Ascend New England 2026 ERG Summit

Ascend New England’s 2026 ERG Summit is a Thursday afternoon for people who actually run Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander employee resource groups. It lands September 10, 2026, from 1:00 to 5:30 PM at Pao Arts Center, 99 Albany Street in Boston’s Chinatown. Ascend’s page calls AANHPI ERG sponsors, leads, and HR/DEI liaisons explicitly. The program mixes a keynote, a panel, and action-planning reflections so chapters leave with practices rather than only new LinkedIn connections. Keynote speaker Su Joun is Principal of Diversity@Workplace Consulting Group, a Tedx speaker, and author of SELF-GUIDE TO DEI.

Ascend is the national Pan-Asian professional network with corporate partners and chapter programming across the U.S. and Canada. New England’s chapter already ran a Post-Engage summer social earlier in August; this ERG Summit is the denser workplace-leadership room that follows. Pao Arts Center puts the afternoon on Albany Street in Chinatown rather than a Seaport brewery, which is useful geography for Boston’s Asian professional map. The invite is narrower than a general Ascend mixer: if you do not lead, sponsor, or liaison an ERG/BRG/ARG, the room will feel off-center.

This is right for ERG chairs, executive sponsors, HR partners, and DEI liaisons who need peer practice and a Chinatown afternoon that compounds introductions among people doing the same unpaid organizational labor. Early-career professionals without an ERG role should pick a broader Ascend night instead. Biotech operators who only want MassBio mixer nights should stay on the Cambridge calendar. Bring a case study from your chapter year, not a product deck, so the action-planning block has real material.

Register through the official Ascend event page and read the Terms of Registration and Participation. Confirm building access and any Chinatown parking guidance in the RSVP email; Albany Street traffic and limited street parking are real on a Thursday afternoon. Leave buffer if you are coming from Kendall, Longwood, or Quincy. Screenshot confirmation. Do not treat a casual Cambridge coffee meetup as a substitute for this ERG floor.