Who built this — and why

Built by someone
who got tired
of waiting.

Stephanie High spent years going to events, joining groups, and genuinely trying to find her people in Spokane. The community she was looking for wasn't missing — it was scattered. Hidden in niches. Fragmented across platforms. Quietly eroding as budget cuts hit women first, as they always do.

After years of searching, she stopped looking and started building.

The founder

Stephanie doesn't just think about this. She does it.

01 — The room that didn't feel like hers

She kept showing up. She kept leaving alone.

For years, Stephanie attended networking events. She joined the groups. She showed up, introduced herself, and drove home feeling no more connected than when she arrived. It wasn't that the people weren't good — they were. It's that the format didn't create the conditions for anything real to happen.

73% of Spokane County women ages 16+ are in the labor force. Nearly three-quarters of the women in this city are working, and most of them have never found a community that actually felt like theirs.

Employment Security Dept, 2025

She didn't want to perform connection. She wanted to actually have it. She kept looking for the room where that was possible — and started asking why, in a city with this much talent, it was so hard to find.

02 — The pockets she kept finding

Over 11,000 women-owned businesses in Spokane. Where are they?

The more she looked, the more she found — small groups doing meaningful work, women building something real, pockets of people who just wanted to feel seen and heard and were doing extraordinary things with no easy way for anyone else to find them.

11,000+ women-owned businesses in Spokane County — and no single place to find them, support them, or connect them to each other.

U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 — Spokane County women-owned firms

"I kept finding these little niches. Amazing people, doing great work — but no easy way to find them unless you'd spent years looking the way I had. And I'm still learning."

Stephanie High, Founder

It shouldn't take years of searching to find your people in a city like Spokane. The ecosystem was real. What was missing was the infrastructure to make it visible and accessible to every woman who needed it — not just the ones who already knew where to look.

03 — When the safety net started shrinking

Budget cuts hit women first. As usual.

Then the cutbacks started. Programs reduced. Organizations restructured. Resources that women had quietly depended on disappeared — and as has always been true, women absorbed the impact first.

~80% of Spokane moms with school-age children are in the workforce — navigating careers, caregiving, and a support system that keeps getting smaller.

Employment Security Dept, 2025

The fragmentation that was already a problem became something more urgent. There needed to be something to backfill what was being lost — and an honest acknowledgment that some of those gaps had existed long before any cuts. The question wasn't just how to rebuild. It was what should have been there all along.

04 — The inventory no one had taken

Someone needed to look at the whole picture and report back.

The more Stephanie looked, the clearer it became: no one had taken an objective inventory of what existed, what was missing, and what women in this region actually needed to thrive. Not just entrepreneurs. Not just executives. The whole workforce — including the women whose work happened inside a home and never showed up in an economic report.

46.5% of all businesses in Washington State are women-owned. Nearly half the state's business base — and a fraction of the resources, visibility, and infrastructure that should exist to support it.

U.S. SBA Office of Advocacy, 2024

HIKE is that inventory made into infrastructure. A directory to surface what already exists. Community programming to fill the connection gaps. A capital pillar being built to address the resources that were cut or never existed. And an ongoing commitment to keep looking, keep asking, and keep building what the community actually needs — not what sounds good in a grant application.

Set the record straight

What HIKE is and isn't.

HIKE is →

Connective tissue, not competition
Built to link what already exists and fill what's missing — not to compete with other organizations doing good work.
Research-backed
Every programming decision is grounded in what we know about community resilience, trauma, and how real relationships form — not what looks good in a pitch deck.
For the full workforce
Business owners, employees, executives, caregivers, stay-at-home parents. If you're a woman navigating work and life in the Inland Northwest, you belong here.
Digitally accessible first
Not everyone can make it to a Thursday evening event. HIKE is built to meet people where they are — online, in their pajamas, on their schedule.
Genuinely diverse by design
Not a curated room. Representative of what Spokane actually looks like — because that's what real community requires.

HIKE is not→

A replacement for what already exists
HIKE is additive — built to connect and amplify the ecosystem, not compete with the organizations already doing good work here.
Only for entrepreneurs
Most of the workforce isn't a founder. HIKE is built for all of it — business owners, employees, caregivers, and everyone in between.
A curated highlight reel
We're not here to present a polished performance of women's professional life. We're here for the real version — honest, accessible, and representative.
Hard to find or access
The whole point is visibility and connection. HIKE is searchable, digitally accessible, and designed to be findable by the women who need it most.
One person's vision imposed on a community
HIKE is guided by an advisory board, shaped by community input, and built to evolve with the needs of real women in this region.

The 2026 Advisory Circle

The women guiding what comes next.

The HIKE Advisory Board is a cross-sector group of accomplished women serving as strategic architects of the ecosystem. They bring expertise across business operations, finance, nonprofit leadership, social media, and community development — and they hold HIKE accountable to its mission.

They are not figureheads. They are active partners in building something that actually serves this region.

Nicolle Hansen

Owner & Consultant, Brightline Business Solutions
Adjunct Faculty, Whitworth University

Lauren Trivison

Influencer & Social Media Manager
Traditionally Trivison

Geneva Johns

Executive Director
Women Helping Women Fund

Rochelle Durruthy

Social Media Manager
& Content Creator

How we operate

The principles
we don't negotiate.

These aren't values we hang on a wall. They are the decisions we make when it would be easier to do something else — when a sponsor wants exclusivity, when a program could be simplified by narrowing the audience, when showing up as we are is less comfortable than performing what we think people expect.

Connective tissue, not competition

Get visible, get referred, and build the network that moves real dollars to your business.

Research over vibes

Every programming format, every community design decision, every structural choice is grounded in what we know about how people actually build trust and resilience. Not what looks good in a slide deck.

Representation is not a checkbox

We are done with curated rooms. Diversity is baked into the architecture of how we build programs, choose venues, invite speakers, and structure access — because the workforce is diverse, and we reflect that.

Resource sharing over hoarding

The current culture of gatekeeping information, access, and opportunity is precisely what we're here to dismantle. Everything HIKE builds is designed to make it easier to share, not harder to access.

Work with the founder

Stephanie is accessible.
On purpose.

Stephanie makes time to connect with potential members, sponsors, community partners, and women who just need a conversation with someone who gets it.