Susan MacTavish Best ’95 has found her niche in cultivating connections and spreading ideas. After more than two decades working in Silicon Valley public relations, this year she founded Posthoc, which she describes as a “petri dish for ideas and thought-leaders.”
Posthoc hosts salons — intimate dinner parties that center around a discussion topic and thrown in one of MacTavish Best’s bicoastal homes. The purpose of these parties is to get guests engaged in meaningful discussions on big ideas and have them form connections with one another. Recent salon guests have pondered “Plant Intelligence” and “An Algorithmic Night of Whisky.”
The company has received a nearly $250,000 grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to create conversations and foster a community of curious people. “Businesses also are seeing the huge benefit in creating experiences for their audiences within a curated network of people,” says MacTavish Best. Posthoc recently began working with Calm, a meditation and sleep app, and hosted a salon to launch the app’s Sleep Stories feature.
Known throughout the industry for her party-planning skills, MacTavish Best wears many hats when hosting a salon. She carefully crafts a diverse guest list of writers, scientists, artists, and scholars, interviews experts on the evening’s topic, plans the menus — and cooks the food herself. “I love bringing people together from all walks of life and of all ages,” she says. “We all have so much to learn from each other.”
(See how more Hamiltonians are making a difference in their communities and beyond on the Because Hamilton campaign website.)
