Meet Liz Diaz, an Apartment Life Coordinator who has been serving alongside her husband Danny in Orlando, Florida since 2021. They served at communities in Nashville, Tennessee prior to that. 

Tell us about your strategy for planning impactful resident events.

Events are an opportunity for neighbors to connect with each other. That’s the heart of what we're doing, because we help residents experience a sense of community. When we are planning an event, we ask ourselves, are we creating an inviting, fun event where residents are going to be able to engage?

How do you make your events inviting?

So, the first question we ask is, is it going to be fun for us? As a coordinator, I want to have fun planning and putting it together, because then I can project that fun and energy to the residents we’re engaging with at the event. 

We also want to connect with the residents, so we ask them, what do you want to see? 

One of the first communities we served was full of college students, so one of the events we did was a cooking class. We intentionally made it a smaller event, so they wouldn’t feel like “Oh my gosh, I don’t know how to cook.” We wanted it to be fun, so we made it very simple. 

We said, “Let’s make salsa.” Everybody likes to eat salsa! And we told them, we’ll provide the tools, the supplies, and then you get to eat it and take it home. We had a small group of students, some of them didn’t know how to use a knife or cut an onion. And they were able to experience the flavors, the smell, and the different textures. They were able to learn how to use a knife, and they joyfully took the food home and enjoyed it with their friends. So that was a really fun event for all of us. 

We're always thinking of how we can create an environment that engages people in conversation. So, in a scenario like that one, students were able to share things like, “Nobody has ever taught me how to cook,” and then we were able to speak life into them by saying, “Hey, you can do it, take baby steps.” And we could encourage them to build a life skill.

Where we serve currently, we have a very multicultural community. So, when we did our Friendsgiving, it was more like a Thanksgiving dinner, and we invited residents to bring something to share. It could be a dessert, a salad, a side dish, or a casserole, but from their own country and from their home. And it was almost like celebrating the first Thanksgiving all over again.

How do you help residents connect with each other and build relationships outside of events?

My husband and I know that we’re the first ones to build relationships with many of our neighbors, so when they arrive to events, we introduce ourselves and ask questions.  “Which building do you live in? How long have you been here?” We initiate those conversations so we can tell who is more introverted, who might be lonely, or who just moved here and hasn't met anyone yet. Then, we can connect them to neighbors they have something in common with, and immediately, they can start building community. That’s the goal of our events – to build community. 

It’s fun to see the different neighbors and couples come back to other events and start to recognize people. They sit down together and enjoy burgers around the pool or whatever the event may be. And you see people pairing up with other families and you know you're building that fabric of community. 

We know from a Witten Advisors study that when residents get to know several other people in their community, it doubles the likelihood that they'll renew their lease and stay in the community. And so, we know that Apartment Life events go a long way to help facilitate residents becoming a community. 

This interview was pulled from Episode 230 of the Apartment Life Leadership Podcast and lightly edited for clarity. For more coordinator stories and interviews, you can follow along at apartmentlife.org/podcast. Follow @aptlife for updates on new episodes and upcoming content! If you enjoy listening, leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. We can't wait to hear from you and hope this podcast serves as a helpful resource.