Tending the Friendship Garden

A plus-one to a show, a few extra hands to help with a move, or just someone to listen after a tough day: each scenario proves that friends have got it all covered, and that friendships themselves are invaluable.

Before we can get by with a little help from our friends, though, we have to actually find them—a task that’s tough in the first place and gets more and more difficult the older we get. That’s a problem that Smith College alum Jenn Maer ’93 wants to help solve.

“On the surface, friendship just seems like something fluffy, ” Maer explains. “But then you start digging into the health, social, societal implications, and there’s really, really important stuff under the surface. If we don’t have good friends to rely on and good social structure, we’re just going to rip each other apart with all the global challenges that are heading our way.”

Over the course of her career, Maer, who majored in women’s studies (now the study of women, gender & sexuality) at Smith, has been a creative director, a brand strategist, and a design director. Now she’s set her sights on a new venture. Impacted by the significant role friendships (or lack thereof) can play on health, lifespans, and productivity, Maer is perfecting the art of building and maintaining friendships and more “pro-social” workspaces, and helping others to do the same.

“For me, doing this work has become a little bit of a mission because I feel like I’m trying to equip people with the skills they’re going to need to get through the next couple of decades,” she says.

After moving from California to Asheville, North Carolina, during the pandemic, Maer, a freelance design consultant, realized that in addition to having to find a new dentist, dog walker, and everything in between, she also needed to find new friends. 

Maer frequented local events and meetups, hoping to find someone to click with, but had little to no success. Instead of despairing, Maer asked herself a simple question: what if she could use design thinking to prototype friendship?

Design thinking, a problem-solving concept popularized by the firm IDEO, where Maer worked for 15 years, starts with empathy. Designers talk with end-users (those who may actually use the products or services that are being created) to learn their wants, needs, and concerns; designers then use that insight to craft quick, sketched out prototypes to test and eventually build upon different ideas before presenting a final product.

Maer planned to follow that same methodology to start “creating containers for friendships to grow in”—asking potential new friends what they wanted and needed from, or could offer to, a friend group, and going from there. She wanted the discussions to be deliberate and intentional, to ensure that everyone’s expectations aligned around the final product (in this case, a new friendship).

As luck would have it, Maer was able to try out her idea with fellow Smithie Angie Flynn-McIver ’94, who had recently messaged her on LinkedIn to ask if they could get together over lunch. Maer and Flynn-McIver were friends-of-friends at Smith and eager to connect about their complementary careers and shared interests.

“I immediately liked her a lot, and she was talking about longing for in-person community where she lives,” Maer recalls. “She was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do something that got people spending more time together?’ and I just asked her if she wanted to try this friendship experiment with me.”

Flynn-McIver was game, and the idea took off from there. The alums each invited a couple of friends they wanted to get to know better to a group dinner focused specifically on making new friends. After establishing clear expectations with Maer’s friendship prototype, they created a group chat, made plans to regularly meet, and of course, decided on a name: the Mutual Aid Society and Bird Appreciation Group, or MASABAG.

Inspired by the success of MASABAG (the group just celebrated their second annual summer party), Maer continued using design thinking to help more effectively make friends, and shared the process with others through workshops.

When a few students told her the topic of her workshops was so good that it could have been a TED Talk, Maer submitted an application to TEDxAsheville. Out of over 200 applicants, her talk, “Friendship By Design,” was selected as not only one of the 12 finalists for the 2025–26 season, but a TED Editor’s Pick.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve done in my entire life,” Maer says. “It was several months of prep and writing multiple drafts and practices and rehearsals and getting feedback.”

In an unexpected friendship moment, Maer’s self-described ace in the hole who helped her perfect her talk was none other than Flynn-McIver. “Angie is a speech and leadership coach, and she would come over, help me practice, and give me pointers on how to memorize without it looking like I was memorizing,” Maer says. “I almost quit several times, but she was so important to me, and so helpful in giving me the confidence that I could do it.”

Teaching the art of building and maintaining friendships has become a driving force in Maer’s work. In addition to kickstarting several of her own friendship groups utilizing the same design thinking prototype, she’s continued offering friendship workshops. She also co-founded (with friends, of course) Knitted, a company Maer describes as a “social architecture firm” that emphasizes that friendship, like yoga or guitar, is a skill that can be taught and needs to be practiced. In that vein, Knitted offers programming, workshops, and other immersive experiences to teach folks how to make friends and implement the power of different kinds of friendship in their personal and professional lives.

As Maer continues discussing the impact of friendships and their evolution, she makes a surprisingly botanical comparison—one that highlights her philosophy of connection.

“I think often about having a friendship garden. Some friendships are little blooms just coming up, some are solid oak trees that will always be there,” she says. “And then others are like leaves falling off the trees, where they look different or may not serve you like they once did. The garden is alive. It’s always changing and can always be improved.”