PRACTICE: AOMA, community & brand building, growth marketing
My practice is rooted in reading the cultural zeitgeist, understanding unexpressed needs, powered by years of brand-building experience and amplified by the latest technology.
This page is a snapshot of the various parts of my practice and a window into the ways I apply the insights gained through them in my work.
A O M A
AOMA is an eco-positive hospitality project aimed at helping us reset our relationship with ourselves, each other, and nature.
To achieve this, we have adapted, as our guide, the metaphor of the Japanese concept “Ma” - the space-in-between - throughout the property and resident experience.
The art of the Conscious Pause.
Our first property is being built in Ericeira, Portugal’s surf mecca, opening in late 2026.
AOMA is my living lab for regenerative hospitality and future of living. As a reformed nomad, I have been at the forefront of the location independence movement and truly believe in a flexible, communal living model.
We crave connection, security, and support – and models such as coliving, coworking, international and passion driven communities have the potential to make any place a home where people can truly thrive.
While working on AOMA and exploring how design shapes emotional experience and performance, I developed the Thrive Spaces Framework to codify the elements that create an optimal experience for flexible, modern humans.
I growth hacked my way through fundraising, authority, and community building, inventing and learning clever ways to cross-pollinate and compound growth, raising capital, being featured in media and orchestrating advocacy.
FROM SOLO FOUNDER MYTH TO COMMUNITY-POWERED GROWTH
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![Kate Shifman filmed for Portuguese National TV on the site of AOMA Coliving, outdoors among orange and green foliage, wearing a multicolored patterned top.]()
A girl with a drive
Armed with the conviction that a great building can fix most societal ailments, I bought the land and embarked on designing the project.
Early success on the outside - being on Portuguese National TV, winning pitch competitions, Coliving awards nomination, speaking opportunities - contrasted with the difficulty of securing financing, navigating the crippling bureaucracy, learning property development, fundraising, construction and law while building and constantly being out of my depth.
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![A group of digital nomads smiling and posing for a photo on a mountain with a city and water in the background, surrounded by fog.]()
Belonging
The first time I felt belonging was with the nomads.
For someone who has lived between countries since the age of 8, the only cult I could join was digital nomads. Finally someone could understand the emotional and logistical complexity of my life.
I made friends for life and began to appreciate the incredible privilege of having a global community.
I started seeing AOMA through this lens - architecture supporting the needs and nuances of community that’s ever changing.
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![People gathered outdoors under a decorated canopy at a Red Bridge Lisbon event, engaged in a conversation or panel discussion, Kate speaking into a microphone and others listening, sitting on grass]()
Community as Practice
I was invited by a dear friend, Filipa, to an event by RedBridge - a community connecting Silicon Valley with Lisbon’s innovation ecosystem - she co-founded with a Portuguese medeia agency founder and a San Francisco journalist.
Over the next 3 years RedBridge became my life as I volunteered to help with social, brought in members, spoke at and organized events and, eventually felt into my purpose there.
Now I am dedicated to nurturing the member community through events, intimate gatherings, direct dialogue and designing intentional high value interactions.
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![Coworking and Spa days in Ericeira, Portugal. People gathered around a long wooden table enjoying a meal in a restaurant filled with plants and natural light.]()
Steaming the way
Bringing intentionality into my budding community building practice, I started a weekly Coworking and Spa day in Ericeira in January 2024.
Reframing the ethos of Ma — the conscious pause — into a pop-up coworking context meant bringing wellness directly into the workday. Sweating out the day in the sauna and washing away stress in the heated pool proved a hit, and the format earned us the Best International Community Award in its first year.
Now in its third season, the Ericeira Coworking & Spa community has sparked countless friendships and collaborations and become a warm beacon of connection for remote workers and entrepreneurs living in and passing through Ericeira.
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![Kate Shifman is giving a presentation on stage at Bansko Nomad Fest in front of a large screen displaying the text 'THE BODY REMEMBERS.' There is an audience in front of her, and a small table with a cup is nearby.]()
Vulnerability as growth engine
Being on stage and faced with the need to raise capital meant building in public. The nearly unbearable vulnerability was rewarded with genuine support from expected and unexpected places.
And a pattern started to emerge… The more I opened up - on and offline - the more potential investors I attracted.
I discovered and later designed a growth loop system where each instance built the stage for the next.
This framework became a core part of my Growth Blueprint method which I use when working with brands.
Communities I build and steward
RedBridge Lisbon
RedBridge Lisbon is an entrepreneur club connecting Silicon Valley with Portugal’s innovation ecosystem. With members in San Francisco and Lisbon, our mission is to move ideas, know-how, capital, and talent between the two hubs.
Our monthly public events draw 100+ guests and have become vibrant gatherings of thoughtful conversations, panels, demos, and star guest speakers from both sides of the Atlantic. I’ve been involved since the very beginning across all aspects of the club—from social media and partnerships to member recruitment and programming.
Over the past year, I’ve shifted my focus toward what I care about most: engaging and growing the member community. Beyond the public events, I design intentional member-only moments—social and professional—that bring people closer, surface the club’s shared expertise, and create real openings for collaboration, mentorship, and new work together.
My approach is deeply influenced by Priya Parker’s idea of generous authority: clear rule-setting held with care, not ego. Every community needs someone to “set up the container” and then balance between empowering members to take ownership and guarding the mission, vision, and norms of how we show up together.
In practice, that means:
creating formats where members can share their expertise without turning everything into a pitch
giving the stage to founders and operators while keeping space psychologically safe and inclusive
curating connections between people who can genuinely help each other, not just trade business cards
I draw on years of living in coliving spaces and digital nomad communities around the world in how I design and hold these spaces. For brands, RedBridge is another live example of my community practice: designing containers, rituals, and governance so that ambitious people feel safe enough to be real, bold enough to contribute, and invested enough to stay.
Ericeira Coworking and Spa - weaving work, wellness, and community
What started as an early awareness play for AOMA has become a stand-alone community: three years of weekly meetups, hundreds of members, many friendships, collaborations, and even an international community award.
I created Cowork & Spa as an answer to a very specific tension: it’s hard to maintain a stable performance and wellness routine when you work remotely, and it’s even harder to feel genuinely connected to people. The question was: what if self-care and connection were built into the workday, not bolted on after?
Every Thursday, we gather at a 4-star ocean-view hotel to work, share our lives over lunch, and dip into the pool and sauna together. Reframing the ethos of Ma—the conscious pause—into a coworking context meant bringing the pause into the middle of the day, not the margins.
Over three seasons, I’ve grown the community to 300+ members, with roughly 30% active at any given time. Ericeira is transient, so many people joined while on “workation” and stayed connected long after they left town. Along the way we added a monthly Breakfast Talk series, with topics ranging from AI to shamanism—intentionally broad, to support personal and professional growth from multiple angles and surface the expertise already inside the group.
Running this community has been a crash course in the real work of community management:
designing a clear value proposition and simple, repeatable formats
attracting and onboarding new members without losing the core culture
giving members the stage (talks, sessions, collaborations) while keeping things inclusive
handling conflict and personality differences without letting the space fracture
showing up with what I call generous authority—holding the container lightly but firmly
Once AOMA is open, this community will transition into Vizinhos Club (“neighbours” in Portuguese), evolving into a hybrid of in-person and online experiences for people who call this place home—whether for a week or a decade.
For brands, Cowork & Spa is a live example of how I design and steward communities: clear intent, simple rituals, member-led value, and a structure that can grow without collapsing under its own weight. The same principles are what I bring when I help brands build communities around their spaces, products, and missions.
Community isn’t a Discord channel or a points program — it’s a core part of your growth strategy.
If you’re building a space or a brand and want a community that actually holds people over years, not campaigns, I can help you design a holistic, long-term community framework around it. If that resonates, reach out and let’s explore what this could look like for you.
The Belonging Architecture
A five-stage system for designing communities that compound brand value, retention, and revenue — without losing the soul.
Most brand communities don't fail from lack of effort. They fail from lack of architecture.