About Me
Growing up in Toronto’s east end immersed me in a variety of cultures from a young age. When I think about my first tastes of travel, I can still feel the excitement and anticipation of those early morning airport waits as my family and I got ready to head off to Florida or Mexico. My sights were set on teaching as a career until the age of 16 when I had the opportunity to embark on a World War II based history trip through Western Europe with my high school. My first time out of North America truly sparked the travel bug within. This realization would soon change the direction of my life path.
When I graduated high school, I decided to put university on the backburner as I saved for a gap year trip. I embarked on a tour through the UK and Ireland where I met other young travellers from around the globe, many of whom were Aussies. Ten days backpacking through Italy followed the tour and six months later, I was off again. This time, I set out on a year-long working holiday in Australia.
That year changed my life forever. I often say it felt like I was living out the best movie ever at that time in my life. While it was not without the highs and lows and hard life lessons for a 19 year old, it taught me more than I ever could have learned sitting for hours on end in a lecture hall.
I continued to defer my acceptance to the University of Toronto’s Psycholinguistics program and it soon occurred to me that I wanted to pursue this love of globetrotting as a career. I squeezed in one more adventure, a trip to Peru, before studying for a diploma in Tourism and Travel Services Management.
After some practical work experience interning for a local boutique travel company and training with American Express Global Business Travel, I decided to launch Your Travel Analyst.