Episode 153 - Dawn Booker, Pack Light Global
Traveling without extra baggage can mean more than leaving that fifth pair of shoes in your closet. It means leaving behind the person, identity, and story of yourself you feel you’re supposed to be, giving yourself the space to enjoy yourself, be welcomed, and be loved.
In this episode of Soul of Travel, Season 5: Women's Wisdom + Mindful Travel, presented by @journeywoman_original, Christine hosts a soulful conversation with Dawn Booker, founder of Pack Light Global Itineraries.
A Space of Connection
Many of the women who travel with Dawn “have hyphenated lives,” she shares. “They are active in their communities. They have ascended to levels in their career that require very much of their time and their identity, and when they travel with Pack Light, it is our perspective that you shed those encumbrances, you shed those identities, and you come and go on vacation.”
Women who travel with Pack Light have the nourishing experience of being seen, appreciated, and cared for.
On the podcast, Dawn shares of her trip(s) to France that would pave the way for her venture with Pack Light.
In 2003, she applied for and received her passport for the first time with her daughter and mother and headed to Paris for a six-week experience. Dawn’s intention for the trip was to consider the second half of her life; spending four weeks in Nice and two weeks in Paris, she treasures the travel journal where she wrote down her intention to live and work in France.
When her brother passed away when she was 44, she prepared for the next big milestone: age 45 and the next phase of life. Picking up that same journal rekindled her intention to travel, and she began to explore the world, starting where it had all begun for her: Paris.
Travel and Identity
Dawn shares her experience traveling as an African American woman and her new understanding of her evolving identity as an American woman after interacting with more and more people around the world.
When she founded Pack Light, Dawn thought she was creating a simple travel company that would bring people around the world. On an early trip to Bali, she recognized the emotional response of her travelers—and this experience repeated over and over again.
When she led a 19-room yacht cruise in Croatia, the story of what Pack Light would become began to come together in earnest.
She heard, again and again, that women continue to have the experience that our perceived identities are more important than who we are.
One of Dawn’s foundational values at Pack Light is that travelers do not introduce themselves based on what they do but introduce themselves with a prompt, a moment of gratitude, or something that creates a feeling of equity, not hierarchy.
To travel fearless means to travel prepared with knowledge, understanding, and appreciation, leaving all your fears at home.
Equity and Business
Dawn has worked to integrate sound business practices while maintaining a high level of integrity when it comes to creating equity and positively impactful travel experiences, both for travelers and for host communities.
She negotiates from a place of knowing her value as a high-spend travel company bringing larger groups, creating the expectation of shared value with tour operators.
Diversity for Dawn is an economic opportunity, not a simple social initiative. Christine shares the “buzz words” surrounding travel and how they have fallen in and out of favor, while responsible travel has the opportunity at this moment to create a tremendous social and economic impact.
Travel Values
Dawn shares that her travel values include equity, economic impact, and respect. Tune in to hear how deeply these values resonate with her travelers and the impact she and her travelers are making on their own lives and in the lives of others.
“Packing light isn’t about your luggage. It’s about your baggage. And just like in life, what you have to bring, you have to carry.”
Soul of Travel Episode 153 At a Glance
In this conversation, Christine and Dawn discuss:
How knowing leads to confidence
What “Packing Light” truly means
How travel can help us get to know ourselves beyond the labels we create–and those created for us
Travel marketing and the gap that exists when Black women are not included in the marketing and storytelling of travel
Travel values and their importance in helping us guide and shape our experiences
Join Christine now for this soulful conversation with Dawn Booker.
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Related UN Sustainable Development Goals
Sustainable Development Goal #3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Sustainable Development Goal #5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Resources & Links Mentioned in the Episode
Visit Pack Light Global for more information.
Follow Pack Light Global on Instagram or Facebook.
Get your copy of Atomic Habits at your local bookstore.
About the Soul Of Travel Podcast
Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of people making a positive impact in the tourism industry. In each episode, you’ll hear the stories of women who are industry professionals, seasoned travelers, and community leaders. Our expert guests represent social impact organizations, adventure-based community organizations, travel photography and videography, and entrepreneurs who know that travel is an opportunity for personal awareness and a vehicle for global change.
Join us to become a more educated and intentional traveler as you learn about new destinations, sustainable and regenerative travel, and community-based tourism. Industry professionals and those curious about a career in travel will also find value and purpose in our conversations.
We are thought leaders, action-takers, and heart-centered change-makers who inspire and create community. Join host Christine Winebrenner Irick for these soulful conversations with our global community of travelers exploring the heart, the mind, and the globe.
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Credits. Christine Winebrenner Irick (Host, creator, editor). Esme Benjamin (Guest). Original music by Clark Adams. Editing, production, and content writing by Carly Oduardo.
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WE WON A BESSIE AWARD! The Bessie Awards recognize the achievements of women and gender-diverse people making an impact in the travel industry. To view the complete list of 2022’s winners, visit bessieawards.org.
Soul of Travel Episode 153 Transcript
Women’s travel, transformational travel, sustainable travel, women leaders in travel, social entrepreneurship
Christine: Welcome to the Soul of Travel podcast. I'm Christine Winebrenner-Irick, the founder of Lotus Sojourns, a book lover Yogi mom of three girls and your guide On this journey, we are here to discover why women who are seasoned travelers, industry professionals, and global community leaders fall in love with the people and places of this planet. Join me to explore how travel has inspired our guests to change the world. We seek to understand the driving force, unending curiosity and wanderlust that can best be described as the soul of Travel. Soul of Travel Podcast is a proud member of the Journey, woman Family, where we work to create powerful forums for women to share their wisdom and inspire meaningful change in travel. In each Soulful conversation, you'll hear compelling travel stories alongside tales of what it takes to bring our creative vision to life as we're living life with purpose, chasing dreams and building businesses to make the world a better place. But the real treasure here is the story of the journey as we reflect on who we were, who we are, and who we're becoming. We are travelers, thought leaders and heart-centered changemakers, and this is the Soul of Travel.
Dawn Booker founded Pac-Lite global Itineraries with the mission to inspire women to travel the world fearlessly and joyfully grounded in reverence for sustainable and equitable travel. Dawn facilitates shared experiences and creates lifelong memories with the women who choose her thoughtfully curated cultural adventures. Dawn believes to travel fearlessly means to be an informed traveler. Knowing leads to confidence and the best way to confidently travel and demystify a new location is through research to Pac-Lite means to be free from the encumbrances that hold women back from experiences that will bring them joy and lead to freedom. In our conversation, Dawn and I discuss what it really means to Pac-lite and how travel could help us to get to know ourselves beyond the labels we have created or have been created for us. We talk about her career in marketing and the gap she sees where women and especially black women are not included in the marketing and storytelling of travel experiences.
Christine: We also talk about travel values, why they're important to us, and how we can use them to shape and guide travel choices. Join me now for my soulful conversation with Dawn Booker.
Welcome to Soul of Travel podcast. I'm so excited today to be joined by Don Booker. She is a global marketing and communications professional and the founder of Pack Light Global Itineraries and many of our multi passionate guests. She also wears several hats which we're going to explore, but some of those include adjunct professor and visiting lecturer. And in just a moment, I'm going to turn that over to you to tell us a little bit more about yourself, but I just wanted to let our listeners know that we've met here in the virtual world multiple times. So I'm so excited for us to be having a little one-on-one time today. We both are a part of the Journey Women Community as part of the editorial staff, and then also have been a part of the Women's Work program and have really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit there, but I'm very excited to dive deeper today. So welcome to the podcast on
Dawn: Christine. Thank you so much. I just again, want to start with the spirit of gratitude and excitement and anticipation about this conversation. I also am looking forward to chatting with you. So again, my name is Don Booker and I founded Pack Like Global Itineraries and Pack like Global is an experiential travel company that was created to encourage and inspire black women over 40 to see the world and to do so fearlessly. I wanted to create global spaces of freedom and joy for women, especially at this stage of life. Very often we think 40 is kind of the beginning of a downward slope and for me and for my life, the second half of my life has been the most enriching. It's been the most gratifying and fulfilling because I didn't allow myself to stop dreaming. I didn't allow myself to stop thinking about ways in which I could see and serve the world.
And so like global has become that vehicle for me. But also as you mentioned, I'm also an adjunct professor and lecturer and I teach at a historically black college for women, and I've done so about 11 years. It's been a part of my decision to serve a community that I belong to. And Pack like global was also started for that very same reason. So I guess that's the substance of what Pack like global is. But from the perspective of what I hear from the people that travel with me, it's really a space. It's a space of connection. It's a space of freedom and joy and many of the women that travel with me have hyphenated lives. They are very active in their communities.
They have ascended to levels in their career that require very much of their time and their identity. And when they travel with Pack Light, it is our perspective that you shed those encumbrances, you shed those identities, and you come and go on vacation. It is very much about vacation. It's not networking, it's not about making professional connections, although that may happen, we really encourage women to just enjoy themselves and experience luxury as we view luxury, which for Pack light luxury is truly around being taken care of and being acknowledged and seen and appreciated. The places that we travel,
Christine: I love so many of the things that you kind of tucked into that description, but I especially love that definition of luxury because that does feel really luxurious. I think that is a luxury we is often missing in our lives is feeling welcome, belonging, feeling seen, feeling deep connection. That would actually be the most luxurious experience for me outside of perfect beds or pillows or views. Like that to me would be unnourishing luxury. So I love that description that you just shared. I know that you mentioned that your mission is really to inspire women to prioritize themselves and let go of any guilt they might have and give themselves permission to really get out there and discover all of those things you just mentioned. And I know that light was born out of your own experience and a trip that you had to France. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about why this was such an important part of your journey.
Dawn: So what's very interesting is it's actually two trips to France. So my first trip to France was in 2003. I had not had a passport at that time. I had traveled in the Caribbean and had been to Canada, but at that time I did not have a passport. So my daughter and my mom all got our passports at the same time. I went to France for six weeks. At the time I was working independently. I had stepped away from my marketing career a little and had a lot of time to kind of think about what I wanted the second half of my life to be like or that half. At the time, I think I was in my late thirties and I took my daughter and my mom and my mother was a fashion designer. So she, or is I should say she would get angry if I said was.
So my mom is a fashion designer and always wanted to go to Paris. And when I began to research just how much that would cost, what I could do in France that would be beyond just vacation. So I spent four weeks in Nice in a French immersion program. And then my, at the time, 12 year or 13 year old daughter and my mom flew over and we spent two weeks together in Paris. And I received, before I took that trip, I received a travel journal and the first page of that travel journal is me landing. It's my vision, what I see when I'm landing over the Mediterranean in Nice. And that was a little over 20 years ago and I just finished the last page of that travel journal. But in that journal, at some point I wrote when my daughter Simone is in college, I'm going to live here and I'm going to work here.
And 10 years later when my daughter was in college, she was away at college in Florida. And sadly my brother had passed in his forties and I was in my mid forties. And so I thought about what can I do with this next part of my life? What matters to me? And so my daughter had come home from college and I was participating in actually a triathlon that summer because we literally, it was my forty-fifth birthday and my brother passed at forty-four. And so I wanted to do something great for my forty-fifth birthday. And so the night before my daughter asked me, so mom, what are you going to do next? And I had this crumbled up piece of paper from the American University of Paris that I had printed out. And I said, the last time I really felt wonderful, the last time I really felt joy, the way that I wanted to feel joy was the six weeks that I spent in France.
And so I showed it to her and I thought because she was in school that she would say, it's not the right time. But she encouraged me to go for it. My parents encouraged me to go for it. So I moved at 46, I moved to Paris for two years. I sold my car, rented out my house and moved to Paris. And during that trip or that time in Paris, I explored the world as a student. I learned about as a master's student, I received a master's in global communications. I learned about theory and delved much deeper into ideas of representation. It had always mattered to me, but I'm a learner and an educator at my heart. And so when I began to think about my own experience in Paris as a black woman living there and how I often felt invisible by myself and it wasn't this perfect lovely experience.
I love Paris. I go every year sometimes more than once. But I also know that as an African-American woman, I often felt invisible when I traveled, especially by myself, I felt like I wish there were more people either with me or in these spaces. As I traveled around the world from a base of Paris, I often got a lot of questions about why I was there. I had people ask me was college free since I was in Paris or did my company pay for it? But there were all these kind of micro questions that made me feel uncomfortable and felt, made me feel as if I was doing something that I was not expected to do either because of my age or because of my identity as a black woman. But I just knew that as much as I love to travel, that did not feel comfortable to me.
But I do have to say the time I spent at the American University of Paris was transformative. My classmates were amazing. They elected me to speak at graduation, so I had an opportunity to let them know what my experience meant. They invited me to all their parties. It was amazing. And I stayed connected. And now as you mentioned, I am a lecturer in the same program that I received my master's degree. And I've been doing that for about six years now. And so France, I always say to people, it's magical for me, beautiful, lovely things happen for me when I'm in France, but it also is a space where I'm reminded of differences and differences that to me are not important and are not the fullness of my identity. But I do love Paris. I do love France. And I think that that first trip that I took with my mother and my daughter, it meant so much to me for so many reasons. And so later through Pack Light, I planned a Mother-daughter trip and we did the exact same route. So the same trip we went to Nice and we had lunch at the Eiffel Tower and all the things that my mom and my daughter love so much. We had about four or five groups of mothers, and I think it was more like we had 12 women. So it was just a lovely, lovely opportunity to relive what attracted me to Paris in the first place.
Christine: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I think we were talking about the magic of first experiences, and I think no matter how they go, it's this first time that you see yourself as a traveler, which is a really reflective experience. Like you said, there was all these things that maybe you wouldn't have noticed about your own personal experience if you were still doing the things you had been doing in your routine life. And if you hadn't gone somewhere and just begin to see how you see the world and see how the world sees you, that's such a powerful experience and that you were really open and witnessing. That is a great thing to hear because I think sometimes we have to be a little more intentional about our travel experiences before we start having that level of awareness. But I do also believe that travel really tries to present this with that level of exploration. I think it's so much more than the travel itself. It's really about who you are when you travel and how you engage with the world and how you start to see how you fit into it. Absolutely. I love that you shared all of those moments as you were talking about that first experience for you.
Dawn: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just say one more small thing. Well, it's small, but it's big that my time in Paris also allowed me to understand just my identity as an American woman. I mean very often as African-American black women, we don't feel like we have the same access to that American identity that is afforded others in this same country. We have this hyphen that we have to have and others don't. They can choose to have. And so when I travel and when I lived in Paris, I realized that my identity, a lot of the ways that I see the world that I show up in the world are really relative to being an American. And so it has allowed me to embrace that identity as something that I'm not only proud of, but because of our history and our as Americans, our resilience and our ability to keep going regardless of how we ended up in this country or what still are the issues here.
And so it's an identity that I embrace. I'm clear. So even when I'm in Africa, I'm clear that my identity is American and would hope that the people that travel with light are ambassadors for both African-American women, but also for Americans as well. And so that's an important value for us as we travel. And it's something that I would not have said when I first began traveling, but the more I interacted with people from around the world, I realized I do have a lot of the qualities of my fellow Americans that has evolved over the years.
Christine: Yeah, thank you again for sharing that reflection as well. We have talked a little bit about labels and recognizing who we are and how that shapes how we do move into the world and how we move through our lives. And on your website, you mentioned that a lot of your customers are women who are at career crossroads, who are retired empty nesters, happily married, blissfully single, all of these different labels that we give ourselves or are given to us. But when you travel, you really encourage them to leave those labels at home. And I know this is something that I talk about a lot on the podcast, it's actually one of my very favorite things about travel is that I have this moment often when I step off the plane and the only thing that leaves the plane is christine.
Dawn: I love that love,
Christine: Love, not the person who forgot to send the email for the parent teacher organization, not all these other things. Something about who I am is most alive in that space, but it's when I can most connect to that part of myself. So I would love for you to talk a little bit about that conversation around those labels, why you think it's important for your clients to leave them at home and how that shapes their travel experiences and then also when they come back into their lives with awareness later.
Dawn: I think that's my favorite part of Pack Light. So I initially thought I was starting a pure travel company. I thought that I had found a niche, as you had mentioned in my introduction, I spent my career in marketing. And so what I began realizing, not just so when we had our first trip in Bali on the last night, many of the women were extremely emotional to the point where I was trying to understand what was going on, what's happening here. And then it happened again. Then it's actually happened on every single trip. And so what I have, so in Croatia, we had chartered a yacht for 30 women, a nineteen-room yacht, and it was just one of the most amazing experiences that I've had in travel as well. And not because it was Croatia, not because it was the yacht. I mean that was a part of it.
And our yacht was owned by a woman who flew in because she was so excited that this group of women was going to be using chartering her yacht. And I had a reporter come in and she interviewed many of the women on the cruise, and I expected to hear about luxury or about the beauty of the island hopping in Croatia, but that's not what I heard. I heard from one of my travelers about how she had been taking care of both of their parents and they passed in the same year. I talked about, a woman talked about how she had never really gone on vacation where she wasn't responsible for every single thing that took place on that vacation. I had another woman with a very high-level professional job that says she finds herself in so many spaces where there are no black women, where she's not able to connect and find sisterhood and where her identity is more important than who she is as a woman.
And so one of the ways, and so for me that was so enlightening and so beautiful, and what's weird is I didn't listen to the videos until a few months later and was blown away by they weren't. I thought, well, these are going to be nice testimonial compliments. And it was the opposite. It actually gave me all this information about why these women were feeling the way they did and what this travel meant to them as black women to be extended luxury, to be extended equity, private experiences where there is no necessity to explain or qualify your identity or the things that sometimes make global spaces inhospitable for us. And so when we get to a place, the first thing we do is we introduce ourselves, but one of my foundational values is that you don't introduce yourself by saying what you do. I usually have a prompt question.
I usually have a question around something that you're grateful for or something that you want to acknowledge in your life. But we're very clear that when we go on this vacation, it's an equitable space. We've had teachers, we've had nurses, we've had people with very high level jobs, we've had a minister, doctors, all sorts of folks, but we don't want to create that hierarchy. And so you're leaving that identity at home, you're leaving that behind. And so the trademarked tagline for Pack Light is to travel fearless and pack light and to travel. Fearless is to travel with knowledge, with understanding, to be prepared to have information about the local economy, the history, the language, the currency to understand. Because I've traveled so much, I very often take groups to places that I've been and where I have connections. So some of the fear or anxiety that comes from planning your own trip, you can leave all of that at home.
So you sign up and you show up. And then as far as the packing light, what I always say to the women who travel with me is that it's not about your luggage, it's about your baggage and just in life what you bring you have to carry. And so if you bring, I had someone bring several trunks, we laughed, but she was going somewhere else after our trip, and it was just so funny. She said, I get it. I know this is pack light, but I'm going somewhere for two months. And so that's why I have all these things. But typically we're all very conscious about how much we bring because just like in life, if you think you aren't enough, if you think you don't have enough, then you tend to overpack. You tend to bring things that are not necessary for you to be happy or for you to have a wonderful time.
And so the pack light is really about leaving those encumbrances as home at home, but also some of the physical things that we think we need because we're just a group of women on vacation and you don't need much. And so I'm not a carry-on traveler. I have not mastered that. I did on a trip to Vienna last week, but I ended up checking it anyway, even though it was just a carry-on bag. So I'm not encouraging women to not have the things that make you feel happy and comfortable on your vacation, but I'm also saying, if you bring it, you must manage it. To me, that's a metaphor in so many ways. I think it makes women think about, I often hear women say on the third day, oh, I think I should call home. I wonder if my husband did. I give him the information very often. And it's like I said, it's like around the third day. It's rarely the first night. The first night, everybody's having a great time. It's rarely the first night. It's right around midweek and sometimes later that women are saying, okay, maybe I should call my kids or maybe I should let folks know. But we try to make it very clear that this is vacation, this is self-care, this is connection, this is a sisterhood, and I want it to feel like a place where you can let your braids down and just be not worry about anything. And I hope to be creating that type of space.
Christine: So beautiful. And I think what's so interesting is when I first began following you and saw your website and saw Paclight, my brain of course went to, oh, she maybe has a blog about how to pack better for a trip. And then really quickly I realized that wasn't what Paclight meant, and that's when I realized the depth to those words and that it was about not what you're taking, but what you're leaving behind. Oh, yeah, lovely.
Dawn: All
Christine: That allows you to be immersed in the experience and peel off those layers and maybe literally like you said, peeling off makeup or whatever. It allows you to be more fully present as you and the experience. And as you were talking, I was thinking about packing and being like, okay, am I putting this in for me or am I putting this in for what someone expects me to be that's really good
Dawn: Glasses
Christine: Or a dress or jewelry or something. We're so used to kind of having these performative layers as well, and we take them when we travel. And I even think travel sometimes brings you into it even more. Like, oh, if I'm going to be in Paris, of course I'm going to be like the parisian version of me in Paris who doesn't even exist, and you're not going to get it right and you're going to have the wrong shoes anyway because you don't
Dawn: Always have the wrong shoes.
Christine: So I just was thinking how freeing is that actually to maybe have that conversation and how much that's going to open you up to the experience that you are already creating, just to have that conversation in something as simple as packing and examining what your intention is by adding that burden to your bag. This is such a beautiful metaphor. I think I'm going to have to go back and listen to our conversation later, so many things in here, but I really, really love that, and it's such a tangible, easy way for people to begin to understand the space that you're creating. Hey, it's Christine. I'm popping in for just a minute to share a bit more about my presenting partner for the podcast Journey Woman. I'm so happy to have joined the Journey Woman Family over the summer and to be working together to create a powerful forum for sharing the voices and stories of women.
Founded in 19 ninety-four Journey Woman is the world's first solo female travel publication and one of the most popular and trusted online women's travel brands in the world. Early in my career, I remember hearing about Journey Woman and thinking that the founder, the late Evelyn, was incredible to be stepping up and supporting women's travel around the world. Reflecting back that may have been one of the early seeds planted, making me realize I wanted to and actually could focus on travel for women and support gender equity and tourism. A few years ago, I was at the Women in Travel Summit created by wonderful quick shout out to my friend.
I was at wit because the Soul of Travel podcast was nominated for a Bessie award in the wonderful category for a brand that had gone above and beyond to support women. Over the past year, I was so nervous about my nomination and possible acceptance speech that I didn't realize that one of the women on my must meet list was sitting right across from me at my table. When Carolyn Ray, the current editor and CEO of Journey woman, got up to give the Journey Woman Award, which recognizes a long-term commitment to working in and making the travel industry better, I couldn't believe she was right there. As she returned to her seat, they began naming the nominees in my category. I nodded to her quickly and returned to imagining myself tripping up the chairs in my infrequently worn high heels or breaking into tears with my voice cracking if my name was actually called.
I was so lost in the imaginary moment, I had to be brought back by my dear friend and podcast editor, Carly Eduardo. She was saying, you did it. You won Christine. They just said your name. In the frenzy that followed, I missed Carolyn. And in case you were wondering, I did not fall or cry and only had a moment when I had to regain my composure. Luckily, another seed was planted, and when I asked Carolyn to join me as a guest on the podcast, she quickly agreed that conversation and immediate connection set our partnership in motion. I am so excited to see what we can do together. In 2024, journey Woman will celebrate 30 years of community honor Evelyn Hannon, and find even more ways to encourage and support women's travel to support women owned businesses. Journey women will continue to grow the world's largest women's travel directory with hundreds of women friendly tours, retreats, guides, and accommodations. Carolyn also recently launched a women's speakers bureau, which includes some of my guests nor a Living Stone, Lola, akin Muddy Nikki, Padilla Rivera, Casey Hanisco, and Don Booker to name just a few. I truly believe we rise together, and I know that Carolyn, the Journey Woman team and I are committed to creating positive change and accelerating inclusion and diversity and travel. Thank you for taking a moment to listen to me share about our connection. Now let's hop back over to our soulful conversation.
And the other things that you mentioned that really resonated for me were this second half of life. You're really speaking to women over 40, and then you said something about how this made you feel. And I think we spend so much time worrying about how other people are feeling, how we're creating this space for them, and to just ask this question of how do I want to feel in this second half of my life? Not who do I want to be, not what title I want to have, but how do I want to feel? So I really love that. And I wanted to ask if you might share a little bit more about,
Dawn: Well, I am. I mean, I have to be kind of honest in this moment. Tomorrow would be my brother's birthday, and it was just three of us, my sister and brother and I. And so we had plans. My brother died in an accident, so we saw his desk. We saw that he had just got business cards printed. We saw that there was a life unlived, and I had an aunt that passed at 39 with breast cancer, my mom's youngest sister. And so those were just hugely impactful to me. Both of those experiences were hugely impactful because I understood that my life is a gift. It's a privilege. I was encouraged. It was funny. My dad was the last person I told that I was moving to Paris. My business side came from my dad. Well, he was the last person I told not knowing that my mother had told months ahead.
And so when I told him, he was very clear about how proud he was about, my dad would say things like, when you get home, you're going to be able to write your own ticket. So unfortunately though, when I came home, what other people saw first was not what I saw or felt. First. What they saw was a woman years old who had been living in Paris for two years. And so there was a break in my career, which my job before I went to Paris was a vice president of Marketing for Economic Development Agency. And I came home and found that the world didn't embrace me the way that I thought they would. I thought there would be all these opportunities in global development, and I would apply for things and realize that somebody would get it right after in their twenties or right after doing a peace Corps stint or something like that.
And so I wondered if others my age were feeling, and I had someone say to me, you should be supporting your daughter's dreams, which I do and always have, but I didn't feel good about out kind of being let out to the pastures to be everybody else's kind of cheerleader. I wanted to be that for my own life, but for my friends and people that I knew still had so many things that they wanted to do. And I remember when I spoke at graduation in Paris and when I finished the parents, because I talked about, there's a quote from Maya Angelou about living your dreams and wouldn't take nothing for my journey now. And the parents rushed me and they were all crying. It was the parents that said their children are in Paris because it was always their dream. And I just didn't think I was modeling for my daughter something that I wanted her to emulate if I decided that, okay, I'm 40, it's your turn.
I didn't do that. And so she travels with me on almost every trip she has taken over portions of the business on site that are so beautiful and helpful. I encourage other women to bring their daughters. That's where there's an exception on the 40 and over because for women in their thirties, and they're typically in their late twenties or thirties when they come with us with their mom, for them to see this experience centered around their mother, centered around her joy, centered around her identity as someone over 40. So we are always intentional about having kind of trap doors in our day. So if you're tired, you don't have to feel like you're the one slowing down the group. I will always have a way out.
I have rheumatoid arthritis, which means that even though I don't look and I don't appear or present that, that's a physical limitation. It is. And so I work out all that stuff. I'm fine. But if I have an issue with Ra, then I need to go sit down somewhere. And I don't want women to have to feel, because you are literally naturally aging. You're still alive, you're still here. You're still able to contribute and to create and to dream. I don't want them to start feeling like, okay, because I've maybe gained weight or because my knees, I've had people that have come on my trips after knee replacements and right before knee replacements, and I just want to be creative. Like I said, it's more than just kind of a girl's trip. It feels like it's different than that. It's a space that honors exactly who we are, and it's nuanced with our identities as black women because I do think that having a majority experience matters.
And that is why I teach at an hbcu. That is why my life is diverse. I have all sorts of friends, I've always have, but this is meaningful for me to not have to code switch, to not have to be something different than who I truly am. And it feels liberating, and I hope that that is what's happening for the women that travel with me. But some of them are empty nesters and they realize their husband is not going on that dream trip. And so they're going anyway. Some of them are really, really high level professionals that just want to minute where they don't have to be that, where they literally can show up and have fun and people don't know what they do for a living. So there's not this space where they still have to maintain that identity on vacation. And so it really means it feels like purpose.
And so I always laugh with my daughter when I'm feeling because I'm also an entrepreneur, which has actually really been very difficult and a huge learning curve for me. But my mind has always been entrepreneurial. But what I've said so often lately is that you can't quit purpose. It's impossible to quit purpose. I'm sure you may have found that in the path that you've taken with the way that you celebrate women and our stories and to travel as a multi-dimensional component of our life, that it's purpose. And you can't really quit. You can try to quit. You can create some balance. But yeah, it's purpose. And I used to pray and cry to try to figure out what my purpose was. I knew what my skills were. I knew what I was good at. I knew how I had been educated, but I didn't know what my purpose was. And so through this, I'm privileged to spend this time with women at this time, and then also to be able to do something that for me represents purpose.
Christine: So beautiful Dawn, I love that. And deep in my bones feel the sentiment of you can't quit purpose and it's a gift, but it is also sometimes a heavy weight because it can still be, even though you might feel more connected to your purpose, it doesn't always mean that the answer is still clear. And so now you feel like just what you have to do, but you're still not quite sure how you're doing it. And I think many purpose-driven leaders and entrepreneurs, this question always was just find your purpose. And then you're like, that's the golden ticket. And everything from there will be easy. It's like, no, before I was seeking and I didn't feel the weight of my purpose. And now,
Dawn: And you could walk away, right? Like, that's not my purpose. That's just a job. So it's actually, I've been noticing though, through Carolyn at Journey Woman and just other women my age that it's a movement. It's not just my group or my idea, it's a movement. It's a space or it's a time in history or a time in our existence that women, especially women over a certain age are trying to not recapture our youth, but to literally embrace who we are and the things that we've learned and the way that we want this next part of our life to be. And I'm actually grateful that I came through life at this time because I do think it's a movement. I don't see myself as the only person in this space, and I didn't see the work that I was doing to just meet a market niche, although there is a lot of money being left on the table because black women over 40 are not a target in the travel industry.
They are not seen in marketing materials or commercials or even travel narratives and travel writing. And so I was at tour Radars event last week, and I talked about inclusion and equity in the tourism space as an economic conversation. It is not a conversation about the right thing to do. I mean, we all don't always do the right thing, and it's harder to do the right thing if it might mean that you lose money. But in the case of equity and extending your understanding of who travels and your idea of what a high value customer is, that doesn't cost you anything to extend that idea and to market a via or market to a viable, ready, curious client that could potentially allow your business to grow. So to me, that's an economic decision. It's money left on the table. My trips are not cheap, but they typically are full.
And I've not had anyone say to me that they feel like they've overpaid or that the value didn't align with what they paid. And so if more travel companies would think about how to be more inclusive, and it's not about price, it's not about things like that, money is not why you don't see as many black women in some of these travel groups or other travel experiences. We want to be in a hospitable, welcoming space. And so that takes a little more effort, but it also can reap dividends like the brands that we've worked with that have really treated us humongously well and not, again, because my background is in marketing, because I worked on major customer meetings and events, I know the value of my customer. And so when I talk to a brand, I'm not saying, well, can I get a discount? I'm saying, this is the average spend of one of my customers. They use the spa, they go to the bar each night when they come home. If you have a gift shop, they're going to converge on it and buy the high ticket things. They're not buying the candy bars, they're looking at the jewelry.
If you have a concierge that is selling excursions or other opportunities, there's all sorts of ways in which I know my clients, my customers and me as the planner are contributing to the revenue of the place that we're staying. And so I negotiate from that perspective, but not from the perspective of we're women of color and we expect to have a discount so that we can come to your property. No, we are going to represent a third of your rooms for the two nights that were there. And so we would like our rates to reflect our value to you for the three nights that were on your property. And so that's what others do in the same space. And so we have the same expectation.
Christine: Yeah. Oh my goodness. Again, I wish I could go back and rewind so that I could ask about a million follow-up questions to everything that you just shared. So I will be doing that afterward for sure. And luckily I can email you to follow up, but I want to go back and try and see if I can get it right. But one of the very first things you said is looking at diversity as an economic opportunity and not just a social initiative. And I think that's so incredibly powerful because I think in the industry we've been talking about, first it was maybe volunteer tourism, responsible tourism, sustainable tourism, and now it seems like Dei kind of is like this next thing that has getting lumped into this social responsibility bucket adjacent to tourism, which I don't agree with any of that being true, but I can see that that has happened.
And it also always is, we also can't do this because just because it does good doesn't mean it's economically beneficial. And I really just love that clear line that you drew, that you're actually just shooting yourself in the foot by not being inclusive. And the other thing you were talking about marketing and who we're seeing, who we're selling travel to and who is traveling and that disconnect. And I think it's so huge, whether you're talking about black women over 40, or whether you're just talking about women over 40, or you're talking about people who are not able-bodied, who have, there's so much that we're missing in terms of who we're marketing to, who is traveling and who feels not included in the travel experience. And I was so aware of this after another interview talking about walking through a travel event and picking up brochures and saying, who do you see on the covers of all of those brochures?
And at one point it was me, but it's not me anymore on the covers of those brochures. But for sure it was not you. And I just had that moment where I thought I hadn't had that experience in that way before it took until I was in my late forties to have that awareness where it resonated with me. But then I was like, oh my gosh, this is a missed opportunity and a disgrace on so many levels. And something that I felt really disappointed in our industry for not really tackling head-on much earlier than this. And so that was kind of a rant and a ramble. But
Dawn: No, that was beautifully said. That was beautifully, beautifully said. Because like you said, sometimes these business practices, I don't call Dei, EI, it's a business practice. They're only thought of to be relevant to the group that is impacted. And as the group that is impacted gets larger and larger, like you said, it's not just black women, it's women over 40, it's women over 50. It's differently abled. It's differently sized. There's just so many ways in which if you decide that this is who travels luxury and this is who deserves to travel luxury, and this is who can afford to travel luxury, once you make those preconceived decisions, you've just lost money just in that moment.
Christine: Wow. I feel like that was just so incredibly powerful, and I really want to be able to dig into that deeper. So I'm going to put a sticky note on that for follow up and for more conversation. But before we end, I think all through this, and maybe even just in this last moment, we've really been alluding to travel values. And I think that that's something that's really important to both you and I, both as planners of travel, as people trying to create influence in the industry and as people guiding travelers. I would like to understand a little bit about why that is important to you, how you use your travel values to gauge the experiences that you participate in and those that you create, and then also how that might come up in conversation with your own travelers.
Dawn: That's a lovely question. For me, it's equity. It's really important because I've been in spaces where I've felt more than, and I've been in spaces where I felt less than, and actually neither space was comfortable. So equity is very important to me as far as the local and indigenous people. I'm interested in economic impact. So we actually do not do volunteerism at all. We feel like if I'm using a local transportation company, if I'm using a local dmc, if I'm using a Dmc MC, so in Tanzania, we use a tanzanian company in Ghana in December, we use a Ghanaian company. So my values, our values at Pakalight are really around a respect for and a clear understanding of our ability to economically impact the communities in which we visit Absolutely respect, respect for one another. But also I'm very clear that because some people have a different definition of luxury.
And so in our very first meeting, I distinguish between opulence and luxury, and that opulence is what you see. It's this expectation that people are going to serve you all day long. But being in a luxury space for Pakalight is just really being taken care of and being in a space where you feel welcome. And we've had so many experiences that have felt that way for us, so many more than, I mean, one or two that have not, but maybe just one really, because we've just been, we bring a spirit of joy and happiness and connection, and where we bring just a lightness that allows us to again, be our full selves, but also to be in a space where people see us. And the colorful, if you've seen our website, the colorful photo shoots that we do. So I initially said that Pakalight was for women of color because it was a play on the words.
It's actually created for black women. But in every city, we do these very public, very colorful photo shoots. And the people remember that they saw us recently when I was launching my Twenty-Twenty-Four trips. I did a poll, I have a Google, excuse me, I have a Facebook group, and I did a poll and very many wanted to go to Greece. They wanted to do a similar island hopping trip in Greece. Well, at the very same time that I had sent out that poll they were having, there were multiple instances of immigrants that had perished in the waters in and around Greek islands. And once I put Greece there, and I said that Greece was one of the places that we were, was high on our list, one of my travelers said, why would we as black women choose to be in a space that is having has all the people who have perished in the waters?
And immediately I removed it from consideration, and then I expressed, and we made Greece. I just, I've been to Greece. I'm not, it's nothing against traveling in Greece, but as black and brown women for us to know. And it was literally the week of the major, which was not perfect, good timing for me, but it made me feel proud that the women that travel with me understand my values. And then I wrote a pretty long post about why, but it was on the poll. It ranked the very highest as a destination folks wanted to do for twenty-twenty-four. But I was very clear that it did not align with our values, and we couldn't feel comfortable and confident conducting an island-hopping tour and those waters at that time. So that was an example of when it was kind of spoken back to me, what I have been very clear that my values are around local indigenous people, brown people. Because very often when we travel, we're being treated with privilege, with great privilege by people who look just like us. And so I think it's important for us to be stewards of this privilege in a way that we are remembering and we are extending kindness, generosity, not pity, not subordinate, not creating a subordinate type experience, but really creating allyship and creating opportunities to learn about local and indigenous people as opposed to treating them the way that many other travelers do as servants and not service.
Christine: Again, just thank you so much. The way that you continue to share your values and express all of the things that you've shared. It's really speaking so true to my heart and to the way that I hope people can engage with travel. So I really, really appreciate everything that you've shared with us. And this conversation has flown by. So I cannot believe we've already been here for our full time together. But quickly, two things. I have a few rapid fire questions to end our
Dawn: Oh, good. I was hoping I would get the rapid fire. I was scared that we didn't have time. Good.
Christine: Do it. And just before that, I know you mentioned twenty-twenty-four, but if you wanted to share just a few of the places you are headed for listeners, if they're interested in traveling with you, where will they be able to go?
Dawn: Absolutely. So in May we'll be in Bali and Singapore in July, late June and July, we'll be in Portugal, in Lisbon, and in Madeira. In October we will be in Thailand, and then between late December and the 1st of January of twenty-five, we'll be in Senegal.
Christine: Excellent. Well, thank you so much again for everything you've shared. Let's jump into the rapid fire questions. The first one is, what are you reading right now?
Dawn: Oh, a couple of things. So I'm reading Atomic Habits, like everybody. I just finished Mariah Carey's autobiography, which was so much fun. She actually sings in it. So yeah, those are the two books that have, I'm an audible girl, so those are, and then I'm reading a book. A friend of mine wrote a travel fiction book. She's a professor and wrote this lovely book called How Not To Save the World, and it's about a woman who, her mom was the head of a global ngo. She passed and the daughter had to take over, couldn't figure it out financially. So she became a global jewel and art thief, and she's a black woman, and it's an amazing book. So it's called How Not To Save the World.
Christine: I love it. I love that you have multiple books and multiple genres. I typically am the same, and I also love to have an audible book around me on my phone, on all my devices, so I can always be immersed at some point. What is always in your suitcase or backpack when you travel? I should have asked what isn't in your case, but
Dawn: Oh my gosh, no, I'm not there yet. I carry what I can bring, but my suitcase could always be half the size of what it is. I'm down to a middle-sized suitcase or medium-sized suitcase and a small my world, but it could be half of that. So I always have some tea. I usually have tea. You're going to laugh, but I always have Vicks because on a plane my ears get really bad. So I always have Vicks. I always have tea. What else do I always have? Oh, I always have an HDMI cord so that I can watch TV for. To me, that brings me home. I travel a lot by myself, and so having a way to just watch TV and from my laptop, it makes me happy. So those are things that I always put in my bag.
Christine: The HDMI cord has never been mentioned, and that's very clever.
Dawn: Always I have to watch something from, because I've traveled so many places. We're not a single channel is in English, and I just want to watch a movie or I just want to kind of unwind. And now between that and my vpn, I can watch, I turn on Hulu or Netflix and watch a movie and feel comfortable
Christine: To Sojourn is to travel somewhere as if you live there for a short while. Where is some place that you would still love to sojourn?
Dawn: I was there for Christmas on Christmas Day, and then I had a group join me, and then I stayed an extra four days and I could have stayed an extra six months. I absolutely loved Tanzania before I went to Tanzania, I would've said South Africa, but yeah, Tanzania very much so.
Christine: I haven't been yet, but would love to go as well. So what is something you eat that immediately connects you to a place you've been?
Dawn: I think that charcuterie before it became kind of everybody's everything. That used to be something that always took me back to Paris. Rooibos Tea takes me to South Africa for sure. So yeah, those are the two. Rooibos. Tea is something that I love and I make a latte. They have the red lattes everywhere when you're in South Africa, and so that's something that I like.
Christine: Thank you. Who was a person that inspired or encouraged you to set out and explore the world?
Dawn: I have to say, my parents. I have to say, we went on vacation every single year when we were children. It didn't, my dad worked for the federal government. I don't know how many weeks vacation he had, but every year we went to Wildwood, New Jersey, it took us 13 hours. I found out later that it was not that far. I mean, we would spend the night on the way, but yeah, I think that my parents, my mom has always wanted to go to Paris, and so that was something that was in my mind when I took that first trip. My dad was stationed in Berlin and traveled all over Europe, played for a Berlin football team. So we always had pictures of him. And he passed a few months ago, and we found pictures of him coming out of a train station in London. And so there, I think that it always felt possible. It never felt impossible. Travel felt like that was what we did in July every summer, no matter what was happening in our lives. And we continued to do that until my dad got really sick. So we did family vacations always. And so travel was a value in our family. And so it never felt like something that you did only when you had saved for six months or two years. We didn't travel just felt natural. It felt like movement, like breathing.
Christine: Oh, again, I love all the things that you just said there. If you could take an adventure with one person, fictional or real, alive or past, who would it be?
Dawn: I would've loved for my sister and brother and I to have with our kids. We never had that chance, but I would've loved for all three of us to go to Egypt together and to sail the nile. And I did that. I had to go to Egypt actually the day after my dad's funeral. And when I was there, all I was thinking was, wow, my family would love this trip. They would've loved this trip. So yeah, I would've loved to have a vacation with my brother and my sister and our families and to have that happen. So it didn't, I mean, we traveled, but just locally, but I would've loved to have taken a global trip together.
Christine: Yeah. I love how much travel is for sharing with you. Yes, it's, I think that probably really grows to the spaces that you create, and I love that sentiment. It's
Dawn: An expression of love for me. That's what it is, and that's how I see it, and that's what is the foundation in the trips that I create. It really is. It's an expression of love.
Christine: Thank you. Well, the last question, soul of Travel is for honoring and recognizing women in the travel industry. Who is one woman that you admire and would like to recognize in this space?
Dawn: I think travel writer, faith Adelaide, and I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly. And then also another travel non-binary, Bonnie, Amore. They write about inclusive spaces and beyond just race, but also about ability and gender and all of that. And so both of them have made me think about global identities and travel as black women. And I think that travel writing is more than just entertainment. I think it's an account, I think it's history, and I think that travel writers ensure that black women are people that are not mainstream in this country or others are included in that account. And so I admire both of them for that reason.
Christine: Thank you again, but if this conversation were a book, there's sticky notes and highlighters all over the place with notes in the margin. Thank you so much for this beautiful conversation. I appreciate so much our time together and everything that you shared with us today.
Dawn: Thank you, Christine. It's been my pleasure and I want to thank you for what you are doing. I've been so excited to have this conversation since you asked me quite a while ago. And the fact that you see just all the dimensions of travel and its connection to our souls, it's really beautiful, and I feel like if I were going to talk about what travel means to me in a space, I'm so glad it was this space and that you created something that made me feel comfortable talking about travel as it actually resonates with me and just as a business. So thank you so much.
Christine: Thank you. That's the soul of travel, so I appreciate you honoring that. Thank you so much.
Christine: Thank you for listening to Soul of Travel, presented by Journey Woman. I hope you enjoyed the journey. If you loved this conversation, I encourage you to subscribe and rate the podcast. Please share episodes that inspire you with others because this is how we extend the impact of this show. Learn more about each of my guests by reading our episode blogs, which are more than your average show notes. I think you'll love the connection. Find our episode blogs at www.souloftravelpodcast.com. I'm so proud of the way these conversations are bringing together people from around the world. If this sounds like your community, welcome, I'm so happy you are here. I am all about community and would love to connect. You can find me on Facebook at Soul of Travel podcast or follow me on Instagram, either at she.sojourns or at Soul of Travel podcast. Stay up to date by joining the Soul of Travel podcast mailing list. You'll also want to explore the Journey Woman community and its resources for women travelers over 50. I'd also like to share a quick thank you to my podcast producer and content magician, Carly Eduardo, CEO of Convergente. I look forward to getting to know you and hopefully hear your story.
You can find me on Facebook at Lotus Sojourns on Facebook, or join the Lotus Sojourns Collective, our FB community, or follow me on Instagram either @lotussojourns or @souloftravelpodcast. Stay up to date by joining the Lotus Sojourns mailing list. I look forward to getting to know you and hopefully hearing your story.