I grew up on the outskirts of New Orleans, where the bayou meets the river and childhood unfolds on backroads. My early life was spent in motion—crossing America in a converted yellow school bus, a wood-paneled station wagon, an orange-and-white Econoline, and eventually the Astro minivan, that great icon of the modern family.
My first true memory is of King Tut. I was small, breathless from running up the stone steps of the New Orleans Museum of Art, when I looked up and met the golden face that stopped the world in 1922. That moment unlocked something in me. I spent years poring over the exhibition book, dreaming of Egypt, devouring every story about pharaohs, explorers, and the long, impossible search for the source of the Nile. By twelve I was deep into Livingston, Stanley, Speke—my own private age of exploration.
History, adventure, and the romance of far horizons have pulled me across continents ever since, from Egypt to East Africa to the ice of Antarctica.
I have an unabashed love for polar history, nautical lore, and old-world navigation. I can lose hours in a discussion about the Harrison clocks, will happily detour anyone onto a historic ship, and once argued with a guide in Egypt about the current tally of solar boats buried alongside the pyramids. My greatest unrealized nautical goal is to visit The Fram in Norway. How it’s eluded me this long is a mystery!
In my early twenties, an overheard conversation in a bar landed me a job in the film industry, and I spent the next two decades honing the art of logistics, improvisation, and “making the impossible happen”—skills I now bring to travel design.
I collect wine, mix a proper martini, read constantly (sometimes while watching classic films), and never say no to champagne. I was also, once upon a time, the Louisiana Sweet Potato queen—so yes, I can tell you everything about yams, tiaras, and the crucial difference between a sweet potato and a yam. Thanksgiving is my season.
Travel has been the great through-line of my life—from the childhood school bus, to traversing my home state as a beauty queen, to the present moment—and it remains the lens through which I see the world: curious, wide-eyed, and always ready for the next horizon, or the lost one.
