Uruguay has a few traditions around watching the World Cup, most of them involving food. If the game is in the early morning (as often happens when games are played halfway around the world), families gather around the TV while sipping on the popular local tea called mate. Afternoons will find friends firing up the grill while cheering on the national team.
Javier Anegon loves these traditions, but for the first time in his life he won’t be watching the matches from his native Uruguay. He’s in New York, where he’ll probably be watching the first match—a faceoff between Uruguay and Egypt—with a group of expats from his country. And food will almost certainly be a part of it.
“New York is tough at times,” Anegon says. “You’re by yourself, you’re working a lot, so there’s not much of a community sometimes.”
The 25-year-old native of Montevideo found a community at WeWork, and believe it or not, soccer was the catalyst.
When he was studying psychology at New York University, Anegon woke up early every day to run before his classes. One Friday morning he found himself alone on the field on the roof at Pier 40, which extends into the Hudson River.
Noticing a group of athletes training for a soccer match, Anegon asked if he could join in. The players, members of the WeWork Football Club, were enthusiastic.
“Immediately we had a very good connection to him,” says team manager Avi Yehiel. “You can really see from the first time he’s a great guy.”
In fact, everyone liked having him around, so Anegon began returning for practice every Friday morning.
“Originally, I wasn’t even on the mailing list,” Anegon says. “We were just having a good time.”
Yehiel took Anegon aside, letting him know that they’d love to have him as a permanent member of the team, but that required being a WeWork member.
That conversation turned out to be a major turning point in his life, both personally and professionally.
A native of Uruguay, Anegon had moved to the U.S. to study psychology at Florida’s Lynn University. He had a tennis scholarship, but an injury at 19 left him on the sidelines. He focused on his studies, working through the summers so he could graduate in three years.
A hunger for a faster-paced environment brought him to New York, where last year he earned a master’s degree in industrial organizational psychology at NYU.
In June, after becoming a WeWork member to qualify for the team, Anegon became more interested in WeWork’s mission and community. For one college class for which he had to help a company become more efficient, he jumped on his newfound connection.
His teammates listened to his 20-second pitch for his class, and were so impressed that they brought him in to share his ideas with Adam Amar, then WeWork’s head of Employee Engagement, on how to increase operational effectiveness in the WeWork community.
Anegon built a tight connection to his teammates, who invited him to Summer Camp, WeWork’s annual retreat that brings together members and staffers for a weekend.
“They made it clear that I was one of them pretty quickly,” he says.
Afterward Anegon was offered an internship with WeWork’s Wellness team, where he focused on how soccer, basketball, volleyball, and other team sports can help build a sense of community. Now he’s on staff at WeWork, and it’s no surprise he’s working to help members on the People team.
Anegon says he’s experienced firsthand the power of community. When he first came to study in the U.S., he didn’t speak much English and relied on a tight-knit group of students to help him succeed in the classroom.
And, perhaps most of all, he found a group of like-minded people on the soccer team.
“When I came to New York I had no family or friends,” he says. “But I wasn’t the only one. WeWork truly changed my experience of living in New York.”