Luxury Ambassador of the Month

“My parents are avid sailors, so I was very fortunate to grow up sailing as a child. We’d go to France or the Channel Islands on the weekends and roam about as we pleased. My dad is a computer scientist and my mom is an accountant, so on paper they should be quite ‘geeky,’ but the truth is that my mother is a free spirit who loves to travel and immerse herself in cultures around the world.

I was 14 years old when I first stepped foot on a plane. My mom was taking my sister and I to Carnival in Brazil. That was an eye-opening experience where I ‘caught the travel bug,’ and my passion for it evolved organically, and wildly – my teenage years were full of curiosity and adventure. To me the world was just such a big place and the more I experienced it, the deeper in love I fell with discovery.

For example, at 16 a friend and I spent a month backpacking across China. At 18 after finishing high school in 2006 I booked a one-way ticket to Nairobi. Little did I know that purchasing a car from a one-armed taxi driver in Kenya would lead to three and a half years on the road, splitting the time between working and traveling – mostly through Africa, APAC, Australia, and New Zealand.

On the surface it might’ve seemed aimless, but my experiences eventually became the cumulative building blocks of my career as a travel designer and agency owner.

For instance, while I was exploring Australia in 2007 I worked at a ski shop in Melbourne, specializing in high-end, branded ski wear, and I found myself intrigued by the buying process of these goods. Growing up I’d been on a number of snowboarding trips to Canada, which not only cemented my adoration for exploration, but also provided me the experience I needed to be a ski tour coordinator (and itinerary builder) for U.S. clients once I returned to the UK.

I was fascinated about contracts and procurement, and was beginning to think more seriously about the direction I wanted to take. In 2012 I landed a job at American Express and trained extensively in their Travel & Lifestyle division. That was an intense introduction to luxury – the various products, processes, Sabre…but I found the creativity and autonomy to be infectious.

In 2013 I was promoted to Centurion, which really took my imagination, problem solving skills, and the quality of my contacts to the next level.

I loved it. The creativity and international diversity of that environment was amazing – even if I was trying to find a spoon that didn’t bend for a client. Two of my proudest achievements were sourcing the Bond watch that Daniel Craig wore in Quantum of Solace, and developing a new program from concept to fruition called Crafted Journeys, which comprised tailor made itineraries. It was 2015, and that year the department saw a 2000% spike in revenue that was directly attributable to that initiative.

But fortunes are fickle sometimes, and I found myself unhappy with my role after things at the department were taken in a new direction. It was time to move on and I worked a number of various roles until early 2018, when I was totally burned out and suddenly, I collapsed at work one day. It wasn’t just stress – I didn’t stand up for about four months after that, and the rest of that year I endured pretty much every treatment for what was eventually diagnosed as an autoimmune disease in late 2018.

With support from family and from the British charity Oceans of Hope, I gradually began to regain my strength back on the family sailboat. I spent five months on the water, which is where Wanderlux LTD was born.

Sailing off the coast of Sicily a vision began to come together, and I realized having my own travel agency was a logical culmination of my experiences.

Over the course of that year I regained strength just as Wanderlux gained momentum as a business. Friends, family, even old clients came to support me as industry partners in early 2019. By the end of that year I’d done a fam trip to Bhutan and a quarter million GBP in sales despite my diagnosis.

Covid was of course a special challenge, especially since I'd just become a mom, but it also helped me prioritize what was best for both me and the company.

I started being more realistic about managing my own health and the business. I introduced a minimum spend strategy, and leveraged my contacts to be an enabler of my clients’ dreams.

And it's been working quite well. In 2021 I organized my biggest booking ever – the first post-Covid Antarctic expedition onboard the MY Legend, accompanied by an astronaut and a Greenpeace ambassador to chase the last Antarctic total solar eclipse for 400 years.

Earlier this year I arranged a father-son trip to the most remote place on Earth – a first-ever, Guiness world record holding expedition to Point Nemo in the middle of the Pacific, which garnered significant international media attention.

Now, just this month, I've launched Wanderlux Retreats – four trips for 2025 (and one's already sold out), all geared towards health and wellbeing.

By partnering with organizations like the Scientific Explorers Society, as well as being a founding member of others such as The Conscious Travel Foundation and the Travel Sisterhood, I've been able to put more focus on connecting to culture, on education, on advocacy, and on philanthropy.

That makes my itineraries as meaningful as they are powerful for my clients, and I’m proud that Wanderlux can shed light on the challenges of our world to inspire curiosity and to motivate action.

As a result, Wanderlux's success has allowed me to give back by raising over £100,000 GBP for Oceans of Hope UK, which helped me so much back in 2018 and for which I've been a trustee since 2020.”