85 Percent Podcast

Season 2 of The 85 Percent Podcast has been a journey. One filled with raw, unfiltered conversations about the joys and challenges of building a life that works for you. We’ve talked to powerhouse women who’ve shared their stories of navigating life that doesn’t always make it to Instagram. From career pivots to personal growth, we’ve laughed and learned along the way. As we close out this season, let’s take a moment to reflect on the lessons learned and the voices that made this season unforgettable.

New to 85 Percent? Here’s a quick intro

Did you know that women make 85% of travel decisions, and yet make up just a tiny fraction of who we see in travel media and leadership? 85 Percent: A Wanderful Podcast showcases the trailblazing women of travel and the stories they have to share with the world. It’s hosted by Wanderful’s founder and CEO, Beth Santos.

The format is part interview, part narrative style, sharing the powerful, passionate travel stories that have changed the lives of the women who are changing travel right back.

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Special Thanks to our Sponsors, B&H Photo and Sony!

This season, B&H Photo has gifted all of our show guests a set of STUNNING Sony ECM-S1 wireless streaming microphones to record our podcast and we are in love with them. Thanks so much for supporting 85 Percent and our mission to get more women’s stories out in the world.

At the end of each episode, we’re sharing a travel story from one of our listeners.

This should be a 2-minute recording of a moment that changed you during your travels. It may be something that surprised you, a funny or harrowing experience, or something else that gave you an important lesson about travel.

SUBMIT YOUR LISTENER STORY

Meet Travel Tales by Afar

Beth: Hey everyone, Beth here, and I’m so excited to tell you about Travel Tales by Afar, the Lowell Thomas award-winning narrative podcast that goes deeper into the heart of what travel means to us. Each episode digs into stories from people who took a trip and came home transformed. You’ll hear on-the-ground stories of epic hikes, life-changing road trips, cultural pilgrimages, and you’ll hear from adventurers, entrepreneurs, and scientists who have used their platforms to make travel a force for good in the world.

Follow Travel Tales on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Wrapping Up Season 2

[00:00:00] Beth: So in season two, I interviewed the winners of the 2024 Bessie Awards. The Bessies are an award show that Wanderful created in 2019 to honor and celebrate the accomplishments of women in travel. Hundreds of people have been nominated across nine categories and each year at the WITS Creator Summit, we announce the winners live on stage.

People get glammed up, we walk a red carpet, and we celebrate not just the winners or even the finalists, but the accomplishments, the curve balls. And the moments that all of us have had that made us stronger and better. Did you know that women make 85% of travel decisions, whether booking a trip for our families or cleaning the hotel rooms, women are the backbone of the travel industry, but the people we see in travel shows, marketing and leadership, they don’t look like us.

[00:00:58] Now we’re cutting through the noise to talk to the change makers, the trailblazers and the women who make travel what it is. And how we can make travel better for all of us. This is 85 Percent. I’m your host, Beth Santos.

[00:01:23] I’m sitting in a cozy cafe in Jamaica Plain. It’s a neighborhood in Boston that’s filled with green spaces and families with big dogs and creatively painted houses. While Boston sometimes gets a bad rap for being cold and unfriendly, Jamaica Plain, or JP as we call it is anything but. It’s so community oriented and warm.

[00:01:52] Just last week, we participated in the JP Lantern Parade, an annual community holiday that consists of people making homemade lanterns with reused two-liter soda bottles and walking around Jamaica pond at night. Literally that’s what the holiday is all about. And yet thousands of people show up for it time and again, taking our time to slowly walk around the pond.

Gather together and be in community with each other. Around me, the whirr of an espresso machine and the banter of people in meetings and catching up with friends are the sounds that fill the space. I’m at Ula Cafe, a homey place with exposed brick and pride flags and white string lights hanging from the ceiling.

[00:02:41] It’s inside the historic brewery building, which was once occupied by the Haffenreffer Brewery. And is now Sam Adams landmark location. Ula is constantly filled with just about everyone. Families, friends, remote workers, kids fresh out of school, older couples grabbing an espresso together. When my husband and I became owners three years ago, we had never run a cafe before.

[00:03:10] But when Ula went up for sale, something spoke to us and we took a leap. Three years later, I still don’t know what possessed me to run the place, but I’m sure glad it did. For many, cafes are our reflection places. There are real studies out there that talk about how that kind of ambient noise can help people with focus.

So it seems like a perfect setting for the last episode of Season 2 of 85 Percent, where we can reflect on what we’ve learned in the past season and talk about what’s to come. It may be our final episode for now, but we are not even close to done yet. When I started 85 Percent, I was not a podcaster. Trust me, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

[00:04:04] I connected with Bethany of Crackers In Soup, coincidentally a fellow Massachusetts resident, or what we charmingly refer to as a Masshole, and she helped me define the vision for this podcast and design the episodes. I wanted a series that attempted to better illustrate the real people of the travel industry.

The idea was this, if 85% of travel decisions are made by women, then why don’t we meet and talk to some of those women and understand the travel industry that they’re building? I wanted to interview some of travel’s greatest trailblazers, and hear some of their best pieces of advice, carefully cultivated through a travel story that changed them.

[00:04:48] I wanted to take the time and energy to really retell that story and to describe that moment for you, the listener. For me, the how of storytelling was nearly as important as the what, because as we know, a really beautifully told story changes everything about how we remember it and how we internalize it.

So in season 2, I interviewed the winners of the 2024 Bessie Awards. The Bessies are an award show that Wanderful created in 2019 to honor and celebrate the accomplishments of women in travel. Hundreds of people have been nominated across nine categories. And each year at the WITS Creator Summit, we announce the winners live on stage.

People get glammed up, we walk a red carpet, and we celebrate not just the winners or even the finalists, but the accomplishments, the curveballs, and the moments that all of us have had that made us stronger and better. The awards are named after Bessie Coleman, a woman who braved a serious amount of adversity on her own.

[00:05:55] But overcame it all to be the first woman of African American and Native American descent to receive a pilot’s license. And even after this incredible accomplishment, she continued to advocate for integration at her shows and events. She was a trailblazer in every definition of the word. When you examine each 85 Percent episode, what you hear is an episode in two parts.

Episode 9: Screaming Into the Falls

[00:06:20] Today, we’re going to take a step back to review all of the incredible episodes that you’ve heard this season and the great lessons that you’ve learned along the way. In the first part of each episode, we tell a travel story. It’s a moment that changed the way our guests saw the world. In Episode 9, the first episode of Season 2. We joined author Nikki Vargas on a journey to Iguazu Falls in Argentina, where she screamed her feelings and her fate into the gushing waterfalls below. Nikki was days away from her wedding. And yet, it was on this trip that she realized that actually she didn’t want what was awaiting her on her flight home.

[00:07:02] Nikki: I decided to start walking away from the waterfalls and sort of following the trail as it sort of goes into the jungle. And so I find myself walking alone through this jungle. I remember this feeling while walking, this sort of almost kind of rise of butterflies in my stomach of knowing before I really understood that I was about to ask myself the tough questions.

[00:07:29] Because at the back of my mind, this entire time that I was in Argentina, I kept thinking about the fact that I was due to get married in about a week. I started talking to myself quite literally out loud, and I remember asking myself, what is it you have to say? In a very like exasperated way, as if I was traveling with somebody who had been complaining the whole time and I’d been steamrolling them.

[00:07:56] Beth: Something about taking this trip to Argentina allowed Nikki to separate herself from her home context, the routines of daily life, but also the expectations of her family, her loved ones. And most importantly, Her own expectations of herself. Maybe that’s why faced with the massive ZO falls in front of her and nothing else. She realized she had only one thing left to say.

[00:08:24] Nikki: There was no pause. There was no momentary, oh, let me think about the answer and calculated response. It was, what is it you have to say? And then the answer just flew out of me very loudly. I don’t want to get married. It just screamed it.

Episode 10: Hiking Through Existential Crisis

[00:08:44] Beth: In episode 10, we met influencer and entrepreneur Gabby Beckford while she had an existential crisis on her first ever hiking trip in Iceland. A hiking trip where she showed up with literally no luggage at all.

[00:09:01] Gabby: First day I’m in the front of the pack. I’m going up the hills and stuff and I’m like, I did gymnastics in high school. Like I’m great. And by the second day I’m like, Oh my God. This is a bit more. Yeah, by the second day, third day, I’m like at the back. They’re like, Gabby, come on. And it’s blistering winds and scorching deserts. Like it’s freezing cold and then it’s so hot and it’s windy. We’re sleeping in the dragon’s nest, which is like jagged volcanic rock. Like I’m like, what the, I thought that was cute.

[00:09:32] It was terrible. It was so cold. It was miserable. The confidence, if I could make a graph, was very high. Drops low very quickly, but that low drop I think was pivotal that I kept saying like why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I here? Okay God In life, why am I here? Existential crisis was happening as i’m like clawing my way up the like volcanic sand

[00:09:55] Beth: Maybe Gabby’s attitude had something to do with the fact that she was on a seven day trip.

[00:10:01] It wasn’t like she could just turn around and leave. The hike meant that she had to stick it out, no matter what. And, believe it or not, something started to happen after the first few days. That girl that came totally unprepared and completely out of her element, she started to change.

[00:10:19] Gabby: I remember that moment viscerally.

I was back to back with the girl in the sleeping bag, and it was It’s 1 a. m. bright as heck outside and we’re trying to sleep and I had been writing my journal before and I remember thinking, I remember having a thought and being like, okay, I want to write it. And that’s when I realized I’d rather be here having a bad time, quote unquote, cold and hungry and tired and like out of place and the only person of color, no one else has to deal with curly hair.

[00:10:41] Like I would rather be here still than at home. Do I regret it? And I remember being like, damn, this sucks. But somehow the answer is no, and that’s when my brain was rewired. So yeah, I was back to back with that girl writing my journal, being like, Damn, I still am glad I came. I could literally feel the gears turning.

Smoke was coming out. I’m like, okay, wait. I’m getting used to this. Like I’m liking this now. And I think that whole experience of it was miserable, but I would still rather be miserable and growing than be back at home and never have tried. I remember feeling like that. I remember being at the end of being like, I’m cold.

[00:11:19] I’m tired. I haven’t washed my socks in seven days. My hair big. This was rough. But wow, I remember feeling like, wow, I am not the same person I was before I came here. Not because it was Iceland specifically, but because I think I had put myself so far out of my comfort zone and I was like, I could do that again and I think it would be easier.

And I just kept doing it again for 10 years now.

Episode 11: Facing Fears in Antarctica

[00:11:43] Beth: In episode 11, we followed Stephanie Jones, a leader in the Black Tourism Movement, as she traveled with her daughter to Antarctica. It was a place she never thought she’d end up in, and yet found herself not just fundamentally challenged to rethink the way she saw travel, but grateful to experience the world through her daughter’s eyes.

[00:12:14] Stephanie: I only knew the limited knowledge. You see on TV. Oh, it’s so cold. It’s too cold. And then for someone my age who has arthritis in both of my knees, I’m like, Oh, my knees are going to be hurting because it’s so cold. And then it’s like, am I going to have mobility issues? Then it’s like, Oh, I have asthma. Will my asthma flare up in that climate.

So all of these things started. Coming to the forefront, people that I know, my family, they was like, you go on to Antarctica. Why are you going there? It’s too cold. And I still get that. But one of the things I wanted to make certain is that I shared the experience so that people could see it was the most beautiful experience I ever had in my life.

[00:12:56] It was such a surreal spiritual experience for me to be in a part of the world that a lot of people don’t venture to, to experience this pureness. Everything about that experience from the luxury ship, the food, the spa, and then to, to be able to share that experience with my daughter made it even more meaningful to both of us.

[00:13:20] And she would still be like, mom, pinch me. I can’t believe I’m here. But I had to address the fear that I had. And false perceptions, because honestly it was warmer over in Antarctica than it was in the U S it was never when we went on the excursions in the Zodiacs. It was never a time when I was like, oh my god, I’m just so freezing.

[00:13:43] I think. The challenging part for me was putting on all that gear because I was so exhausted by the time I put it on and took it off. My husband started going on YouTube to find video of people who had gone to Antarctica and specifically gone on the cruise with the cruise line. And to hear it kind of see their experience and how positive was that also started to address my fears.

[00:14:11] And I think that’s important too. If you’ve never been to a destination and you are fearful about whether it’s the safety, you know, whether it’s going to be, Challenging from a mobility standpoint, there are YouTube videos, go and research people who have gone there just to hear their perspectives of what to do, what not to do, what to pack, because you basically got to pack everything when you go to Antarctica, because you, you, can’t find a drugstore if you get sick, and you gotta have ample insurance to make certain they can fly you from the ship to land.

[00:14:45] So just making certain again, being prepared, watching videos of people who have had that experience might help to ease some of those fears that you have about a destination.

Episode 12: Navigating Solo

[00:14:58] Beth: And in episode 12, DEIA champion and accessibility advocate Catarina Rivera took us across the street on a solo trip to Montreal and shared one of her deepest insights on how getting comfortable with publicly using her white cane made her rethink not only her own ability to travel solo, but the example she set for so many other blind and disabled travelers.

[00:15:23] Catarina: Montreal going solo with, you know, my white cane was amazing. And I also do that in smaller bits when I travel. Cause now I travel full time with my partner. I will choose a moment to say, okay, I’m doing this by myself. I’m going out by myself. I’m keeping these muscles active and I need to keep proving to myself these little moments of courage that I’m going to go experience on my own.

And I can. So if you’re disabled and you’re afraid to travel, I would say don’t shame yourself. Don’t speak negatively to yourself. Figure out a way that you would like to travel that would feel good to you. You don’t have to do solo travel. You can do a group trip. There are lots of accessible travel providers, and I’m trying to work with more of them.

Episode 13: Lessons in Courage

[00:16:17] Beth: I loved opening 85 Percent with stories. Not only because I just love a good travel story, but because it’s sometimes during our travels that we find ourselves opening up and learning things in ways we never would have expected. And it doesn’t take a lot for travel to do those things to us. We find ourselves in new surroundings and suddenly who we are and how we interpret the world are slightly different than when we’re in our home environments, surrounded by people who know us. And it’s in those moments that we begin to learn some of life’s greatest lessons.

Like this one, in episode 13, when Alexa West, author of The One Way Ticket Plan and creator of the Solo Girls Travel Guide series, shared the earth-shattering realization that you don’t need to travel fearlessly. You can actually be totally afraid and still travel anyway. And that’s completely okay.

[00:17:16] Alexa: I’m actually afraid of everything. Mostly transportation. I’m afraid of cars. I’m afraid of boats. Like I’m afraid I’m going to die all the time when I travel and I don’t and I’m not and I’m here. What I say is I choose my locations and destinations based off of safety. You know, it would be one thing if we’re picking up a dart, throwing it on a map and asking you to just go there.

You might run into some unsafe things. There are unsafe places in the world and in our own country, there are unsafe things. You do need to navigate. The world with safety in mind, for example, living here in Seattle, Seattle is more dangerous than like Seoul, South Korea, I talk about this in the One Way Ticket Plan in Seoul, I would go out midnight, grab a bite to eat, have a beer, like on a curb and like watch like street performers until like 3 a.m. and be completely safe and walk home completely fine. As long as I’m using my street smarts, I would never do that in Seattle.

So it is literally that you can pick yourself up and drop yourself somewhere in the world that’s actually safer than maybe where you live. It is street smarts mixed with doing this intelligently, like doing this with thought to safety. If you travel and you stay in like a guest house, The people that are there, like the people that own the guesthouse, their number one job and goal is to keep you safe and comfortable. We paint adventures with like a scary brush, but in reality, it’s not that scary.

Episode 14: Breaking Stereotypes with Vanessa Fondeur

[00:18:42] Beth: Or this lesson in episode 14, when teacher Vanessa Fondeur reminded us that it’s when we travel that we experience some of the deepest cultural connection and shared her work with how the Latino Travel Fest was a success.

[00:18:57] It’s helping to give a voice and a face to the Latinx travelers who feel unseen and underrepresented.

[00:19:05] Vanessa: Travel is having that cultural connection to other people, to other foods. I believe in exploration and discovering who you are through that process. Challenging your, your mindset, your ideas, and just like the whole process of learning who you are at the deepest levels as, as little as, dude, I like the company of just myself.

[00:19:37] Or how do I feel eating in a restaurant by myself or just getting lost versus, Oh, traveling with a group? How do I feel more comfortable? You know, it’s, it’s just that, that process of discovering who you are, what you like, what you don’t like, what foods called your attention, what foods you’re never going to eat again.

And I think a lot of people just stay in their comfort zone. And to me, travel is a stepping out of your comfort zone. Traveling is also more affordably than what I thought it was. Like I thought it was like this expensive thing, only rich people can do it. Or if I get a scholarship, that’s the only way.

[00:20:22] Not realizing that there are many different ways of traveling. Staying in a hostel, you know, traveling in a group, using public transportation instead of trying to do a private tour, you know, if you want traveling to really happen in your life, you can really do it no matter what your budget is. I got married in Thailand and people were like, why are you going so far?

Well, my country in February, when I got married, the flights are 800. And when in Thailand, there were 387 round trip to Phuket. And I’m like, let’s just go to Thailand. So we took 35 family members from my husband’s side on my side to a place they never would have thought they could go. We found Airbnbs for $17 a night.

[00:21:15] And I’m like, look where you are. So it’s also this mystifying those beliefs that travel is expensive. It could be, but it doesn’t have to be.

Episode 15: Empowerment Through Solo Travel

[00:21:26] Beth: In episode 15, Kim Callender and Arabella Bowen, the founders of the app SoloTrvlr, shared stories of how travel made them see their own capabilities differently.

That you can actually choose to travel with yourself and be empowered by that choice, rather than seeing it as a necessary alternative when you have no one to travel with.

[00:21:50] Arabella: The number of women that invested, oh my god, I just came back from this trip and I decided to change my job. I just came back from this trip and I decided to break up with my partner.

[00:22:01] You wind up doing things on your own. And by simple virtue of doing them on your own, you wind up with all this innate confidence and you come home feeling like you can just do anything. The personal rewards last a lifetime.

[00:22:19] Kim: Eating alone can be fun. Not just it’s okay, but eating alone can actually be so enjoyable.

You can sit there with a book or your email or just watching people. There is almost nothing better in this world than sitting at one of those little cafe tables and just having like the short little glasses of wine they do because they’re never really a full glass of wine. They’re just like a little glass.

[00:22:44] Whatever your food of choice is and just sitting there and watching the world go by and you can just be. How many opportunities do we as women have in the world to just be? When I look at kind of the five years down the road, what I would love to have created is a way to step out there and do the things you want to do regardless and wherever.

If you don’t have a passport, maybe that’s too far. Maybe going to another country is too far. Maybe going to the other side of the country is too far. But what about going to the other side of the town that you live in? What about going one town over? What about taking yourself to lunch at a place you’ve never been to?

[00:23:26] What about actually having a conversation with someone who lives in one time over. And then maybe from there you go and take yourself on an overnight trip for a weekend at a little B&B that’s 20 minutes down the road. It doesn’t have to be far to create that space. And I think that’s one of the things I really want to kind of change about the way we look at solo travel is it doesn’t have to be this really far difficult to attain thing.

[00:23:52] It can be, you can want to go to Borneo and travel to Silk Road, but you can also just start with choosing yourself in small moments.

Episode 16: Self-Examination Through Travel

85 Percent Podcast Episode 16 cover graphic

[00:24:04] Beth: And in our final story, in episode 16, Intrepid’s Zina Bencheikh told us how travel can make you a better person and give you opportunities to self examine and even address your own biases along the way.

[00:24:19] Zina: I think travel can fix a lot of problems and this is exactly what happened at the moment and that’s really made me just convinced that it is the right thing to do. We have to continue to do this. When it comes to travel, I think it’s important to keep an open mind and don’t be afraid to discover the unknown and to share in the unknown, to go in places with the idea that you might learn something.

[00:24:43] For me, it’s, it’s what travel, it’s what travel does. It’s, teach you something, makes you better, makes you another person, a more tolerant, a less ignorant, more informed. And Try to use it as a power to become better people.

What’s Next For 85 Percent Podcast?

[00:24:59] Beth: If you missed any of these episodes along the way, here’s your chance to go back and listen to them now.

[00:25:06] Each one is chock full of powerful travel stories, meaningful lessons, and moments that make us rethink what travel is all about and who travel is for. And of course, you’ll love the Community Wander Story that’s included at the end of each episode. We had two minute travel stories submitted by our listener community, sharing moments that changed the way they saw things.

[00:25:29] And I loved what you all had to say. We’ll be collecting more Wander Stories next season, so stay tuned and make sure you’re following me on Instagram @MaximumBeth. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so that you can be alerted when we’re collecting stories again. So, you’ve listened to all the episodes, you loved them, and you even went back to Season 1 and heard those.

[00:25:53] And now your question is, what’s next for 85 Percent? A few things. First of all, you can expect another season to work its way around after the 2025 Bessie Awards. Nominations are due on December 1st, 2024, so there’s still a little time to nominate a favorite trailblazer in travel. Anyone can nominate at BessieAwards.org. You’ll be able to hear from our winners next fall, during our next season of 85 Percent. I know what you’re saying. Am I going to have to wait a whole year for the next season to come? It’s possible, but I’m also hoping not. Here’s what you might expect in the meantime. You might be aware that on October 1st, we launched the Woman Owned Map, the first interactive map of woman owned businesses that you can find and visit at home and when you travel.

[00:26:46] If you visit womanownedmap.com, You’ll find hundreds of listings of woman-owned businesses in some of your favorite cities. And if you don’t see your city on the map yet, make sure you click the button on our website to add some of your favorite woman-owned businesses now. My hope is to continue to tell stories, in my own way, of women who are building businesses in travel and hospitality, and even businesses that you can visit on the map.

Get In Touch

[00:27:11] I’m actively seeking destinations that want to tell the story of their women owned businesses. To partner with on some 85 Percent field trips. We might even add in a little video. If you’re interested in the idea and want to explore more, send us an email at podcast@bethsantos.com or shoot me a DM at @MaximumBeth.

[00:27:33] I can’t wait to see what collaborations are coming and where we can hit the road with this podcast series. If you haven’t signed up for the Bessie Awards and the larger WITS Creator Summit, well, what are you waiting for? We’ll be gathering hundreds of travel content creators together in Downtown Manhattan next May 2025, and it’s going to be one of the most exciting events yet.

[00:27:58] Whether you’re a creator or a small business owner or a member of the travel industry, you definitely want to join us at the most powerful event for women in travel content creation. And finally, if you’re part of our Wanderful community as a member or a brand partner, thank you so much for supporting my vision.

[00:28:17] It’s not every day that someone moves to a country they’d never heard of, starts a travel blog, and builds it into a business and a life calling. But that’s kind of what happened to me. Every person who becomes a Wanderful Member is supporting the growth of a community of women who help one another all around the world.

[00:28:36] Every company that joins us as a brand partner is advocating for a new and more diverse face and voice of travel. If you haven’t become a member yet, come check us out at community.sheswanderful.com. Membership starts at just 99 bucks a year and gives you access to virtual events, local chapters, group trips, and more, and brand partners get [00:29:00] easy access to our creator network where travel’s most unique voices.

[00:29:05] If you’re an industry member seeking brand partnership, shoot an email to partnerships@sheswanderful.com.

A Big Thank You

You all know I love a good monologue, so I’ll just take this last moment to say thank you to B&H for sponsoring all of the microphones that we use during this season. As well as our other friends, including Afar’s Travel Tales, Intrepid, all of the incredible guests that have taken so much time to tell their stories.

[00:29:33] And, of course, to all of you for actively listening and being part of this exciting journey along the way. I hope you’ve gotten so much out of this season. If you haven’t given me a rating yet, please do. Make sure to go and give one now so others can find this podcast easily, too. And thank you so, so much. For being part of this amazing adventure. Catch you all in season three. Thank you so much for listening to 85 Percent. Make sure if you wanna follow along this journey, you hit that subscribe button wherever you get your podcast so you can keep up with new episodes as they drop. Of course, we want you to follow along online as well.

Go to 85percentpodcast.com. That’s numeral eight five percent, all spelled out podcast. com or you can follow me on Instagram at @maximumbeth. Catch you next time. Safe travels, everyone.

About the 85 Percent Podcast

Women make 85 percent of travel decisions. So why are we not 85% of travel marketing?

85 Percent explores what it means to be a woman in travel through interviews with leading women in the travel, tourism and hospitality industries.

From CEOs, to travel influencers and writers, to women who work in cleaning and maintenance, we’re cutting into the underbelly of an industry that is predominantly made of women, but still fails to include them, and is hosted by Beth Santos, founder of leading women’s travel network, Wanderful.

About the Host, Beth Santos

Beth Santos is a passionate entrepreneur and community builder out to disrupt travel for women worldwide. She is founder and CEO of Wanderful, an international collective of travelers and travel content creators on a mission to make travel better for all women. She is the creator of the WITS Travel Creator Summit, a leading event for women and gender diverse travel creators, the annual Bessie Awards to honor women of impact in travel, and the first major outdoor travel festival by and for women, Wanderfest.

Beth has been named one of 17 changemakers shaping the future of the travel industry by Business Insider, one of 12 women to follow by Conde Nast Traveller, and one of 20 influential women in the travel industry by Travel Pulse. In 2022, she was named Godmother of the Azamara Onward cruise ship.

She is the author of WANDER WOMAN: How to Reclaim Your Space, Find Your Voice, and Travel the World, Solo and works to amplify underrepresented voices in travel while challenging each of us to do better in her work as a keynote speaker, an industry consultant, and a startup and small business coach. At home she is a co-owner of Ula Cafe, an inspired cafe and community hub in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, where she lives with her husband and children.

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