About SAWY
SAWY is a cultural platform shaped by a cross-cultural perspective, designing gatherings, programs, and experiences for organizations, institutions, and brands.
We work across public salons, workplace workshops, tea experiences, wellness sessions, private events, and speaker-led programs, choosing the format that best fits the audience, setting, and goals.
The result is stronger engagement, better dialogue, and experiences that feel thoughtful, distinctive, and easy to remember.
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SAWY works across three main areas:
PRIVATE EVENTS
Thoughtful experiences for brands, clients, and communities—from intimate tea gatherings to elegant mixers and hosted conversations.
CULTURAL PROGRAMS
Workshops, talks, and recurring programs for teams, ERGs, and organizations looking for a more substantive approach to culture, wellbeing, and belonging.
PUBLIC SALONS
Small, curated gatherings open to the public, in English or Mandarin, built around topics worth exploring together.
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SAWY partners with:
Companies and internal teams focused on people, culture, and engagement
Schools, colleges, and universities
Nonprofits, foundations, and community organizations
Brands and client-facing teams
This includes HR and People teams, ERGs, student life and academic departments, libraries and museums, and customer-facing teams in retail, hospitality, and brand experience.
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SAWY is not organized around a single subject area. It is organized around a way of seeing.
We work across art, tea, workplace culture, and wellness because each one offers a different way into the questions that matter most: how we pay attention, how we make meaning, how we relate to others, and how we sustain ourselves.
Depending on the context, we work through the most fitting format, theme, or cultural lens to help people and organizations build perception, presence, self-knowledge, and vitality.
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SAWY stands for Saturday Afternoon With Yuan.
The name reflects how SAWY began: as an invitation to gather differently.
Too many events are either polished but impersonal, or well-intentioned but forgettable. Teams are brought together without real connection. Clients are entertained without meaningful engagement. Important questions about identity, culture, belonging, and wellbeing are often approached in ways that feel generic or flat.
SAWY was created to offer something more thoughtful: experiences that make space for reflection, genuine connection, and cultural depth.
Yuan Zhang is a cultural creative based in Boston, working at the intersection of design, writing, and cross-cultural dialogue.
She began her education studying Astrophysics at Peking University, drawn to the most fundamental questions about the universe, before turning her attention to the human scale. She trained at RISD and spent eight years in the AEC industry shaping cities across three continents. Her projects include the Plan Capital Abu Dhabi 2040, Changi Airport in Singapore, Hengqin Hospital in Zhuhai, and the Williams College campus. At the Boston Society of Architects, she served as Co-chair of the Global Practice Network.
In 2024, she founded SAWY, a cultural platform that has convened over 50 gatherings in Boston, bringing together artists, entrepreneurs, and thinkers who navigate life between East and West. She is currently completing her first book, a work of narrative nonfiction about the unwritten rules of American life, seen through the eyes of someone who had to learn them all from scratch.
Her work moves between the designed and the lived: how cities hold people, how culture shapes identity, and how conversation itself can be a form of art.