In Honor of Women's History Month: Travel as a Catalyst for Change

In honor of Women's History Month, I have been interviewing women who are leading the way in creative travel -- back road, off-the-map and Slow Adventures. The best part of seeking out women to interview is that I haven't had to look very far to find inspired women traveling the world, breaking ground, and feeding our sense of adventure. After some great conversations, I devote this blog to honoring one of the women that I encountered this month.

As a leader in travel and conservation, Susan Hannah is one of those women who, you get the feeling, has always been at the front of the trail. In graduate school she studied with the legendary Margaret Mead and since then she has worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society, CARE USA, and the Intrepid Museum Foundation where she has spearheaded programs across the globe. Travel, undoubtedly, is among the catalysts for the work that she does. While addressing a global health initiative in a speech entitled Impatient Optimist, Bill and Melinda Gates got close to the heart of it. They said, "one of the big reasons for inequities is that the people who see the worst of it don't have the resources to defeat it. And the people who have the resources don't often see the worst of it." Like many of us in the field, Hannah looks to tourism as way to personify that "it," to connect resources and perspectives, and to reach in from both sides and hopefully meet somewhere in the middle. As she describes, Sustainable Tourism, at its best, "provides hard currency, jobs, and connects people to really understand the needs of a community."

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