles.
Facciolo brings entertainment, television and public visibility. Tortorello brings entrepreneurship, consumer products, e-commerce and television experience. Ingrassia brings Palm Beach relationships, interior design, major retail-store design, fashion and retail entrepreneurship.
CDC Collective is attempting to connect those circles and then continue expanding them throughout South Florida.
Whether the company ultimately succeeds will depend less on the number of events it produces than on the quality of the network it creates. If people make useful introductions, return for future events and begin doing business or collaborating through relationships formed within the group, the network itself becomes the company's most important asset.
That is the larger idea behind CDC Collective.
The first gathering happens in Boca Raton. The network the founders are trying to build stretches from Palm Beach through Broward and Miami.
