Ascend Orange County Post-Engage Meet & Greet

Ascend Orange County’s Post-Engage Meet & Greet is the OC chapter’s reconnect night after Ascend Engage: members, newcomers, and allies meeting over food and conversation in Newport Beach. Thursday, August 27, 2026, 4:30-7:30 PM PDT at Wara Kitchen, 5000 Birch Street, Suite 150. Ascend is the national pan-Asian professional membership organization; the chapter night carries Engage’s Forward with Purpose energy into a casual hosted room with food, refreshments, and boba. Whether you attended the conference or are newly exploring Ascend, the invite is built for introductions that continue after the national gathering.

Ascend Orange County runs the local calendar inside Ascend Leadership’s chapter network. Newport Beach’s Birch Street suite is coastal Orange County geography, useful if your commute already lives south of the 405 rather than forcing a downtown Los Angeles evening. Ascend LA Metro’s Arts District Post-Engage follows the next night on August 28; the two rooms share a national host and different local maps. LISC LA’s ASCEND accelerator programming is a separate host and audience from Ascend Leadership’s membership chapters.

If your work or network sits in Orange County, this is the Post-Engage room that keeps the reconnect local. Membership, mentorship, and industry peers are the usual chapter goals; arrive with a one-line role and one person or topic you want to find. Skip if you need investor pitch time, middle-market deal flow, or a bioscience academia mixer. Same-day SoCalBio at UCLA, Women of ACG in Beverly Hills, and HPA with SMPTE in Burbank are different graphs; do not mash them into one calendar block unless your week can genuinely absorb the travel.

Confirm ticket tiers, capacity, and RSVP status on the Ascend event page or the chapter registration mirror before you drive. Food, refreshments, and boba are part of the listing, so the 4:30-7:30 window is a hosted reconnect rather than a no-host bar. Re-check confirmation for Suite 150 access and parking notes at Wara Kitchen. Birch Street is a suite door, not a walk-up restaurant patio; the confirmation is what gets you inside after the 405.