I caught the travel bug early.

I was the kid who always wanted to be somewhere else. I spent hours reading about UNESCO World Heritage sites and made obsessive lists of the best places to see around the world. I read old copies of National Geographic at the hair salon and daydreamed my way through random guidebooks and atlases.

So when I flew to London with a touring children’s choir, my 12-year-old brain nearly exploded. Before we even dropped off our bags, we drove (on the “wrong” side of the street, mind you) to a concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square.

The parish felt old and grand. Onstage, kids were dropping like flies from jet lag and the stuffy summer air, but I stood wide-eyed, taking it all in. It was the first time I felt reverence.

And there was so much more to see. I gawked at the Tower of London’s ravens, slowly circled the Eye, tried rice pudding. A security guard at St. Paul’s Cathedral barked at me for sitting, and a choirmate named Paul spat sugar at me over a cuppa.

I was spellbound. It all felt positively Hogwartian.

Unsurprisingly, that little dreamer has never left me. Suddenly, the world felt wide open, and I have been chasing that feeling ever since. I’ve now traveled to 24 countries across four continents, and the list, gratefully, keeps growing.

But as magical as travel can be, I worry more and more about its effects on the people and places we visit. Overcrowding, habitation destruction, pollution, overloaded infrastructure, increased costs of living. We as individual travelers can't control the systems that fuel these problems, but we can take intentional steps to limit our impact. We can make choices that prioritize care over convenience.

Through my work, I’m exploring what it means to travel thoughtfully. I want to tell stories that matter and help people move through the world with care. I hope my work invites people to ask questions. I hope it sparks curiosity. And I hope it inspires your next adventure.

Thank you for being here. Wishing you safe travels!