
Clickbait
be damned.
Something was missing. We both knew it. Maybe you do, too. We could spend hours surfing the internet and end up feeling empty.
But something was tugging at us. Maybe it’s tugging at you, too. Don’t be afraid. Let it pull you where it wants you to go: North. South. East. West. Down the rabbit hole …
What are you heading towards?
How will you know when you’ve arrived?
… you’re already here.
Welcome to Hidden Compass.
Where we challenge the notion that readers only want mindless, clickable content.
Hidden Compass is for the journalist chasing big questions, complex connections, and meaningful exploration. It is for the reader hunting profound stories that immerse, inspire, and inform. It is for anyone aching for substance and longing to celebrate collective human endeavor.
Here, the nuance of the world is within reach. Hold on to it …
Hidden Compass is the antidote to clickbait.
About Our Founders
Powerful storytelling and oral traditions meet nuanced ideas and boundless exploration.
Sabine was once stranded in the Bolivian Andes during a period of political unrest. She discovered the power of storytelling by seeking out keepers of the oral traditions passed down through millennia of indigenous Quechua history.
Sivani tabled a career as a public defender to sail across the most brutal sea on earth. She spent weeks exploring Antarctica by boat and on foot, all the while writing, photographing, and pursuing stories to bring home.
They met one day at a bookstore and connected over the lack of substance in travel media. Where was the nuance? Where were the challenging ideas? They weren’t interested in the mass-produced content that bombards us daily and they knew they weren’t alone.
That’s why they founded Hidden Compass, a place for stories of exploration — stories that make us question what we think we know, transport us to places we’ve never been, and kindle a fire for us to stoke.
How It Works
Choose your level of support.
Start by reading our stories and learning about the people creating them.
If a story means something to you, share it and contribute to its fundraising campaign. Each journalist will receive 50% of campaign proceeds in addition to their pay. The other 50% supports Hidden Compass.
By sharing and contributing, you allow us to publish articles that aren’t dependent on selling you products or tracking your habits. You’re supporting our team and the incredible people behind our stories — journalists who research the unknown, helicopter in, snowshoe out, dive deep, and help us discover.
These are our new influencers.






Find your story.
Choose a Theme to Explore
Journey alongside characters in pursuit of elusive truths. Travel through extreme landscapes, to the far reaches of the planet, and into the unknown.
Get to know extraordinary characters from around the world — individuals, cultures, places, creatures, and even objects.
Investigate the relationship between humankind and the planet. Come face-to-face with Nature as an unpredictable danger, a wise teacher, and a precarious organism.
Delve into the dark and difficult aspects of a place, even when the darkness exists only in the narrator. Investigative pieces, historical exposés, and tales of narrators immersed in danger.
Inhabit the past, present, and future of a place. Unearth layers of ancient legends and traditions; probe the transient nature of the current moment; and venture out into prediction, peril, and possibility.
Photo: Dr. Gilad Fiskus
Photo: Sivani Babu
Photo: Kim F. Stone
Photo: Sivani Babu
Photo: Sugato Mukherjee
Photo: Geraint Rowland
Find your story.
Choose a Theme to Explore

Photo: Sivani Babu
01
Quest
Journey alongside characters in pursuit of elusive truths. Travel through extreme landscapes, to the far reaches of the planet, and into the unknown.
Photo: Sivani Babu
Awards & Recognition
Our Contributors Are Also Featured In






March 2022:
In the 2022 Solas Awards competition, presented by “Best Travel Writing” publishing house Travelers’ Tales, seven Hidden Compass stories won gold, silver, and bronze awards. The winning stories represented 35% of the stories we published during the award year and more than 40% of eligible stories (stories must be written by U.S. residents to be considered). Winners included, “Honor and the Sea” by Janna Brancolini, “The Medusa of Time” by Daniel Hudon, “Eroded Myths” by Robert Annis, “Blue in Toulouse” by Moriah Costa, “A Spark of Hope” by Michele Bigley, “The Alchemy That Binds” by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, and “No Dog Is an Island” by Richard Pallardy.
October 2021:
“When the World is Withdrawn” by Sivani Babu was listed as a Notable Mentions in the 2021 edition of the Best American Travel Writing. The story took its place alongside pieces from the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine.
August 2021:
Hidden Compass was named a finalist in Newsweek magazine’s Future of Travel Awards, which “highlight those who are creating a travel industry for the future—one that’s more adaptable, sustainable, responsible, innovative and inclusive.”
March 2021:
In the 2021 Solas Awards competition, presented by “Best Travel Writing” publishing house Travelers’ Tales, eight Hidden Compass stories won gold, silver, and bronze awards. The winning stories represented 40% of the stories we published during the award year. Winners included, Alexandria Scott’s “Wade in the Water,” Hayli Nicole’s “People of the Forest,” Sivani Babu’s “When the World is Withdrawn,” Sabine K. Bergmann’s “Awakening the Canopy,” Jacqueline Kehoe’s “The First and Final Days of Denali,” Martha Ezell’s “Journey of a Golden Soul,” Kelsey Camacho’s “Old Clocks,” and Sonya Pevzner’s “Sweet as Challah.”
December 2020:
Two Hidden Compass stories were listed as Notable Mentions in the 2020 edition of the Best American Travel Writing. Hayli Nicole‘s “People of the Forest,” and Chase Nelson‘s “Dark Train to Cusco” were listed alongside stories from the New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine.
Ocotber 2020:
“Love in a Time of Abundance” by Amanda Castleman won a silver Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers. Amanda and her story took their places alongside legendary travel writer Pico Iyer and stories from the New York Times, BBC, and Smithsonian Magazine.
Two of our stories were selected for volume 12 of the Best Women’s Travel Writing. “Wade in the Water” by Alexandria Scott and “Our Ravaged Lady” by Erin Byrne were published in the anthology alongside stories from Vice, Sierra, AFAR, and Smithsonian Magazine.
March 2020:
In the 2020 Solas Awards competition, awarded by “Best Travel Writing” publishing house Travelers’ Tales, our stories won Grand Prize Gold, Silver, and Bronze for best travel stories of the year — as well as three category awards and one honorable mention. An honorable mention also went to a story that first made its appearance in one of our workshops.
August 2019:
In 2019, our first year of consideration, two of our stories were recognized as Notable Mentions in the Best American Travel Writing series! Sivani Babu’s “Ice Bear” and Annelise Jolley’s “Trick of the Light” took their places alongside stories from the New Yorker, National Geographic Traveler, Outside, and the New York Times.
March 2019:
In the Solas Awards competition alone we won Gold, Silver, and Bronze prizes — as well as three Honorable Mentions — for our stories.
2018:
30% of our stories won travel writing awards.
Job Openings
Closed
Digital Marketing Manager
Foster an online community of badass nerds by building and managing the social media presence of Hidden Compass.
Digital Marketing ManagerClosed
Editorial Director — Full Time
Helm our quarterly, award-winning magazine on exploration — our pride and joy — which is the doorway through which we invite tens of thousands of readers each year to step and join our movement.
Learn MoreClosed
Membership Coordinator — Part Time (10 hrs/wk)
Support pioneering members of Hidden Compass’s modern society of exploration — The Alliance — as we build a community that celebrates discovery.
Learn MoreClosed
Managing Editor — Part Time (20 hrs/wk)
Shepherd stories from concept to completion for our award-winning quarterly magazine on exploration.
Learn MoreMeet Our Team

Sivani Babu
Co-founder / Co-CEO
Sivani Babu is the co-founder, co-CEO, and creative director of Hidden Compass. She is an award-winning journalist and nature photographer who has contributed to BBC Travel, CNN, Backpacker, Outdoor Photographer, Iron Horse Literary Review, and numerous other publications. Her work has been recognized in the Best American Travel Writing series and has appeared in exhibits from San Diego to the Sorbonne. Sivani graduated from the University of Chicago with three majors — economics, public policy studies, and political science — and one Lazarused newspaper, the Chicago Weekly News. At the University of Pennsylvania Law School, she taught high schoolers about their constitutional rights. As a Teach for America corps member, she taught eighth-graders about the tangency of math and literacy. After working on a Supreme Court case and representing hundreds of indigent criminal defendants, Sivani left her career as a federal public defender to sail across the most brutal sea on earth. Since then, she has chased storms through Tornado Alley, searched for polar bears in the Arctic Circle, and survived serious injury while celestially navigating the Bermuda Triangle. Sivani is working on her first book, Saving the Night: Shedding Light on the Importance of Darkness.
https://hiddencompass.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/WY5_2112-e1613879282290.jpg

Sabine K. Bergmann
Co-founder / Co-CEO
Sabine K. Bergmann is the co-founder and co-CEO of Hidden Compass. As an award-winning travel, science, and nature writer, she has contributed stories to dozens of publications — including WIRED, Sierra Magazine, and The Best Travel Writing book series — with a collective readership of tens of millions of readers. Her writing has been featured in exhibitions throughout Europe, North Africa, and North America. As an editor, she has managed content for travel companies valued at more than $500 million.
Sabine is a Stanford University-trained environmental researcher and community coordinator who has worked on conservation projects from the Amazon Basin to the Great Barrier Reef. In 2009, she represented Stanford University climate researchers at the United Nations. From 2011-2013, she was the co-host of a live-broadcast environmental radio show in Spanish with an audience of 100,000. She has interviewed sources at sea in a tropical storm, escaped political unrest in the Andes, and discovered cocaine-smuggling coverups in the Caribbean. She has also interviewed earthquake survivors and astrophysicists, mountain biked from the Andes to the Amazon, and chronicled oral traditions passed down through millennia of indigenous history. Headshot by In Her Image Photography. Learn more at www.sabinekbergmann.com.
https://hiddencompass.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/S15.jpg

Alexa Highsmith
Alliance Coordinator
Alexa Highsmith is the Alliance Coordinator at Hidden Compass. As a journalist and creative, her pieces are featured in publications such as LumArtZine, The Horizon Newspaper, and Mazing Magazine. Her work covers a range of topics including reflections on travel through liminal spaces, analysis of art and music, and the prominence of coffee and tea’s cultural significance.
Alexa graduated from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, with a degree in English and Music. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Regis University.
In 2018, Alexa embarked on an expedition to the United Kingdom, Ireland, and surrounding countries to further her literary and musical studies. She has trekked across abandoned famine walls in Northern Ireland, played traditional Irish fiddle music in Ceili night gatherings, toured Hungary giving violin recitals in music-school-converted synagogues, and traversed the wild and relentless moors of the Bronte Parsonage.
https://hiddencompass.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Alexa-Cropped.jpg

Liz Shemaria
Founding Editor
Liz Shemaria is Founding Editor at Hidden Compass. She is an award-winning journalist who has contributed to dozens of publications and organizations including BBC Travel, AFAR, Human Rights Watch, and Fodor’s Essential Italy guidebooks. Liz graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with an undergraduate degree in art history and a master’s degree in journalism. In 2008, she won a fellowship to produce a multimedia series about artistic censorship in military-ruled Burma — traveling undercover between the Thai-Burma border while smuggling rolled-up paintings in her backpack. She launched AOL’s first hyperlocal news startup in California in 2010 and was an on-camera spokesperson for the American Red Cross from 2011-2013. She has trekked solo to an 8,000-ft peak in the Himalaya, traveled through Egypt on a night train, and spent 36 hours crossing the Aegean Sea on a boat, so she could take a picture of her family’s name on a building on the island of Rhodes. She lives in Italy, where she has learned to never order a cappuccino after breakfast.
https://hiddencompass.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Liz-9-e1517354704192.jpg

Nicolette Holmes
Digital Marketing Manager
Nicolette Holmes is the Digital Marketing Manager at Hidden Compass. As a dual citizen of the US and Ireland, Nicolette recalls being curious about different cultures, and the way they experience the world, from a young age. After graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder with a degree in Psychology and double-minors in Business and Religious Studies, she leaped at the opportunity to pursue a marketing career in Portugal. In her previous role at a Lisbon-based digital marketing firm, Nicolette was responsible for managing the agency’s international client portfolio and worked directly with brands from Denmark to Russia to Kuwait. When she’s not on her laptop crafting a digital marketing strategy or plotting her next international adventure, you can find her practicing yoga, studying yoga philosophy, or admiring an ocean sunset in one of the two place she calls home — Portugal and California.
https://hiddencompass.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Nicolette-3-e1691507697519.jpg

Vivian Randall
Submissions Manager
Vivian Walman-Randall is the Submissions Manager at Hidden Compass. Her fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been published in The Catalyst Literary Arts Magazine and Spectrum Summer Editions, and she was awarded the Richardson Poetry Prize in 2021. She’s had the privilege of presenting her scholarly research and creative work at the UCSB’s 2020 Research and Creative Activities Conference, the CCCC Undergraduate Poster Session, and The Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium. Her creative work and research focus on the intersections between gender and nature, as well as addressing climate change and climate catastrophe while exploring new possibilities for relationships between people and the environment. Her research is also concerned with creative writing pedagogy and the development of generative workshop models. She graduated with her B.A. in Creative Writing and Literature from The College of Creative Studies at UCSB in 2022, and is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing with a Fiction Emphasis at Emerson College. Alongside working for Hidden Compass, she is also the Chief of Staff at Emerson College’s graduate journal, Redivider, and teaches undergraduate composition.
https://hiddencompass.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_7877.jpeg