My name is Dan Basco. I am honored to be the Social Director of the Cleveland Professional 20/30 Club during this 20th year.
To give you a little background about myself, I was born and raised in a small suburb of Cleveland called Independence. I moved to Columbus after graduate school, and became a member of their young professional group while working and living there. I moved back here in 2016, and immediately started attending Cleveland 20/30 events. My attendance ramped up in 2019, and just as I was hoping to start planning in-person events in 2020… we all know what happened.
I took over the Social Director role at the start of this year, and instantly started to plan some fun virtual events: a virtual beer tasting with Southern Tier Brewery and a virtual wine tasting with CLE Urban Winery. Through these events, along with virtual icebreakers and board interviews, one common thread emerged – everyone is eager to get back out there and meet other young professionals in the area. Even over Zoom, I could sense the excitement, enthusiasm, and optimism from our members!
Looking ahead, as Social Director, I hope you get the opportunity to visit some local places or try some new things that you might not normally do on your own. Our monthly Around Towns, the club’s biggest event, will showcase some of Cleveland's relatively new hotspots (such as Saucy Brew Works Vibe Garden, which is our August Around Town event) that opened during or just before the pandemic. These events are huge and often have hundreds of members!
For those who prefer a smaller crowd, we have many smaller events that generally have 10-20 people that attend. To showcase the wide variety of cultures, cuisines, and neighborhoods in Cleveland, we brought back the Global Gourmet series this May. It’s important to me that we support these small local businesses. Every month, we do a small group dinner at a local cultural restaurant – the July dinner is at Xinji Noodle Bar for Japanese Ramen in Ohio City on July 22nd. You will have the chance to attend these dinners if you purchase a Professional Membership! Additionally, with the great park systems we have here in Northeast Ohio, we run monthly hikes where we showcase some of our great local and national parks in Cuyahoga and Summit County. We also have monthly meetups at the Edgewater Park Beach House this summer.
We have already started a couple of co-ed volleyball leagues, where you have the familiarity of seeing the same people every week, while exercising and making friends. Building up co-ed sports leagues (and game leagues such as trivia) is one of my goals as Social Director for the 2021-22 year. In addition, we plan to attend sporting events in person, such as an Indians baseball game on August 27th. We also have a number of one-off events that are in the works, which could range from anything exercise-related, to learning how to make cocktails, or to visit something local like a tour of the Christmas Story House.
I’d love to hear from you if you have any feedback about any of the events we have in the works, or what kinds of events we could be doing. Please reach out to me at social@cleveland2030.org. I look forward to hearing from you, or seeing you at an event!
Sincerely,
Dan Basco
