From Lair to political campaign trail, Kol Van Giesen explains how a summer in the woods prepared him for anything.
Kol Van Giesen was just eleven months old when he first set foot—or perhaps more precisely, set crawl—at the Lair. The camp connection runs deep in his family.
How did it all begin? It started when Kol’s grandfather, Don Van Giesen, was working at UCSF as a urologist. One of his coworkers, who had camped at the Lair, told him that The Lair of the Golden Bear was looking for a Camp Doctor. The offer? The doctor’s family could stay for free.
“The rest is history,” Kol said. From then on, Doctor Van Giesen and his wife Lee, Kol’s grandma, spent their summers with the whole family at the Lair. Sixty-two years later, Doctor Van Giesen has missed only one summer—during COVID.
Kol’s dad, two uncles, and an aunt were all staffers in the 80s, and in 2023, Kol joined his sister Elle on staff, working together on the Maintenance Crew at Camp Gold. He overlapped with his cousin Ian at the Lair too.
On a November afternoon in San Francisco, Kol and I sat down over acai bowls to talk about his latest adventure. Fresh off the campaign trail, he had just wrapped up his time on the advance team for vice-presidential candidate Governor Tim Walz.
He’d fly into swing-state cities days before the governor, working with a small team to scout sites, build relationships, and prep events. By the time Walz would arrive, Kol’s team had every detail mapped out, who he’d meet, where he’d stand, how it’d play out. Then Kol would see the governor off, already focused on the next city.
I was curious about what his experience as a Lair staffer had to do with it all, how those summers might have shaped the way he approached the high-stakes world of politics. Here’s what he had to say.
Note: Kol’s answers have been edited for clarity and flow.
Cal Alumni Association (CAA): How did the pace of working a campaign compare to the energy and intensity of a summer at the Lair?
Kol Van Giesen (KVG): I was on the Maintenance Crew at the Lair. That means keeping the whole camp clean. It’s early mornings and late nights, it’s working on a team and working toward a common goal. There are a lot of parallels to the campaign you can draw there.
Having worked at the Lair helped me to work harder on the campaign, especially when I was tired. A lot of people aren’t cut out for work on the campaign because they’re not willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. There’s a lot of stress involved. The constant go, go, go, and the mentality of working hard and working until the job is done, and not just done, but done above and beyond, was important both in Pinecrest and on the trail. You have to be willing to go with the flow. Both jobs were right up my alley because I got to always be moving around.
CAA: How did the sense of community you helped create at the Lair compare to the teamwork needed on the campaign?
KVG: The Lair is the first job I had that motivated me to not want to let the team down. I felt the same on the campaign trail. The teams themselves were pretty similar. Both were full of high-achievers, people who weren’t going to just slack off. In both cases, I never looked to my right or my left and thought ‘Oh, they’re not pulling their weight’ or ‘Oh, they’re not helping.’”
CAA: What did your time at the Lair teach you about communicating with a diverse range of people, and how did you apply what you learned to connect with folks on the campaign trail?
KVG: The whole underlying part of working at the Lair is that you get to meet thousands of people during the summer. You get the chance to interact with people every second of every day if you want to. For me, I love that. You get to understand how people work, what makes them tick.
On the campaign trail, it was so important to know how to talk to different people. You’re not gonna talk to the Secret Service in the same way that you’re gonna talk to a student at a university who’s introducing Governor Walz. There’s a certain disposition you need to use with each group of people and it’s really important to be able to figure that out quickly. Working at the Lair helped me hone my skills in doing that.
For this campaign specifically, people were very anti or pro what we were doing. We had people who were unwilling to host us or people who were unwilling to have the Governor fly into their airport. I think that goes back to my point about people at the Lair and learning how to talk to them. People have different temperaments. Some people come right out and tell you what their problem is. Some people are a little more coy with it. Some people like to be told exactly what’s going on. Some people just like to have a conversation. Figuring out people’s tendencies was super important for getting things done on the trail.
CAA: Can you think of a specific moment on the campaign trail where you thought, “Wow, my Lair training prepared me for this?”
KVG: Moments when things seemed to be going wrong. In Atlanta, Georgia, on the tarmac, Governor Walz was supposed to do a meet and greet, but the people he was supposed to be meeting and greeting weren’t in the right places.
At that moment, I thought about what I would do at the Lair. How would I handle this situation when it’s stressful, sure, but I know there’s an answer. And then, boom, it was ‘We’re gonna pause him coming off the plane, we’re gonna rotate these people around, and we’re just gonna make it work.’ The Lair teaches you to improvise and make it happen, you know, don’t take “no” for an answer.
The constant go, go, go,… working until the job is done, and not just done, but done above and beyond, was important both in Pinecrest and on the trail.
Kol Van Giesen
CAA: At the Lair, you were part of a team that often had to think on its feet. How did that flexibility help you on the campaign trail?
KVG: You have to be willing and able to get on an airplane at an hour’s notice and get to a certain city. Once you get to that city, you drop down, and there’s very little guidance. You show up somewhere you’ve never been and the only instruction is ‘Get to this hotel and we’ll be in touch tomorrow.’ You have to do so much on your own that, frankly, if I had never worked at the Lair then I never would’ve had the confidence to do it. I think a lot of people on the campaign would fold under that pressure. You have to have it within you to figure it out on the fly.
CAA: What do you think makes the Lair such a unique training ground for future leaders, including those entering politics?
KVG: It’s learning to do the most with the least. On the campaign trail, there’s no one babysitting you, no one waiting for you to do something. No one cares about your little team in Atlanta. You have to take a little responsibility and a little control over how you want things to turn out. You have to be on top of it. It’s the same at the Lair. The Lair really teaches you how to self-start and how to be self-accountable.
I also think that the Lair breeds leaders because once you’re able to be your true self, leading in the way that you want to lead is easier. At the Lair, everybody is given the opportunity to be themselves and be confident in that. So, over the course of the summer, you come out of your shell and you have a better idea of who you are. When you leave the Lair, you’re able to translate that ability of being your true self to the rest of the world.
Good leaders are built from believing in themselves and believing what they’re saying first. The Lair helps you hone in on what that is for you and then gives you the confidence to go after it.
Kol’s reflections reveal just how deeply the lessons of the Lair resonate, reaching far beyond Pinecrest. In 1962, the Van Giesens started something that stuck. A week in the woods grew into a legacy of growth, connection, and purpose.
Now, Kol carries those lessons forward: family matters, connections count, and the work you do should mean something.
To scrub a floor, wash a dish, or to direct the choreography of a governor’s schedule? The difference, perhaps, is in scale, scope too, but not in spirit. A summer at the Lair isn’t just a summer. It ripples outward into a way of being: rooted, resilient, ready.
Apply now to work at the Lair this summer. Applications for summer 2025 are open, with interviews January through March.
