The power of play to build belonging

Welcome to the Community Strategy Podcast. 

I'm Deb Schell, the host. I'm excited to introduce today's guest, Eli Walker! She designs events and programs that build play into belonging in the modern world and how to use play to facilitate more engaging meetings. 

Equipped with a BFA in Theater from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and as the founder and author of Drunk Yoga® (now The Uplift Experience), Eli pioneered the wellness entertainment movement to bridge the gap between #selfcare and #communitycare through her social yoga events. 

Since then, she has used immersive storytelling and mindfulness practices to support tens of thousands of individuals and hundreds of institutions across the globe—including NYU and Columbia University, as well as Barclay's, eBay, Intel, Google, Pinterest, and Mastercard—in building meaningful belonging for themselves and their teams in our modern, remote world by leveraging the art of play in live experience design. 

Eli has always loved helping people from different backgrounds get on the same page. Bonus points if she can achieve this while inspiring them to live joyfully, empowering them with new perspectives, and making them laugh simultaneously. When you work with Eli, you can expect to play, move, laugh, and walk away feeling empowered with tools to create a more connected world.

During this interview, Eli shares her entrance into the community industry. She describes community-based theater as an immersive performance art in which the facilitator and storytellers go into existing communities and use live storytelling theater to help participants tell their stories and bridge sociological barriers. 

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