Creating a Community

Kiki Grainger '07 is co-founder of Westbound Place + Co, a collaborative space located in Denver that bills itself as "a new kind of neighborhood."

Kiki Grainger '07 has always been attracted to strong communities. She followed her older brother, J. T. Grainger '05, to Brooks from her native Wyoming, and says she appreciated the school's small size and friendly nature. "I loved the intimacy of Brooks," she says. "You've got this super down-to-earth, welcoming, charming feel. Everyone was super ambitious in their classes and their sports, but it was also a little more of a laidback place."

Grainger did her fair share of activities at Brooks, including playing for the 1st field hockey team, but she speaks especially fondly of the "Fins and Feathers" club her brother, J. T., founded. "We would go down by the boathouses," she says, "and put on barbecues for people and bring fly fishing rods for people to learn how to fish. It was a fun activity on Friday night, or Saturday night after sports were over."

Grainger wove herself into the fabric of the Brooks community, and she used it to pursue her interests, get outdoors, and meet, interact with and bond with people. She also says she loved the beauty of the Brooks campus, and says that being in a beautiful place affects the way you feel.

Those themes — small, community, friendly, beauty — took her to the University of Richmond, with its 3,000 students and idyllic location — and it has carried through her life into her work: After a stint at Deloitte in Washington, D.C., Grainger decamped out West.

"The big corporate lifestyle was not for me," Grainger explains. "I wanted to get back out West for the lifestyle, being around people who were a bit more focused on personal wellness and adventures and getting outside." Grainger engaged with a series of young companies that gave her valuable leadership experience while also playing to her love of community and the outdoors.

Grainger began with a spot at Boa Technology, which manufactures an increasingly popular dial-closure system for boots and outdoor gear. "Boa has a super outdoor-focused, incredible culture," Grainger continues. "I loved that it was a young company. It was small, and you could make pretty quick decisions. The culture there is unmatched. They treat it as more than just a job; they treat it as if we're a community. It's a group of genuine people that helped each other out and did a lot of fun things outside of work."

Grainger then moved on to Wayfinder Co-op, a co-working space for outdoor-inspired companies, where she served as director of strategic planning. She helped the company grow from its earliest stages — she describes herself and two friends helping the founders lay out the space and build desks — and she appreciates the experience she gained from helping a company grow from its infancy. "It was three people who had an idea," she says. "They had each started operational companies, but nothing that was a physical space. So, it was six of us just completely fumbling through it and figuring out the basics, which I think was hugely helpful."

Now, Grainger has moved on to her current project, one that brings her love of community to the fore. She is the co-founder of Westbound Place + Co, a collaborative space located in Denver that bills itself as "a new kind of neighborhood."

Westbound is set to open in late 2020. Grainger and her co-founder, Brendan Fung, recently purchased space for Westbound: a 1970s-era church to which they plan on adding a two-story addition. The indoor and outdoor space will offer amenities ranging from co-working space and exercise facilities to reading lofts and outdoor patios. Westbound, Grainger says, is more than just a space, though.

Grainger set out to build "a beautiful place where people want to spend their time," she says; a place where people intentionally grow a community. She explains that the idea behind Westbound began as a co-working space, but soon Grainger and Fung became more interested in attracting members to do more on the weekends or something that was more social than just working in a shared space. "People can do the things they want to do," Grainger says. "They can connect with friends, both old and new; they can relax and completely unplug; they can play, and meet people through competition and activity; and they can grow."

Westbound attracts members who are young and who are "pioneers," Grainger says. "We call them experiential trailblazers. They're someone who is always seeking new things, and taking risks and excited about exploring the unknown. The person who is always planning the ski trip, the person who is always doing things that are not part of the norm."

The name of the space — Westbound Place + Co — plays into that spirit. "I, having grown up in the West, care so much about the West and the pioneering spirit," Grainger says. "I straight up tie it to the Oregon Trail, and people who wanted to try something new, to risk it, and thought there might be a reward. The meaning to us is in the people who moved west — who were westbound — who were bound for things they wanted to create, who carried a sense of independence, pioneering, risk and joy, who do their own thing and invite other people to go with them."