Kathy & Kaitlin Nasevich

If fate is kind, visitors to Philly will bump into Kathy Nasevich while they’re here. She’s one of those warm, chatty, connected locals who strangers just open up to – and then feel happy to have met.

Which apparently happens all the time.

“I’m out with my kids, and I’ll end up in a long conversation with someone,” says Kathy, 59. “Afterwards, the kids say, ‘Mom, who was that’? And I go, ‘I have no idea!’ I guess I have a face that says, ‘Talk to me, and I’ll talk to you.’ I love meeting new people.”

So she was all in when her daughter Kaitlin, 24, enrolled them in the Phambassador program’s first-ever Pham Camp, the all-day extravaganza that brings Phams together for an intro to all things Philly. (Its inaugural session was June 21st.)

Says Kaitlin, “It sounded fun, but I was also a little nervous” about mixing it up with strangers for interactive games, workshops, and other activities. “I was like, ‘What if people are really reserved?’”

As if.

When she and Kathy approached the Independence Visitor Center, where the festivities were held, they could actually hear their fellow 175 attendees before they saw them. 

“The energy was incredible!” Kaitlin says, recalling the din of the ballroom, which shook with laughter and blabbing from people dressed in every kind of Philly-themed apparel imaginable. 

Adds Kathy, “The camaraderie! You could tell that every person in that room really wanted to be there  – you could feel how much they love this city.”

The Naseviches are natural Philly boosters. What excites them is how being a Phambassador gives them specific ways to share that love with visitors and with locals whose hearts already belong to the Big Scrapple. 

“We get to tell everyone that this is the best city in the world,” says Kathy. “And we get do it together.”

Kathy grew up in South Philly at a time when asking someone “What’s your parish?” told you precisely which neighborhood of the city they hailed from. She graduated from the Cascia Career Center – the private, now-closed business academy run out of a converted Broad St. brownstone by two nuns who placed their grads in good office jobs.

“Those nuns were connected, let me tell you,” says Kathy.

 She landed a great gig as an executive assistant for the Flyers, staying late on game nights to ensure the catering and giveaways were ready. She left when she had twins — Kaitlin and brother Michael — and eventually moved to Bucks County, where she handles paperwork for her husband’s funeral home.

Kaitlin is the advertising, marketing and communications coordinator for Visit Bucks County. But her heart is in Philly, where she spends weekends and holidays with extended family – and dines as enthusiastically at Nick’s Roast Beef as she does at the James Beard restaurants that have made the city a culinary mecca.

“I’m the family foodie,” she says.

Mom and daughter may represent different Philly generations but they share the same appreciation of the city’s help-each-other sensibility. 

Kathy shares childhood memories of collecting dollar donations from neighbors when someone had a baby or suffered a death in the family. Kaitlin nods knowingly — she sees the same generosity in the city’s young digital communities, whose influencers routinely rally their followers to support this or that struggling business.

“People here really look out for each other,” says Kaitlin. “It makes me feel proud.”

She and her mom each have their own favorite “unforgettable” Philadelphian. 

“For me, that would be Ed Snider,” the late Flyers owner, says Kathy. “He was from Maryland but then embraced this city and actually became Philly”  – all grit, kindness, and largesse.

For Kaitlin, it’s her hospitable Aunt Ann, who still lives in the South Philly rowhouse she was raised in, which is the family locus for watching sports games and celebrating holidays. 

“She even works for the sheet metal union – can you get more Philly than that?” Kaitlin laughs.

And they cherish their shared Philly moments: cheering the Eagles at the 2018 Super Bowl parade; waiting 90 minutes for cheesesteaks from Angelo’s during the Italian Market Festival; and, now, basking in the afterglow of their first-ever Pham Camp.

“We left feeling so connected to the people who are truly proud to be from Philly,” says Kathy. 

As for Kaitlin, who had been excited but “nervous” about Pham Camp?

“When it ended,” she says happily, “I was like, ‘I met incredible people today! When can we do this again?”