Founder Jason Kelley set out to help people find their people. What he built is now a multi-city network reshaping how connection happens.
Moving to a new city is hard enough. But moving to a new city alone and spending the first six months trying to figure out the best happy hour, the best natural hair salon, or the place with the best burger, is a particular kind of haze.
When Jason Kelley started The Wave in Washington, D.C. in 2016, he had one idea that spoke exactly to this: give Black professionals a way to find their people, in whatever city they were trying to make home. It began as a GroupMe chat for 13 friends, and today it has over 40,000 members across 40 cities, a national bar crawl, a weekly newsletter that reaches 20,000 subscribers, and a consulting arm that brands pay money to access. He runs all of it alongside his business partner, Sabrina Harvey.
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