Katherine Naylor Pullman knows the advertising world. She’s had advertising roles at the fan engagement platform Cameo, Reese Witherspoon-founded production company Hello Sunshine, and at the now-defunct streaming platform Quibi, where she spent roughly two years each.

But in her experience, companies didn’t always have the time or resources to invest in team-building or career development, which can lead to stale, impersonal, or even nonexistent networking opportunities. Often, networking could feel like a downright chore.

So she started hosting dinner.

“The whole idea is that I wanted to create a space where women could supercharge their network with friendship,” Naylor Pullman told Marketing Brew. “I just wanted to make girlfriends in the industry, and I realized the best place to do that is over dinner.”

Naylor Pullman’s Media Dinner Club first kicked off in October 2022, and now, she’s building out a larger networking collective for women in media and advertising, including those working within a brand, publisher, agency, or ad tech company. This September, the club got a new name—Our Third Place, or O3P for short—which is aimed at offering shared meeting and networking places for women in those industries, especially those who Naylor Pullman said are in the “messy middle”—not quite at a senior level in the corporate workplace, but not early-career, either.

“These women are the future of our industry and the backbone of our industry at the same time,” she said, later adding that “This age group is when we’re making a lot of hard life decisions: to have kids or not to have kids, to buy a house or not buy a house…There’s so many things that you almost have this permission to just do in your 20s. Then in your 30s and 40s, it’s like you are the adult in the room, and there’s a certain expectation for you, but we’re not giving people the right tools to succeed.”

Since it began, O3P, which has chapters around the world, hosts an average of 20 dinners a week across 37 cities, including Boston, New York, Toronto, and London. It’s now recruiting more brands to help grow its network as it scales both its presence at industry events and the range of events it hosts heading into 2026.

Run a tight ship

For a membership fee of $179 a year, members can attend networking dinners hosted by local O3P members. One recent dinner in New York, for example, took place at the French eatery Le Coin. At the events, members are asked to abide by certain rules: come as you are; practice confidentiality so members can have open conversations; and practice the “pivot rule” to redirect conversations, she said.

Beyond dinners, Q3P also hosts get-togethers and networking opportunities at industry events, along with other, more casual meet-ups, like walks or other activities.

As of early December, O3P had 1,850 members, and Naylor Pullman has been primarily promoting the group through organic mediums, including LinkedIn and word of mouth.

It appears to be finding some traction in the agency world. Some agencies, including Mediaplus North America and DAA, are sponsoring memberships for employees, and Naylor Pullman said she has spoken to other agencies about purchasing memberships for their own staff.

Brands are getting involved, too, supporting some of the free bigger-swing activations O3P does around major events like Advertising Week. At Advertising Week this year, O3P activated at a Macy’s near the event venue on the Monday morning ahead of the start of the conference. There, O3P members were able to get their makeup done, chat with stylists, and shop for outfits to wear to the conference while eating breakfast and networking.

One O3P member who attended the activation, Meredith Hudson, sales manager at Roku Ads Manager, said that meeting people at the Macy’s event helped make Advertising Week feel more comfortable.

“It has just made networking something that is so fun and not intimidating in any way to show up in a room full of strangers,” Hudson told Marketing Brew. “Sometimes it’s really hard to just show up alone to these things.”

Naylor Pullman is adamant that the dinners themselves remain unsponsored. “I want people to come as they are, be authentic, and relax,” she said. “[Attendees] know they’re not going to be pitched at a dinner or no one’s going to oversell their stay.”

New year, new plans

Expect to see more from O3P in the new year. Naylor Pullman is seeking to secure brand partners for an activation at CES in January, and she’s aiming to have O3P also show up at Cannes Lions, Possible, and Advertising Week 2026. To help members easily identify each other at conferences—and potentially spread the word about the organization further—the group is distributing wearable O3P pins.

O3P is also expanding the range of events it operates to support conversations around women’s health. It’s hosting a series of three women’s health speakeasies beginning in January, which are sponsored by Invisalign. (Kamal Bhandal, SVP of the global Invisalign brand, consumer, and Americas marketing at parent company Align Technologies sits on O3P’s advisory board.) The first event, which will be held in New York, will feature five women’s health experts discussing topics like menopause and oral health, and will feature a sound bath and a cocktail hour.

“We found a very powerful avenue in what Katherine was building to have an organic conversation about oral health, straight teeth, and Invisalign as part of that overall conversation,” Bhandal said.

Naylor Pullman’s grand plan? Eventually, she said, she wants to build out a chapter of the organization in every 50-mile radius—something that might appeal to other women looking to find work-adjacent friends.

“I really wanted to make girlfriends in the industry, and it turns out, a lot of people do as well,” Naylor Pullman said.