“The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food.”
MY SERVICES
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1:1 Coaching for Connection
Loneliness and disconnection are still echoing after years of social distancing. My 1:1 coaching is designed to help you find your people again.
As a certified VITA™ Coach, I work with individuals to:
Identify your interests, values, and personal rhythm of connection.
Offer practical tools for meeting new people, breaking the ice, and practicing social confidence.
Guide you toward meaningful friendships, hobby buddies, and circles of belonging.
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Community Architecture & Strategy
Fractional Chief Community Officer – design and lead community strategy from scratch or scale existing programs.
Community Program Design – build ambassador/insider/braintrust programs that deepen user engagement and expand networks .
Community Feedback Systems – implement structured playbooks for triaging and responding to feedback, bugs, and feature requests .
Superuser & Influencer Engagement – identify, activate, and reward high-value community members with programs that drive organic growth
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Experience & Event Design
Immersive Event Production – design, produce, and operationalize high-touch gatherings like Mozi Landings, SXSW activations, and cultural summit events .
Focus Groups & Panels – design and facilitate community research dinners, feedback circles, and panel events to shape product and strategy .
Partnership Event Integrations – secure and manage brand/event partnerships that amplify reach, including sponsorship packages, partner activations, and co-branded experiences .
Experience Design Advisory – curate rituals, connection formats, and programming that create belonging and spark virality in community activations.
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Growth, Retention & Social Strategy
Community-led Growth Systems – build frameworks like Insiders programs that reward organic actions and expand the social graph .
User Research & Product Insights – run structured research through panels, focus groups, and real-time event onboarding to feed actionable product feedback .
Social Strategy & Content Systems – architect lean but effective social media playbooks, briefs, and in-house systems for campaigns .
Retention Playbooks – design incentives, leaderboards, rituals, and content systems that make users feel seen and keep them engaged
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Partnerships & Ecosystem Development
Strategic Partnerships – design and negotiate B2B and B2C partnerships that drive adoption, sponsorship, and brand alignment .
Ecosystem Mapping – identify and engage aligned communities, cultural hubs, and organizations for co-growth (festivals, universities, cultural institutes, etc.).
Co-branded Campaigns – manage creative briefs, vendor partnerships, and sponsor deliverables that add value to both product and partner communities.
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Advisory & Facilitation
Investor/Advisory Facilitation – design and steward key humans that offer candor and insight.
Leadership Alignment – guide internal teams through community values, mission, and cultural guidelines to ensure cohesion.
Community Culture Consulting – craft value maps, rituals, and reward systems that keep communities intrinsically motivated.
About me
Justine Benanty is a community architect, strategist, and coach focused on designing spaces where people genuinely belong. Her work sits at the intersection of human connection, culture, and systems, helping organizations and individuals move from fragmentation to coherence.
She specializes in community as infrastructure. Not content, not vibes, not vanity metrics. Justine helps teams design the conditions that make trust, participation, and meaningful relationships inevitable. Her approach blends deep listening, pattern recognition, ritual, and clear structural thinking to build communities that are resilient, values-aligned, and alive.
Over the past 14 years, Justine has built and advised communities across tech, consumer products, nonprofits, and cultural institutions. She works with founders and teams to clarify purpose, identify true super-users, and design community architectures that support growth without eroding trust. Her work often includes community strategy, program design, IRL experiences, and the translation of abstract values into lived, repeatable practices.
Alongside her work with organizations, Justine coaches individuals who are craving deeper connection in their lives. She helps people strengthen relational confidence, find their place in community, and move from isolation or over-functioning into reciprocity and belonging.
Before this work, Justine trained as a maritime archaeologist, working on projects centered on submerged history, cultural memory, and recovery, including the São José slave shipwreck and heritage preservation efforts across the Middle East and Caribbean. That chapter deeply shaped her approach to community: learning to listen before interpreting, to honor what is buried or fractured, and to understand that connection often requires patience, care, and the willingness to surface difficult truths.
At the core of her work is a heart-led belief: belonging is designed, not discovered. When people feel safe, seen, and meaningfully invited into participation, everything changes. Culture strengthens. Growth becomes sustainable. Relationships deepen.
Justine leads with care, clarity, and courage, creating spaces and products designed to earn trust and sustain loyalty.