Tatiana Van Campenhout on finding community and getting outside

Tatiana is a designer on the Communication & Brand Design team at Stripe.

I joined the Stripe Design team in January 2017 because I really admired the work I’d seen—it was clear the team held itself to high standard of quality and that Stripe was a design-forward company. After working as a Communication Designer in the San Francisco office for 2 years, I was ready for a life change. When I was originally considering relocating to Seattle and becoming the first designer in that office, the thing that worried me most was finding community again in a new place where I didn’t have my team around me. I’m an extrovert and a very social person, so finding a fun and active community again was a top priority for me.

This was far from the first move I’d made. In the last 6 years, I’ve lived in 4 cities across different countries and timezones. Throughout all of these changes, I’ve learned that the best way to build friendships and connections is to find common interests and bring people together around a purpose. Often in achieving that purpose, friendships are born.

Left: Burroughs Mountain Trail Loop, Rainier National Park. Right: Seahikes planning document.

I love the outdoors and getting my daily steps in so hiking was at the top of the list of the activities through which I planned to seek friends. I created a #sea-hikes channel on Slack to see if I could find other Stripes who were interested in joining me on a hike. I started by creating a Paper Document where I would list 5–10 hikes of varying difficulty levels with a couple of plausible dates. I was amazed to see how many people actually started signing up for these Seahikes! In rain, snow, or shine, the group formed and consisted of local Stripes, visiting Stripes from other offices, Stripelings (children of Stripes), dogs, and significant others.

Left: Lake Ingalls, Cle Elum. Right: Maple Pass Loop, North Cascades National Park.

Snow Lake, Snoqualmie Pass

The best part of starting Seahikes was that I got to meet amazing people from teams that I wouldn’t usually interact with at work. And since we’re all on different teams, we rarely end up talking about work. I care a lot about my work-life balance, and in my experience, creating that balance is much easier when you’re not talking about work all the time.

Six months after the initial idea, we’re in the process of planning Seahike v11. I’m still blown away by how easy it was to start this little community that has helped make me feel right at home in Seattle. I’ve been encouraged by the many informal communities—#seattle-boba, #dogs, #sea-coffee-friends, #juggling to name a few—started by Stripes aiming to cultivate their own communities at work and beyond.

Interested in learning more about opportunities at Stripe?

Visit www.stripe.com/jobs