Bronx Summit is gearing up for another year of making connections within the community.
Now in its fifth year, Bronx Summit has worked to celebrate the vibrant Bronx community and the creatives that live there. The summit will return to DREAM Charter High School, located at 20 Bruckner Blvd., on Sept. 26.
“It’s humbling that it’s something that folks are looking forward to now. It’s exciting, but there’s also an added pressure because you wanna do it well,” said Kevin Brooks, cofounder of the Bronx Summit and cohost of the podcast Live From The Bronx. “People have come to the event and they’ve had such a good time, and now it’s something that they look forward to.”
“I think one of the things that, for me, is really cool is just the excitement and the energy,” said Jason Acosta, cofounder of the Bronx Summit and cohost of the podcast Live From The Bronx. “The amount of people that want to have some sort of role in it, it’s really cool.”
The Bronx Summit will feature over 15 panelists and speakers throughout the day, as well as explore interactive activations, shop local vendors, listen to live music sets and enjoy local food and drink vendors. Also returning this year is Bronx Summit’s signature Business Pitch Competition, the winner of which receives seed funding for their business idea.
(L-R) Kevin Brooks, Sue Fearless, Council Member Althea Stevens, and Jason Acosta.
Like in years past, this year’s Bronx Summit will spotlight innovators across tech, fashion, mental health, media, culinary arts, and more creative industries. Among this year’s speakers are Jason Reyes, principal of the newly opened Bronx School of Hip Hop, and Wallace Peeples, “Wallo267”, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and cohost of “Million Dollaz Worth of Game,” who will serve as the event’s headliner.
For the first time this year, Acosta and Brooks opened up a speaker application to further diversify the speakers on the panels.
“We historically have really focused on the creative economy, right? We assumed and expected that we would get speaker applications from people across those industries because that has been a big focus,” said Acosta. “The thing that I think is really cool, and I think we were intentional about this last year, was adding a mental health component to the summit and really having a conversation about that because so many people go on this entrepreneurial journey but don’t ever have a chance to tell the story about how it’s impacted their mental health, their physical health. This year in our speaker applications, we actually saw an influx of some of those.”
“One of the things that we pride ourselves on in terms of curating events is we want them to be a good time, like a really positive experience. People go to conferences, and a conference can be stuffy and that’s not at all what we want, so there’s definitely going to be a certain vibe, right?” said Brooks. “You’re gonna hear music, there’s going to be a DJ, there’s going to be a lot of time for networking. You’re gonna be able to meet someone in another industry, someone in your same industry, and we built in specific times for networking.”
Bronx Summit will take place from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tickets start at $30. Attendees must be 21+. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit posh.vip/e/5th-annual-bronx-summit-2. You can follow Bronx Summit on Instagram @_thebronxsummit.
