Travel activist, company founder and TWIP CEO, Lauren A. Koenig grew up in the Midwest. Educated at Ball State University while holding a 4-year Presidential Scholarship, she left her hometown of Chicago at the invitation of the French Ministry of Education to teach English.

Lauren welcomed the challenge of working abroad; travel became a hallmark of her early and future stage development. Returning to Chicago, she worked for Anita Dee Yacht Charters before joining The International Kitchen, the leading provider of cooking school vacations covering Italy, France and Spain.

These travel related business experiences enabled Lauren to identify and create a unique, distinctive product offering: TWIP - Travel With Interesting People. TWIP is the only travel website that empowers global and domestic travelers to find each other based upon their individual personal desires or what the company coined, ‘Travanality.’

The travel market is becoming increasingly cluttered thereby enabling TWIP's unique competitive advantage to stand out from the pack.

TWIP offers travelers the opportunity to travel to the most interesting countries in the world, discovering global events and exciting, exclusive adventures. While importantly, being compatible with each travelers previously identified needs.

From birth, Lauren has spent her summers at her family’s lake house in Muskoka, Ontario. Not quite understanding the bi-lingual language on the back of the Canadian cereal boxes, this was enough motivation for her to go learn French, and eventually move to France. Her summers were filled with fishing, slalom skiing and photography, her favorite hobbies.

Anyone that knows Lauren understands she has a love affair and an abiding passion for travel, especially Montreal, Prague, Beirut, South Africa and of course, Muskoka destinations.

TWIP won the 'People's Choice Award Summit Runner-up' at the coveted PhocusWright Travel Conference in Nov. 2017.

Lauren is an Alumni of the Women's StartUp Lab Accelerator in San Francisco, CA; class of Spring 2015 and the 20/20 Startups Accelerator in NYC; class of Fall 2016.