About this Event
For the first time in history, millions of people can do their jobs from anywhere. Six years into the biggest social experiment of this generation, nobody agrees on whether that flexibility is a good thing. Employees defend it, while CEOs issue return-to-office mandates, often by gut instinct. Everyone has an opinion, but no one has had the data.
Natalia Emanuel does. A Harvard-trained economist, she and co-author Emma Harrington have spent years tracking millions of hours of work across Fortune 500 companies, startups, call centers, investment banks and technology firms. Their findings, laid out in their new book In Person: How Working Together Fuels Creativity, Productivity, and Growth, are, not surprisingly, complicated.
Remote work is great for getting through a to-do list, but Drs. Emanuel and Harrington have documented the downsides. Teams brainstorming in person generate 14 percent more ideas; remote workers get 20 percent less feedback on their work; and our brains are 90 percent less in sync on a video call than across a table. Remote work has real costs, but most return-to-office mandates just put bodies back in buildings without getting brains back in sync.
Join us at MATTER on November 3 for a conversation with Dr. Emanuel about what the evidence really shows and what it means for anyone deciding workplace policies. She'll also walk through a practical framework for deciding how much in-person time your team actually needs.
Note: The price of your ticket includes a copy of In Person: How Working Together Fuels Creativity, Productivity, and Growth.
Agenda (all times in Central Time)
2:30pm | Doors open
3:00pm | Fireside Chat
4:00pm | Networking
4:30pm | Event concludes
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“This is a crucial book for this moment. A creative and innovative culture requires real connectivity, serendipitous encounters, mentorship, and face-to-face interactions. Especially as we enter an era of AI, when emotional connections will become even more valuable, we need this clarion call to get back to working in person.”
—Walter Isaacson, New York Times best-selling author of Steve Jobs and The Greatest Sentence Ever Written
“In Person is essential reading for anyone who leads a company or a team today. This is the first book on remote work to bring systematic research to answer the question of when being face to face matters most—and when it doesn’t.”
—Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School and author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well
“For those with Zoom fatigue, tired of virtual hugs, In Person will be your bestie. It is an engaging volume packed with facts and a must-read for our hybrid world. The most important things in life cannot be done at a distance. Discover why.”
—Claudia Goldin, Nobel laureate, author of Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity
“Emanuel and Harrington have written the definitive book on working from home. It distills a mountain of cutting-edge research into a sparkling, concise narrative. Every business leader who is pondering the new world of remote work should read this book. Every worker who has to make choices about working at home should read this book.”
—Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University and New York Times best-selling author of Triumph of the City
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Natalia Emanuel, PhD, is a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and one of the leading researchers on remote and in-person work. With co-author Emma Harrington — the two met by chance sharing a basement office at Harvard — she has spent years studying how where we work shapes productivity, mentorship, creativity and mental health, including a landmark study of software engineers at a Fortune 500 firm that found sitting near teammates increases feedback and improves code quality, with the largest gains going to younger and less-experienced workers.
Her research has been published in Science, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the American Economic Journals, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic’s Good On Paper podcast, the BBC and NPR’s Planet Money. She holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton.
Natalia lives in New York with her husband, four children and six chickens. She has a black belt in tae kwon do, sews quilts in her free time, and illustrated the cartoons in the book. In Person: How Working Together Fuels Creativity, Productivity, and Growth (Crown Currency, October 13, 2026) is her first book.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Steven Collens is CEO of MATTER, the premier healthcare incubator and innovation hub. MATTER helps healthcare innovators achieve their goals faster and more efficiently and increases the odds of their success. MATTER has incubated more than 1,000 healthcare technology ventures and helps leading health systems, life sciences companies, payers and foundations activate innovation to advance their goals.
Prior to assuming his current role, Steven was senior vice president at Pritzker Group, the investment firm led by Tony and J.B. Pritzker. In that capacity, he led the team that created 1871, Chicago’s center for digital startups, which became the top-ranked business incubator in the world in 2018. He previously worked at Abbott in a variety of domestic and international functions, including product management, policy and public affairs. Prior to Abbott, Steven served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun.
Steven holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He chairs the board of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and serves on the boards of 1871 and the Chicago High School for the Arts. He is a member of ChicagoNEXT, the Chicago mayor’s council on technology and innovation, a Leadership Greater Chicago fellow, and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Event venue & nearby stays
222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza, 222 West Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.