I almost didn’t go.

The email landed on a Monday for an event two days later, the kind of unsolicited invitation that arrives during a week already crowded with meetings, deadlines, end-of-school chaos, and baseball games. So I did what I often do with emails like that: I ignored it. Probably spam, I figured, and even if it wasn’t, who has time for tea?

Then I mentioned it to my daughter on the phone, almost in passing. Did you know Gloria Steinem lives on the Upper East Side? She asked how I possibly knew that. I told her about the invitation. Of course you have to go, she said. And while I was in the city, I could see her too. That seemed like reason enough.

My husband agreed. Yes, you should go, he said. And tonight we’re watching the documentary. So I RSVP’d yes and sat down to watch Gloria: In Her Own Words.

An hour later, I was blown away.

Here was a woman who, at 92, has seen and done and reflected on more than most of us will in a lifetime. Renowned feminist. Trailblazing journalist. Social activist. Co-founder of Ms. Magazine, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the Women’s Media Center. Smart, tough, charismatic, and articulate, a role model to so many.

One of her most quoted lines: “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Another: “We can’t make decisions for half the world if that half is not represented.”

Two days later, I was sitting in her living room.

The gathering was part of Tech Week, an invitation-only tea and conversation about AI, held in Gloria’s Upper East Side brownstone. Not a venue made to look like a living room. Her actual living room.

About twenty of us gathered, perched on couches, wicker chairs, and floor pillows, wherever there was room. Gloria walked in, leaning only slightly on her cane, and settled into the same red chair she sat in for that 2011 documentary I’d just watched.

I’d come prepared for the icon, the firebrand. Instead I found extraordinary graciousness, kindness, and humility. How many 92-year-olds do you know who invite a room full of strangers into their home to talk about AI?

But that’s exactly what Gloria has been doing for decades. She was inspired to host these “Talking Circles” during a stay in India in her college years. The format is simple: gather people from different backgrounds, listen more than you speak, and share from experience rather than theory. Recently she’s convened conversations in that very room on women’s health, philanthropy, technology, and leadership. It’s no surprise she didn’t shy away from a topic as technical and fraught as AI.

Gloria’s brownstone sits on an unremarkable tree-lined street, a short walk from Central Park. She’s lived there since 1968, a time when it was still unusual and difficult for a woman to own a home of her own. Inside, the space is full of her: books, photographs, and small treasures scattered everywhere. A carved wood coffee table. An enormous elephant photograph. Sculptures and art pieces, each a remembrance from her travels through India, Africa, and beyond. Her foundation is now working to preserve her home and the legacy it holds.

The women in the room were remarkable: founders, activists, technologists, authors, investors, and journalists. The dialogue was hosted by Charter co-founder Erin Grau and Bloomberg Beta founding partner Karin Klein, inaugural residents of Gloria’s Foundation. Gloria answered questions, told stories, and took a photo with each of us.

A few of my takeaways from the conversation:

• Our elders have seen and lived through so much, and there’s a great deal we can learn from them if we slow down enough to ask.
• We’ve come a long way from the early days of Gloria’s career, when women couldn’t get a credit card in their own name and had few legal protections. And we still have a long way to go, with the current climate posing challenges both new and painfully old.
• Listening matters as much as talking, and maybe more.
• Gathering in person to exchange ideas has tremendous value. Gloria spoke about solitary confinement as the worst punishment a person can endure, because humans are communal by nature and isolation is a form of torture.
• Technology, and AI in particular, can be both an enabler and a divider. It can drive real progress and cause real harm, sometimes at the very same time.
• If Gloria, at 92, can lean into understanding AI, then the rest of us can too.

Gloria is about a decade older than my own mother would be today. My mother has been gone for nearly thirteen years. I often think about what she’s missed in that time, and being in Gloria’s living room made me imagine what more she might have shared if she’d had more time. She was a trailblazer in her own right.

I was certain, sitting in that room, that I was in the presence of women of every generation with the drive and brilliance to change the world. I left the tea invigorated, inspired, and grinning ear to ear. Walking to Central Park to meet my daughter, I emailed Erin and Karin: “Amazing to connect with so many incredible women, see Gloria’s beautiful home, and of course meet Gloria herself. Makes me want to start a living room conversation series of my own.”

And I meant it.

Something this simple — gathering, talking, exchanging ideas — feels almost radical in our always-on, screen-saturated, perpetually virtual world. I’m a staunch advocate for technology, distributed teams, and remote work. I’ve built my career around them. But there’s a rare kind of connection you get sitting in the same room, sharing tea and conversation, face to face.

So here’s my commitment, to myself and to anyone reading: before the year is out, I’ll host a gathering in my own living room.

I almost didn’t go to Gloria’s. I’m so glad I did.

Photo credit: Nina Wurtzel Photography