🌽 The Friendsgiving Edition: Why Work Friends Matter

7 Stories of how Switchboard Leaders found Friendship

Nov 22, 2024

Hello, It’s Julia. Welcome to my weekly newsletter exploring the ways we communicate and connect at work and beyond. In this edition, I celebrate Friendsgiving and welcome your stories of making friends at work.

Four years ago Thanksgiving 2020 was on track to become everyone’s least favorite holiday. But it was one of the most unique for me. While many of us hosted Zoom-giving’s with family, I complimented it with a Friends-giving with my colleagues at the startup where I worked. It was a very special Thursday afternoon with cornucopia virtual backgrounds and our guest list included one of the start-up’s co-founders. I’ll always cherish this memory. Whenever I think about friends at work, I look back fondly at this moment.

In honor of Friendsgiving this year, I reached out to leaders featured on The Switchboard to find out how they’ve made friends at work. All year long, in particular at the holidays, community is critical to foster belonging in the workplace. A work friend can make you feel connected, valued and supported in between the daily ride of projects and priorities. And the best part — while these friendships start at work, they often continue beyond a job and an organization. Here are our reflections:

🧋Lean into Serendipity: Clara Ma
📈 Overcome Challenges: Jason Yoong
⭐ Be Intentional: Farrah Mitra
🐶 Seek out What Matters: Carolyn Clark
🌃 Bond over Late Nights: Brooke Kruger
😂 Find the Levity: Al Dea
🥘 Enjoy a Meal: Tracey Pavlishin

How We Made Work Friends

🧋Lean into Serendipity: Clara Ma

“One of my closest friends at work started with a serendipitous Slack mix-up. I meant to DM one Kelly but ended up messaging the other, who welcomed me and even suggested we grab bubble tea together. That simple, low-stakes invite grew into a meaningful friendship.
After that first bubble tea outing, Kelly and I quickly realized how much we had in common— being first daughters to immigrant parents, both with siblings, and UC graduates. Each time I traveled to San Francisco, we’d meet up, whether for a casual dinner, bubble tea, or even a fitness class.
Our friendship developed naturally, from shared interests to even traveling together. Later, we worked closely when she supported my team’s recruiting efforts, which only deepened our mutual trust and collaboration. Today, I feel incredibly grateful to work alongside a close friend who truly understands both me and our business. Kelly has been instrumental in building the recruiting arm of my company, and our friendship has brought so much joy, support, and honesty to our work and personal lives, even as we live on opposite coasts. I was even her maid of honor!”

📈 Overcoming Challenges: Jason Yoong

"One of my best friends came from work. We were both early in our careers (same role/level) and bonded by working on and overcoming hard problems, stressful situations, and many late nights. We shared an interest in tech, business, and at that time the growth of mobile tech/ads/biz models. This naturally built trust, intellectual respect, and camaraderie that evolved as friendships do."

⭐ Be Intentional: Farrah Mtira

“There was a time at work where I found things really hard and someone asked me if I had a best friend at work. This question changed everything. I had to be intentional about creating that connection. It takes time to create a deep friendship but it really enriched my professional and personal life to have someone understand both parts of me and to connect to, to empathize together when things were hard, and to celebrate with. I do put a lot of myself into my work so I am grateful to have friends along with it.
Fast forward to today, I’m proud that I made a work BFF virtually! It was such a highlight to meet Amy Sandler in person after five years! I've made some incredibly meaningful relationships virtually and I am so grateful for Amy who has always taken the time, in the language of Radical Candor®, to care personally for me.”

🐶 Seek out What Matters: Carolyn Clark

“Every friend I’ve made at work has come from the little things. It’s the nuances in our conversations—like discovering a mutual love of Taylor Swift or connecting about whatever is behind them in their Zoom video. It’s the glimpses into what matters to them—the pride in their child’s dance recital, the excitement over their dog learning a new trick, or the way they light up talking about their grandmother.
Those are the moments I come back to, time and time again, to deepen the connection. To me, friendship is a mutual agreement to treat each other in certain ways—with love, respect, guidance, and the willingness to challenge each other to grow. And to me, that can happen everywhere. Especially at work, where we spend more time than anywhere else.”

🌃 Bond over Late Nights: Brooke Kruger

“Having colleagues that become good friends is such a blessing. I have very close friends from my PR agency years who were one of the best parts of agency life. We all bonded quickly when we were put on the same accounts and worked non stop together. There were many late nights, team dinners and constant laughter and we always had fun in and out of the office. We are still very tight and grateful to have them in my life thanks to work.”

😂 Find the Levity: Al Dea

“One of the first friends I made at work was someone who worked on the same client that I did but was from another office but worked on another adjacent team on the project. We ended up sharing a rental car each week, and bonded over the ridiculous demands that our client (and internal leaders of our team) put on the junior staff.”

🥘 Enjoy a Meal: Tracey Pavlishin

“Sharing a meal or traveling together. For some reason, the “downtime” opens the door to be curious, be vulnerable, and to be ourselves. We gain perspective and find common ground… and sometimes we uncover a kindred spirit. Work friends may last for a season or a lifetime, but these relationships offer essential understanding that our non-work friends simply aren’t able to provide.”

How have you made friends at work? Share your reflections in the comments.

🍽️ Paper Plate Award Spotlight: Most Creative

Congratulations to Jess Clark for being named Most Creative. Nominated by

Jill Jacobs

Jess is a uniquely creative thinker. We look at design so differently that sharing work with each other means sharing new approaches, providing inspiration, and exposing the myriad of different ways any creative problem can be solved.
Jess is always open to a brainstorm, critique, or co-working sessions. Like a true artist, her creativity extends far beyond her design work and expresses itself with handmade stamps, Shibori tie dye, and playing the drums. She’s someone you want in your creative kitchen!