I have spent more than 25 years building travel companies and exploring how travel can create meaningful change for travelers, communities, and the natural world.

Today, I advise hospitality, tourism, conservation, wellness, and destination leaders on transformative experience strategy, regenerative development, stewardship, and long-term value creation.

MY STORY

I began as an entrepreneur in adventure and sustainable travel, drawn to the wild places of the American West and to the people who help others experience them. I founded EverGreen Escapes as a luxury inbound tour operator connecting travelers with national parks, local communities, and nature. That work taught me how much an experience depends on the details, relationships, guides, operational systems, and sense of place behind it.

It also showed me that the greatest potential of travel goes beyond where people go or what they do. Travel can interrupt familiar patterns, open new perspectives, deepen relationships, and change how people return to their lives. But those outcomes cannot be promised or manufactured. They require intention, preparation, skilled facilitation, reflection, integration, and respect for the traveler’s own agency.

In 2016, Michael Bennett and I co-founded the Transformational Travel Council. Together with a growing network of educators, researchers, practitioners, and industry leaders, we helped turn transformational travel from an emerging idea into a professional practice, learning community, and commercial field.

Since then, I have worked across experience design, guiding, luxury travel, eco-camps, retreats, destination stewardship, community development, professional education, and regenerative tourism. My work has included projects and partnerships across the United States and around the world.

I now serve as a strategic thought partner to leaders building what comes next. I help them define the outcomes they seek, see around corners, understand how the pieces connect, and translate purpose into experiences, teams, operations, measurement, and long-term value.

BUILDING THE FIELD

Transformational travel has deep roots in pilgrimage, adventure, education, cultural exchange, wellness, and the enduring human experience of being changed by a journey. Scholars including Yvette Reisinger, Suzy Ross, Graham Lean, and others established important academic foundations. B. Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore articulated the economic progression from experiences to transformations.

My contribution has been entrepreneurial and applied. I was among the earliest industry leaders to commercialize and professionalize transformational travel as a distinct practice, translating research and ideas into travel businesses, traveler tools, professional education, consulting frameworks, destination initiatives, and a global community of practitioners.

That work continues through the Transformational Travel Council and the Transformational Travel Institute, with a growing focus on research, standards, impact measurement, equitable access, and the role travel can play in advancing wellbeing, peace, and stewardship.

HOW I SEE THE WORK

Experiences shape what people remember, value, and care for. The strongest experiences create value for the traveler, the team, the organization, the community, and the place at the same time.

This is the foundation of my work and of the Experience Impact approach: what happens within a traveler is connected to what happens among people, within organizations, and across the living systems of a place.

SELECTED EXPERIENCE

• Founder, EverGreen Escapes

• Co-founder and CEO, Transformational Travel Council

• Founder and President, Transformational Travel Institute

• Co-founder and strategic advisor, Explorer X

• Co-founder, ROAM Beyond Eco Camps

• Advisor to travel, hospitality, conservation, and destination leaders

• Contributor, Routledge Handbook on Regenerative Tourism and Hospitality

• Member, International Society of Hospitality Consultants

• Member, The Explorers Club

• 2016 Puget Sound Business Journal 40 Under 40

PERSONAL

I am an Oregon boy based in Seattle, a partner, and a dad to two remarkable young people. Nature, family, friendship, walking, pilgrimage, and time in wild places continually bring me back to what matters.

I believe travel is at its best when it helps us become more present, more connected, and more willing to care for one another and the living world.