Kansas City - Circle of Trust
Renee Gfeller
Executive Manager, The Kansas City Club
Curator of Connection and Hospitality
Trusted Member of the Epic Explorations Circle of Trust
Renee Gfeller understands that memorable hospitality is not simply about providing a beautiful room. It is about creating a genuine sense of welcome, connection, and belonging. Through her work with The Kansas City Club, Renee helps bring new life to one of the city’s enduring social traditions while preserving the history that makes the Club distinctive.
Meet Renee Gfeller
Renee Gfeller is part of the team behind the renewed Kansas City Club, a historic Kansas City institution entering an exciting new chapter.
When Renee originally joined our Circle of Trust, The Kansas City Club was primarily operating as an event venue. It offered an impressive collection of restored spaces for weddings, corporate gatherings, private celebrations, and other special occasions. Today, however, the Club is reclaiming something closer to its original purpose.
The Kansas City Club has reinvented itself as a private membership club—a place where people can gather, form relationships, exchange ideas, conduct business, share meals, and become part of a larger community. Its reciprocal relationships with private clubs across the country also give members access to welcoming spaces well beyond Kansas City.
This return to a membership model harkens back to the institution’s earliest identity. The original Kansas City Club was founded in 1882, while the University Club developed its own respected presence in the city. The two organizations eventually merged, bringing together traditions of civic engagement, professional relationships, intellectual curiosity, hospitality, and community.
The Club’s current evolution is not simply an attempt to recreate what once existed. It is an opportunity to reinterpret the private city club for a new generation—honoring its history while creating a more relevant and engaging place for today.
Renee is well suited to help guide that experience. She understands the importance of details, but she also understands the larger purpose behind them: helping people feel welcomed, comfortable, and connected.
Guests encountering Renee and The Kansas City Club should experience more than a historic building or private gathering place. They should feel the continuity between Kansas City’s past and its present—a place where architecture, hospitality, civic life, conversation, and personal connection come together. Most importantly, guests should leave feeling that they have been welcomed into a living Kansas City story rather than merely shown another venue.
What Renee Brings to an Epic Explorations Journey
Renee brings a valuable combination of hospitality, organization, local knowledge, and relationship-centered thinking to an Epic Explorations journey.
She understands how a gathering should feel from the guest’s perspective. That includes the practical details—the space, timing, service, atmosphere, and flow—but also the less tangible elements that often determine whether an experience becomes memorable.
Through Renee and The Kansas City Club, we may be able to incorporate a distinctive gathering place into journeys centered on Kansas City’s history, architecture, entrepreneurship, culture, food, art, and civic identity.
The Club can serve as more than a backdrop. It can become part of the story.
A private reception, hosted meal, intimate conversation, speaker presentation, or closing gathering could allow our travelers to pause, reflect, and connect more deeply with one another. For corporate groups and client-appreciation programs, it may also provide an environment that feels polished and significant without becoming impersonal.
The Club’s reciprocal relationships with other private clubs may also introduce new possibilities as Epic Explorations develops journeys and gatherings in other American cities. Those connections complement our belief that meaningful travel is often shaped by trusted relationships and the places where people naturally come together.
What Renee May Help With
Depending upon the journey or gathering, Renee may help Epic Explorations with:
- Private gatherings and receptions at The Kansas City Club
- Hosted meals and conversation-driven experiences
- Corporate meetings and executive gatherings
- Client-appreciation events
- Small-group presentations and storytelling programs
- Introductions to Kansas City professionals and community leaders
- Experiences connected to Kansas City history and civic life
- Thoughtful use of the Club’s historic gathering spaces
- Member-based and relationship-centered hospitality
- Exploring appropriate connections through the Club’s reciprocal network
Every experience would be developed according to the particular journey, the interests of our guests, and the availability and membership policies of The Kansas City Club.
Why Renee Is Part of Our Circle of Trust
Renee is part of our Circle of Trust because she recognizes that hospitality begins with people.
Historic buildings are important, but they become meaningful when they are filled with conversations, relationships, shared meals, celebrations, and new ideas. Renee helps create the conditions in which those moments can happen naturally.
She also represents a Kansas City institution willing to evolve without abandoning its identity. The renewed Club respects what came before while asking what a private membership community can become now. That combination of history, reinvention, and human connection aligns closely with the kinds of stories Epic Explorations wants to share.
Our Circle of Trust is not a directory of suppliers. It is a community of people who help us understand a place more deeply and welcome our guests into experiences they would be unlikely to discover on their own. Renee belongs in that community.
Renee’s Perspective
Renee’s work reflects the belief that a private club should be more than a collection of amenities. It should be a place where people want to return—a setting where members and guests feel recognized, relationships have room to develop, and traditions can be carried forward without becoming trapped in the past.
The Kansas City Club’s return to a private membership model reinforces that perspective. Its future depends not only upon preserving a respected name but also upon creating an active community around it.
Through attentive hospitality and thoughtful programming, the Club has the opportunity to become a place where Kansas City’s established leaders, emerging voices, entrepreneurs, creatives, travelers, and community-minded individuals can meet one another.
My connection to The Kansas City Club is personal. I was a member of the original Club, so I remember what the name represented and what it felt like to belong to an institution woven into Kansas City’s civic and social life.
That is why I find this next chapter so intriguing.
The transformation from an event-focused venue back into a private membership club feels less like the creation of something entirely new and more like the recovery of an important idea. The history of both The Kansas City Club and the University Club deserves to be remembered, but it should not be placed behind glass. It should provide the foundation for new conversations, new relationships, and new traditions.
Renee understands that balance. She appreciates what a place like this can mean when hospitality becomes personal and the space is animated by people who genuinely want to be there.
I do not choose members of our Circle of Trust simply because they represent an impressive property or recognizable name. I choose them because they care about people, understand the value of relationships, and can help our guests experience a place in a more meaningful way. Renee brings that spirit to The Kansas City Club, and I am pleased to have her as part of our Circle.
Experience Kansas City Through the People Who Know It Best
Renee and The Kansas City Club can help Epic Explorations reveal Kansas City through its history, hospitality, civic traditions, and enduring culture of connection.
Explore Kansas City through the people and places that give the city its character. Follow our journeys, discover what we are curating, or start a conversation about experiencing Kansas City with Epic Explorations.