Past Events
Annual Swiss Gala
Enjoy fine dining, entertainment, dancing and a silent auction at our annual Swiss Gala held under
the patronage of Ambassador Niculin Jäger, Consul General of Switzerland in New York.
Swiss Gala 2023 - Guest of Honor Severin Hacker
In 2023, we brought back this iconic event in a revamped format and under a new name - Swiss Gala. Our Guest of Honor was Severin Hacker, Ph.D. He co-founded Duolingo in 2011 with Luis von Ahn, to help people learn languages. Severin currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Duolingo. He completed his BS in Computer Science at ETH Zurich in 2006 and Ph.D. in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he researched large scale human computation. He and Duolingo won several awards and being based in New York City, Severin is a long-term supporter of the Swiss communities and frequently attends events of the Swiss Society of New York.
More Community Events
In addition to our annual Swiss Ball, we organize cultural and social events celebrating Swiss culture
and promote the friendship and exchange of ideas among Swiss citizens and friends of Switzerland.
Swiss National Day 2023
This year’s Swiss National Day was held on Saturday July 29, 2023 at the Hudson restaurant in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan. As we returned to a “Volksfest” kind of event, we were able to accommodate almost 1,000 attendees for all over the tri-state area.
The temperatures were around 30 degrees Celsius (high 80s Fahrenheit) but a regular breeze from the river everyone was able to enjoy great food, drinks and entertainment aspects. Brief thunderstorms erupted over the venue for a couple of minutes but didn’t manage to drive out the crowd which stayed until late in the evening.
As per usual, our partner organization from the Consulate General of Switzerland, Swiss Soccer Club, Swiss Ski Club and the Swiss Benevolent Society were a tremendous support in making this event possible by volunteering throughout the day and makes sure everything run smoothly.
Our musical performance act, Grammy-Award winning jazz musician Linus Wyrsch and co. delighted our guests with their beautiful music throughout the day. Later in the evening, DJ Pedro Canas made sure the floor was packed with his compilation of Swiss and International hit songs to dance to. During the afternoon, we also had a magic show by a clown for our younger audience which was a new addition to our program this year.
Ambassador Niculin Jäger, Consul General of Switzerland in New York, and Jan Furrer, President of Swiss Society of New York, addressed the audience before we came to raffle drawing which is usually the highlight for many attendees. Several different prizes from our wonderful sponsors were available so congratulations to our lucky winners.