The term "executive community" covers several distinct types of gathering, each designed differently, each producing a different kind of value. Understanding the landscape — and knowing which type fits your current needs — is one of the most practically useful things any senior leader can do with the time they allocate to building relationships outside their organisation.
Type 1: Executive Dinner Series
The executive dinner series is the oldest and, for many purposes, the most effective format for building executive community. The format is simple: eight to sixteen leaders, a private venue, a shared meal, no agenda, and strict confidentiality. The dinner series works because it creates conditions for candor that almost no other professional format replicates. There is something about shared food, intimate physical space, and the absence of an agenda that activates a different social register — one where honesty is easier and performance is less natural.
Dinner series can be one-off events or recurring gatherings of consistent participants. One-off dinners are useful for introducing new perspectives and expanding the breadth of peer relationships. Recurring dinners with the same group build the deeper trust that produces the most valuable peer exchange. The best executive community builders run both.
Type 2: Peer Forums and Roundtables
Peer forums are structured roundtables for a specific executive function — CFO peer forums, CISO roundtables, CMO peer groups, CEO advisory circles — that typically meet quarterly. The functional specificity is the point: a CFO forum gives CFOs access to peer intelligence about the specific challenges of the CFO role that no other format can provide. What is the board asking about AI governance? How are other CFOs reskilling their finance teams? What is actually working in AI-enabled FP&A?
Peer forums are more structured than dinner series — they often have a rotating host, a single discussion question, or a framework for peer-to-peer feedback — but the best ones preserve the give-first norm and the confidentiality conditions that make honest exchange possible. The worst peer forums become performance venues where every CFO is presenting their success story. The best ones are places where every CFO is asking for help.
Type 3: Advisory Circles
Advisory circles are small, consistent groups of senior leaders — typically six to twelve — who meet specifically to provide peer counsel to each other. The format is the most explicitly reciprocal of any type of executive community: every member is both advisor and advisee. The most well-known advisory circle model is the YPO forum, but similar structures exist across many industries and executive levels.
Advisory circles produce the most intensive peer relationships of any executive community format, because the explicit purpose is mutual support and accountability. Members are expected to share real challenges, receive real feedback, and follow through on what they have committed to. This level of vulnerability and reciprocity produces trust and relationship depth that other formats do not.
Type 4: Curated Membership Networks
Curated membership networks are structured executive communities with defined membership criteria, regular programming, and a deliberate community culture. They typically include multiple formats — dinners, peer forums, one-off events — organised under a consistent brand and philosophy. The key differentiator from a conference or professional association is that membership is curated: not everyone can join, and the curation criteria are meaningful.
The value of a curated membership network is that it aggregates multiple formats and multiple opportunities for peer exchange under a single trusted brand. A member of a curated network can attend a dinner, participate in a peer forum, and access one-to-one introductions to other members — all within the same community, all operating under the same norms.
How to Choose the Right Type
The right type of executive community depends on what you need at this moment in your career. If you are navigating a specific challenge and need immediate honest peer input, a dinner series with the right participants is the fastest path to useful insight. If you are in a specific executive function and need ongoing peer support from people in the same role, a peer forum provides the most relevant and consistent value. If you want the deepest long-term peer relationships, an advisory circle or curated membership network provides the most intensive experience. Most senior leaders who are serious about their peer community participate in more than one type.
Where Open Future Forum Fits
Open Future Forum is an executive community founded by Murray Newlands that hosts private, curated rooms for CEOs, CFOs, founders, investors and senior leaders navigating the AI era. It operates as a curated membership network with dinner series and peer forum elements. Forum Select private dinners combine the intimacy of the dinner format with the functional specificity of peer forums for CEO, CFO, CISO, and CMO audiences. Forum Events is the open community layer: gatherings for the broader AI and tech community that serve as entry points into the private tier.
Last updated: June 15, 2026
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Open Future Forum combines the best of private dinners and peer forums for C-suite leaders navigating the AI era. Give-first philosophy, invite-only, no vendors.