When Dagmara (Cepuritis) ’91 Kokonas turned 40, she participated in a rigorous retreat in the Santa Monica hills, which ignited not just a new appreciation for taking one step at a time in nature, but also a desire to foster female friendship.
“Women are encouraged to be selfless and giving, both personally and professionally,” she says. “Those are great qualities, but often come at the expense of developing female friendships and opportunities to explore ourselves and the world. I had a growing sense that I should do something about that.”
Top Set Trekkers, a women’s adventure hiking group that Kokonas leads, evolved from that desire. For 10 years now, she has been planning trips to far-flung locations around the world, with increasingly complex logistics: the ancient pilgrim routes of Japan, the highlands of Scotland, and the remote mountains of the Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan. “These are not casual hikes; they can be physically and mentally demanding,” she says. “In fact, they must be or the magic doesn’t happen.”
Kokonas became fascinated with travel as a child visiting her godparents, who had a globe in their house in suburban Chicago with pushpins showing all the countries they had visited. “I grew up feeling, ‘Wow, this is something you can do — travel the world,’” she says. “And so I did.”
As an Asian studies major at Colgate, Kokonas went on the Japan Study Group and lived with a family in Kyoto. Her love of Japanese culture and language led her to return to the country four times, including on a vacation with her two sons and her husband, Nick ’90.
Kokonas worked as a broker at Citicorp and owned a hat-making business before starting Top Set Trekkers. The women who join her trips spend months training for the hikes. Shivani Vora, a friend from Chicago, went on local hikes with Kokonas and worked with a personal trainer to prepare for a strenuous climb on the vertical cliffs of Sardinia with a group of five women in 2019.
“She really inspired me that it’s possible to take that first step, and after that, take two steps,” Vora says. “The personal growth has been phenomenal.”
While Top Set Trekkers is not a business— at least not yet — Kokonas says it’s nearly a full-time job to plan expeditions, especially with constantly changing global circumstances.
Kokonas, who hiked the 475-mile Camino Le Puy in France this spring, says the treks have achieved her goal of finding like-minded women looking for both a physical challenge and camaraderie. “The trip is the motivation to get into shape and try something new, but the reward is the friendship and the confidence you get from surviving the challenge in a supportive group, a grit-born community,” she says.
“It’s incredibly empowering.”