In Episode 12 of 85 Percent, host Beth Santos introduces Catarina Rivera of @BlindishLatina, a disability advocate and DEIA consultant who teaches the world about disability in travel.
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- 21 minute read
In this inspiring episode of 85 Percent, we’re talking to Catarina Rivera, a disability advocate, DEIA consultant, and the creator behind @BlindishLatina on Instagram. Catarina shares her personal journey of embracing her disabilities and becoming a fierce advocate for disabled travelers. From overcoming the emotional hurdles of her diagnosis to learning to navigate the world with a white cane, Catarina’s story highlights the importance of accessibility, advocacy, and self-acceptance.
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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New for Listeners: Share Your Travel Story with Us
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.
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.
Introducing Episode 12 with Catarina Rivera
Catarina Rivera is a dynamic public speaker, DEIA consultant, and content creator. She works with companies to improve disability awareness, inclusion, and accessibility. As a disabled Latiné woman, she is passionate about sharing her own unique story to help build a more inclusive world.
She’s the winner of the Trailblazer Award at the 2024 Bessie Awards, an award for the go-getter who has thrived in the past year in building her own empire and carving out a path for future leaders in the travel space.
Catarina Rivera: Because I’ve been on this journey with myself and my identity, it’s been so many, many years. When I reached this amazing point of greater accessibility and confidence, I couldn’t just let it only influence my life. That’s why I said, okay, I’m going to start sharing online because there are so many people that are struggling.
They’re not going to advocate and there’s so many people that don’t understand blindness, they don’t understand deafness and disability in general. So let me start sharing my story.
Welcome to the 85 Percent Podcast
[00:01:16] Beth: Did you know that women make 85 percent 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. 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%. I’m your host, Beth Santos.
Understanding How Disability Affects All of Us
Hey everyone. As an able-bodied traveler, I often take for granted the ease with which I move through the world. I don’t think twice about booking flights or navigating airports or wandering through unfamiliar cities. My body moves where I ask it to. My eyes take in the sights without hesitation. And I adapt to new environments with little difficulty.
Despite the fact that waiting in long lines can be annoying and flight delays can be inconvenient, traveling as me is pretty straightforward. I think a lot of parents can relate to my awareness and experience of how that changed when I became a mom. Suddenly pushing a baby in a stroller, I realized firsthand how wildly inaccessible so much of our infrastructure is all around the world.
If it takes me three elevators and the help of a kind stranger to get the stroller from the subway to street level, what is it like for someone who relies on using a wheelchair? Just the other day while on an extended trip to New Orleans, my husband pointed out that there are almost no curb cuts anywhere.
You know that part of the curb that slopes downwards so you can roll flatly onto the street? They didn’t even exist. We could walk around it by easing our stroller over the curb, but what about somebody who couldn’t do that? Suddenly, these once seamless journeys begin to look different. Things like uneven sidewalks and inaccessible buildings, or public transportation systems that use only audio announcements to signal a train change, become not just inconveniences, but cruel exclusions, telling people that if they can’t be one with the able-bodied mainstream, then they simply don’t belong.
This whole conversation makes me realize how much the world is built for people like me, and how for so many others, travel can be a constant negotiation with barriers that aren’t even on my radar. It’s not just about physical access, either. It’s about being seen and understood by a world that often overlooks the experiences of disabled travelers.
Imagining this has made me rethink how I see the world around me, and how much more inclusive it could, and should, be for all of us. Don’t forget that we are the ones that create the structures. It’s not a person’s body that limits them. It’s the structures that we build that can’t accommodate those bodies.
Meet Catarina Rivera
In this episode of 85 Percent, I’m talking to someone who has made a career as a public speaker, a DEIA consultant—the “A” is for accessibility here—and a content creator. Her name is Catarina Rivera, and she goes by the handle @BlindishLatina. Trained as an educator, Catarina has over 14 years of experience in the public sector, and she knows what it’s like to travel with disabilities.
In her content, she gives the world bite-sized looks into what it’s like to travel the world as her. She focuses on storytelling but also advocacy. She’s dedicated to smashing the disability stigma and challenging the travel industry to better accommodate disabled travelers. This year, in 2024, Catarina was nominated for a Webby Award, an award for the best of the internet. She also won the Trailblazer Award at the Bessies. And last year, she was invited to be part of Delta Airlines Faces of Travel initiative. As a teenager, Catarina was diagnosed with Usher syndrome, a rare disorder that causes vision and hearing loss.
Dealing with a Progressive Vision Disability
Catarina Rivera: My family’s Cuban and Puerto Rican. And since I was born, I’ve had a hearing disability. At the time that I was born, it was really common for parents and families to be advised to connect their children to the hearing and oral language spoken world only. So, I was fitted with hearing aids. I received lots of speech therapy, and I was not connected to the Deaf community or ASL, American Sign Language, in any way.
When I was 17, that’s when I was diagnosed with Deaf Blindness due to Usher Syndrome. And I didn’t know that I had a vision disability until I was in high school. I went to summer camp, and I couldn’t see, and all my friends were running around at night. And I was like, Oh my gosh, they can see right now. They’re as easy for them. Like, okay. That was the first time that I noticed any kind of difference because when you’re operating with your vision, you think, what’s going on with your vision is what everyone else experiences and sees.
So, that stark contrast led me to get diagnosed and for my family to find out about Usher syndrome since we had never heard of it. It’s the most common genetic cause of combined deafness and blindness. What we found out is that my vision disability was progressive. So, my vision would continue to change over time. But my hearing was going to be stable, most likely. So, I carried that knowledge with me to college, and I, along the way of my career journey and becoming a young adult and figuring out who I was, I was also figuring out what do I do with this blindness? How do I feel about it?
At the beginning, it really felt like a tragedy. It felt horrible. It felt like, what am I going to do with my life?
Catarina Rivera
So I didn’t have a lot of examples. I didn’t have role models. And my doctors were not helpful in that regard. This was all thing that my family and I had to find ourselves who were the role models, where were the resources. In terms of my career, along the way that I was figuring out what I want to do with in the world, because I always wanted to have a purposeful career.
I was also figuring out how do I feel about my disability. And I went on a journey from denial, anger, fear. to starting to accept my disability.
Blindness Modeled Differently
[00:08:40] Beth: It was when she moved to New York that she started to see blindness modeled differently. People with great careers who are happily using their white canes. And something in her shifted.
Blindness is presented really horribly in our society and blind people are not viewed as independent. There’s not a lot of representation of blind people with thriving careers, with full lives.
Catarina Rivera
Catarina Rivera: They would come into the room, fold up their cane, put it on the table, put it down. And it was like, it was nothing to them. And to me, it blew my mind. This is just [00:09:00] everyday life. They’re comfortable with who they are. Okay. So I was taking note of that. Meeting them really influenced me. I started to accept my blindness and I got services.
Um, the commission for the blind and Helen Keller services in New York. These were things like, safety gadgets for the home, understanding technology that I could use, getting equipment, and then eventually learning to use a cane myself, even though I wasn’t ready in my twenties, I wasn’t ready for that yet.
But yeah, when I got a cane finally and started using it, then I was publicly disabled and that was the thing I had to get over. I could still see a little bit and I knew that people wouldn’t understand that because people think, okay, you’re blind, you’re totally blind. I think it’s like between 15 to 20 percent of blind people are totally blind.
So it’s much smaller than people realize and a lot of blind people have some kind of usable vision or light perception and that does not invalidate our blindness. So I had to get comfortable with using a cane in a way that worked well for me and not care about people questioning why was I looking around when I was crossing the street?
Why I was on the subway holding my cane and using my cell phone and looking like I was texting? Yeah, because I was, you know, that’s my life. That’s my reality. And so eventually I just decided I wasn’t going to care about what they thought and I got used to it, uh, existing in this way where I know people are going to be.
Looking at me and having questions. And I hope now that when people see me and how I move about in the world, that they think instead of saying, Oh, she’s could be faking her blindness. They might think to themselves, Oh, maybe I don’t know everything about blindness. Maybe it’s different than I thought it was. Blowing up online, that only happened because I became a strong self-advocate. Okay. Using a white cane and being comfortable existing publicly blind, and then trying to ask for more accessibility when the places I was going, like restaurants and my gyms, you know, when I would take fitness classes, I started to become much more comfortable with saying, Oh, when you’re demonstrating an exercise, can you please stand a little further away from me?
Then I can get a fuller picture. Of what you’re demonstrating to me or, you know, telling people what worked, what didn’t work for me and then realizing, wow, that made this experience so much better for me now that I’m so comfortable advocating. And so that’s. Because I’ve been on this journey with myself and my identity, it’s been so many, many years.
When I reached this amazing point of greater accessibility and confidence, I couldn’t just let it only influence my life. That’s why I said, okay, I’m going to start sharing online because there are so many people that are struggling. They’re not going to advocate, and there’s so many people that don’t understand blindness, they don’t understand deafness, and disability in general. So let me start sharing my story.
Stepping into Disability Advocacy
Beth: Coming into this greater acceptance with herself happened only after experiencing an example of someone who could really be a role model. But when the idea hit, it struck Catarina like a tsunami. She realized that she could do so much more than she thought, not just with her blindness, but while letting her blindness be an obvious and undeniable part of herself, by being open about it, and not trying to hide it anymore.
And in a lot of ways, that’s what she did. is where her story begins.
A Solo Trip to Montreal
It’s afternoon in Montreal and Catarina is on her first solo trip since using her white cane. It’s a short trip, just four days and a quick flight from New York City, where she was living at the time. But to her, it’s everything. Since getting comfortable with her cane in public, she wants to exercise her travel muscles.
And there’s no better way to do that [00:14:00] than on a solo trip. She checked into an Airbnb, staying in a single room and sharing the property with another woman. And you know what? It’s fun. She likes having a roommate. It gives her company without feeling like she’s totally on her own. It’s also a great solo travel tip.
Today, Catarina is in exploration mode. She’s weaving around walkways and past little shops and restaurants. Patrons dining with friends in the open windows. She comes upon a busy street that she needs to cross, but the crosswalk is too far away. She waits until there’s no traffic, then uses a mix of her senses, including her limited hearing and vision to navigate to the other side.
When she gets there, a man is standing on the sidewalk. Hey, he says to her, how did you do that? He’s kind and they start chatting. He’s the owner of the shop behind him. A men’s formal wear shop with a barbershop inside. [00:15:00] He gives her a tour and she’s amazed. Then, he introduces her to his son, who she ends up forging a friendship with.
The son takes her around the city and they explore it together. He takes her out for live music. She gets all the best local tips. She goes salsa dancing and makes new friends. And somewhere inside her, she thinks, maybe I can do this.
Catarina Rivera: 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 gonna 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 the 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.
I just had this deep shift where I was like, “Why am I hiding this part of myself anymore?”
Catarina Rivera
Turning Your Weakness into Strength
[00:16:21] Beth: What strikes me most about Catarina’s journey is how she turned some of her biggest challenges into some of her biggest assets.
[She radically accepted herself. She learned to own her disabilities. And she turned around and shouted from the rooftops how others can own who they are as well. And how we as an industry have got to be better about including people, no matter who we are.
Catarina Rivera: In the beginning, it was just for fun and, you know, it’s a story tell.
And then I realized it could be a business and I was enjoying myself so much. That’s why I became a public speaker and DEIA consultant, the A is for [00:17:00] Accessibility. But on my Instagram page, Blindish Latina, I have a line in my bio. It says educating leaders about disability. So that line educating leaders about disability is, that is what I’m doing.
The online world is my, it’s my classroom. I’m a teacher again. I’m trying to make things simple, approachable, give examples, give stories and bring people on this journey with me, but they have to be open. When you have a disability. You recognize there’s inaccessibility around me. And that’s something that is really frustrating and it’s harmful to your mental health to deal with inaccessibility and microaggressions as well.
Like how people respond to you and ask you questions or touch you and read your space. There’s so many things that happen. So to say, okay, I still want to have this experience. I still want to travel. And. I don’t want to put limits on myself. I know the world is already going to throw me all these things, but [00:18:00] I still want to get out there.
[00:18:01] Um, I think that’s something that I wanted to do and challenge myself to do.
Beth: Her central message to other disabled travelers is simple. There is space for you here.
Catarina Rivera: Whatever you are dealing with, whatever travel brings up for you, you can find resources, you can find support and, you know, things can get better.
Things can get easier. If you’re a disabled traveler, I would look into the sunflower lanyard. And it is a symbol of having a non-apparent disability. It’s at some airports, a lot of airports in the US. Um, and other places are now participating in it. You can even get a lanyard for free from the services area.
So if you get one for free or if you buy one and then you wear it when you’re traveling airport employees, whether that’s TSA or the actual airline, the flight attendants, people are really supposed to be recognizing that as a symbol of disability and it doesn’t disclose what type of disability you have, but you should be treated with more patience and understanding and recognition.
And I, as someone who’s blind, even though I use a cane and I wear hearing aids, which technically people might notice when I put my cane away on an airplane, I put it under my seat and people don’t notice my hearing aids. It can be an indicator to them. Like, “Oh, she’s disabled.” It’s not all the time apparent to people.
So that was the thing I would advise trying if you think it could benefit you. It’s difficult to, for disabled people to like have to disclose in some way in order to get inclusion or get support. So I do tell people things like, you don’t have to disclose, you don’t have to say anything necessarily. You could say, “I benefit from captions. Can you provide them?” Say that I benefit from this because when you disclose or you say, oh, I have this, or this is my disability, it can create this power dynamic where the person listening information can decide if your request is necessary or something they provide and listen to, uh, whether it’s valid. As a society,
I do wish we could just say what our needs are. Cause we all have needs and then get what we need. When I first started Blindish Latina and then turned it into a business of public speaking and consulting, I was traveling full time, but I wasn’t really posting about it. Then I started to make a shift in my content and I started posting a lot about my experience as a deafblind traveler.
I reached a point where I had to embrace my white cane, and I realized that it wasn’t a symbol of weakness, it was actually something that was going to help me be more safe and more confident in the world.
Catarina Rivera
Catarina Rivera on Sharing Her Travels With the World
And it has been so fun to share my travels with the world. And also it’s been part of my mission now to make travel more inclusive and accessible. First of all, I want everyone to know that disabled people are already out here traveling and we are part of the market. We’re a sizable part of the market.
So just showing myself having adventures, whether that’s been like a horseback riding in Colombia and talking about how horseback riding was accessible for me because someone else could do the walking. I’m very slow as a hiker. I don’t cover too much ground. So just getting on a horse and having the horse walk, and then I could look around the whole time and see the landscape.
And I share that for disabled people to feel represented and also nondisabled people to get a glimpse into my life and understand that disability doesn’t mean that someone leads a bad life. Or is unhappy or is less than. So that’s really important for me to, to represent and storytell. So that’s part of being a travel content creator.
[00:22:00] Beth: As Blindish Latina, Catarina is not just sharing her own stories. She’s partnering with companies that want to be more thoughtful about their commitment to accessibility. Often creating accessible spaces starts with a simple question. What do you need?
Catarina: I did a partnership with a company called Portugal 4All Senses, and we cohosted an accessible trip to Portugal.
This was such an incredible experience because we had a group of all disabled travelers join us. Five out of the eight had never traveled on their own. This was the first time for them. Some people had multiple disabilities. You know, we just had such a mix of disabilities and for some people in the group as well, it was our first time really being around lots of other people with disabilities.
We all deserve to be seen, and we also deserve to see ourselves reflected in the world around us.
Catarina Rivera
And I don’t think people understand everyone’s life with disability is so different. Sometimes you become disabled and you’re still immersed in your same friend groups, your same family groups, and you’re an adult. You haven’t really had like experiences that disabled kids might have, like going to camp with other kids with the same disability or, you know, like socially being in a club in college, disabled disability club.
So I think it’s not always, you don’t always have that community around you. Uh, we stayed in Lisbon and we went and did a bunch of activities. We did tile painting at a museum. I worked with Portugal for All Senses on the itinerary and we worked together and I learned so many things from this trip. Like they had a local equipment provider and I learned how important it is, that connection to equipment.
There was a manual wheelchair user on the trip who rented an electric scooter and that just makes so much sense because you’re going to be out and about all day. So just having an electric scooter made it really easy. For her to just enjoy, enjoy the group. And I will never forget just seeing how the group connected with each other and supported each other and the beauty of being in a cross disability environment.
You know, our disability is we need different things. We don’t want to like conflict with each other. So my answer has always been now like flexibility. How can you give people options in general? So, I would say embrace it, you’re not going to get anything perfect the first time you try, you’re never going to achieve perfect accessibility because here I am, an accessibility expert, always learning from the community and learning from feedback, and you just have to be open to that.
The travel industry has a long way to go in terms of creating spaces that are truly inclusive and welcoming for people with disabilities.
Catarina Rivera
Lessons Learned from Catarina Rivera’s Story
[00:24:25] Beth: An enormous thank you to Catarina Rivera for sharing her stories and her insights with us. You are truly a trailblazer, and I can’t wait to continue following your journey. As we wrap, let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the key takeaways from our conversation with Catarina.
1. Accept yourself and the needs of others around you
Travel, at its core, is about discovery. Not just of new places, but about who you are. When you step into unfamiliar environments, you’re often confronted with your own insecurities, biases, and limitations. That’s why embracing yourself and accepting every part of your identity is crucial for meaningful travel experiences to maximize.
It allows you to show up fully without feeling the need to hide or apologize for who you are. When you travel with a sense of self acceptance, you’re able to engage with new cultures, people, and experiences from a place of authenticity. Travel can be transformative, but that transformation often starts from the inside.
2. Advocating for accessibility and inclusion in travel
Being an advocate for accessibility and inclusion starts with just listening and learning. It’s about being aware of the barriers that others face, even if they aren’t immediately visible to you. Start by educating yourself. Talk to people with disabilities, read their stories, and understand the systemic issues that create exclusion.
Once you’re informed, take action in your own spaces. Ask questions like, “is this event, business, or space truly accessible? How can we make it more welcoming for everyone?” Use your voice to challenge outdated systems, promote inclusive practices, and encourage others to think about accessibility in every decision they make.
The key is to approach it with intention and empathy, knowing that every small step toward inclusion brings us closer to a world where everyone belongs.
3. Content creation and representation
When you’re scrolling through Instagram or watching travel shows, the images and stories you encounter set the tone for who’s included and whose experiences or values.
That’s the whole reason why 85 Percent exists. It’s so important for diverse voices to be part of the conversation. For too long, travel content has focused on a really narrow view, often excluding people of color, those with disabilities, or Anyone who doesn’t fit the traditional mold of the explorer.
But the truth is travel is for everyone. When we create content that reflects real lived experiences from all kinds of travelers, we broaden the idea of who can take part in those adventures. Representation and travel content helps people to see themselves exploring the world. Whether that means traveling solo, seeking out accessible destinations, or finding community in places that might not always feel so welcoming.
The stories we tell matter. They can break down barriers, challenge stereotypes, and inspire others to see what’s possible. When we ensure that diverse voices and experiences are part of the travel narrative, we make the world a more inclusive, connected, and inspiring place for everyone.
Learn More About Catarina Rivera
If you’d like to learn more about Catarina and her incredible work, you can find her on her website, CatarinaRivera.com, or on Instagram under @BlindishLatina. Be sure to check out our show notes where we’ll have all of her links.
Our Community WanderStory
And now for my favorite part, our community wander stories. Each episode, I’m sharing a story from you, one of our listeners. This one comes from Margie Jordan of JordanExecutiveTravel.com about the sensory experience she had visiting the Taj Mahal for the first time and experiencing more than what she could get in a stock photo. Here it is.
Margie: So I took a trip to India. I was very excited because I was going to get to see the Taj Mahal. I had wanted to see it for such a long time. And here was my chance. So, I’m in India for a few days, and the next morning we were going for an early morning tour to see the Taj Mahal.
We were gonna see it at sunrise. So we get there, it’s dark, the women line up in one line, the men line up in another, and we wait. There were a few stray dogs out there and we just waited. As we got closer, we got into an area where they take your tickets and they kind of check your bags, you know, to make sure you don’t have anything you’re not supposed to bring in.
But when it came time to actually go into the area where the Taj Mahal is, there are these double doors. And as those doors open, I got my first glimpse of the Taj Mahal at sunrise. I want to say it was breathtaking, but to be honest, it looked like every other stock photo I had seen, so, shout out to all the stock photography out there.
But, as I walked closer and got up on the marble platform, you could see the precious and semi-precious stones that were laid into the marble. And as the sun was rising, it just glistened, it glistened. I walked around and I just rubbed my hands along the wall and I was in amazement. I found a little place to sit and just take it all in.
It was the best experience ever. I highly recommend going to India. We are [00:30:00] actually promoting a trip to Morocco. Another one of my favorite destinations. If you want to know more about it, visit me at jordanexecutivetravel.com. Thank you.
Our Next Episode features Alexa West
Beth: On the next episode of 85 Percent, I’m talking to Alexa West, the founder and CEO of The Solo Girls Travel Guide and author of the One Way Ticket Plan: Find and Fund Your Purpose While Traveling the World.
She’s a multiple bestselling and award-winning travel author who teaches women how to travel alone. But living overseas in Bulgaria taught her a lot about herself that she had yet to know.
Alexa West: It was like five days a week, three hours a day of learning Bulgarian in a classroom, and then going home and living with a Bulgarian family and using Bulgarian.
It was such an intense experience, but because I was 21, I was just, you know, I didn’t have routines and things I needed. It was just so easy being young, being thrown into a village and being like, okay, this is my life now.
Beth: Thank you so much for listening to 85 Percent. Make sure if you want to follow along this journey, you hit that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts 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, 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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