By Ramona Marks '02
Hannah Knapp '02 heard about Mt. Holyoke from a family friend who she greatly admired, an alum of the Class of 1970. Hannah used to joke that she went to MHC purely because she wanted to become an MHC alum. She majored in theater, but after graduating, she felt that work as an actor felt too unstable. And while she enjoyed working in theater administration, that too didn’t feel like a stable enough career. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and knew she would return after college, which is what she did.
She found herself moving towards the operations department where she was “managing everything so that things would happen.” A good friend asked her to join a tech start-up as the Operations Manager and the sole operations employee. She worked with them for eight years, building an operations team and specializing in the human resources skills that she found she enjoyed most. She says, “I love the human part of human resources,” especially training and development. After a buyout and layoffs, she turned towards the second of what she calls the "two pillars" of her professional life: meditation.
About five years ago, Hannah co-founded a meditation studio in downtown San Francisco called WITHIN Meditation. The idea was to create a space where busy Financial District employees could take a beat and tap into the power of mindfulness. They offered daily classes and space for meditation teachers to lead groups, much like a yoga studio. Hannah found that meditation helped her to improve interpersonal connections. As she says, meditation helps people to “know themselves and one another” better. And at the time “mindfulness was in the water” in San Francisco, where there were a lot of stressed out people looking for ways to balance out their busy lives.
The idea and the studio were gaining traction. And then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. At first, she was worried that in-person meditation groups wouldn’t be transferable to online classes. Fortunately, her worries were unfounded. The online platform for WITHIN Meditation could include people from all over, including teachers, and the pool of people looking for ways to deal with their now confined and stressful lives expanded. People were also trying to find and create communities online.
WITHIN Meditation now hosts day-long, as well as longer, retreats in the U.S. and internationally; this year, retreats are planned near San Francisco and Boston, as well as in Peru.
Around the same time as she co-founded WITHIN Meditation, Hannah started working for Leaders in Tech, where she went from Head of Operations to COO within five years. The organization provides tech leaders with intensive programs that help them create better work cultures. Since the pandemic, she works full-time from home. She didn’t think that would be possible, with her two kids, eight and ten years old, in the house. But ditching a three-hour round-trip commute has its upsides. Working from home has allowed her to be more involved in the day-to-day, and her kids have (mostly) adjusted to her need for quiet work time. She still values the in-person time that she has with her colleagues and says the regularly scheduled meetings are important for maintaining relationships. But the online life has worked for her.
The last MHC reunion Hannah attended was our 10th in 2012. She enjoyed the feeling of being among other alums and was reminded of why her MHC friendships were so good. She is certain that when her life allows for it, she’ll be more involved in the Alumnae Association activities locally. She gets the updates from the NorCal Group and is glad to know the opportunities are there. And she’s looking forward to coming to more reunions so she can reunite with her MHC friends.
Check out Hannah's interview with Ramona here!
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