A special live guest workshop hosted inside Coral: “Becoming World-Class Connectors,” led by Jon Moorehart of Praxis. Some people collect contacts; a rare few build genuine connection — the kind that opens doors, moves ideas across the world, and turns a room of strangers into a community. This hands-on session was about becoming the second kind of person.
About the guest: Jon Moorehart is a Partner at Praxis, where he leads Experiences & Partnerships and has spent over a decade supporting venture-building ecosystems around the globe. He built and led Praxis Academy, a program that has reached hundreds of young entrepreneurs from more than 160 universities across 20 countries. Before Praxis he spent seven years at a Fortune 100 company, where he helped launch one new venture and revive another as part of a turnaround. He’s a founding board member of 100cameras, a nonprofit that empowers youth to create change through photography, has mentored startup incubators, and has taught entrepreneurship at The King’s College in New York. Praxis itself is a New York–based venture-building organization built around “redemptive entrepreneurship,” with accelerators, fellowships, and a global community of values-driven founders and investors.
Coral brings in outside experts for live, hands-on workshops like this one, alongside its regular member corners.
In the session, Jon reframed the poet Mary Oliver’s “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” as instructions for connecting. A few of the highlights: the “connection bank,” where trust is built from character (integrity + intent) and competence (capabilities + results); the shifts from scarcity to abundance, extraction to generosity, and self to others; attention as “the rarest and purest form of generosity”; the difference between shallow “networking” questions and deeper “relating” ones — what’s taking up your headspace, what brought you here, a surprise joy or grief you’ve had lately, what you’ve been thinking about that has nothing to do with work; storytelling as the strongest connection between people; and a practical toolkit for follow-through — keep simple records, close loops even when the answer is no, make time to think about where you can add value, honor people with double opt-in introductions, and make it easy with a “self-contained forwardable email.”
Inside CORAL shares recaps of sessions and events from a private, application-only community for people who work for themselves — founders, operators, and creators. Not a member yet? Apply to join at coral.vip.