I am a two-time Lowell Thomas award-winning travel journalist who has danced on six continents. My writing and photography have appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Hidden Compass, Outside, AFAR, Los Angeles Times, Brides, CNN, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Yes!, Islands, Tiferet Journal, Via, Smart Set, Columbia Journal, Catamaran, Mutha magazine, inflight magazines and many more. I’ve been featured as a Hawaii travel expert for CNN’s On the Go series. My career earned its wings penning dozens of guidebooks about the backroads of Hawaii and California. I write a climate-solutions for busy parents newsletter, Our Feet on the Ground.

When not traveling, I teach writing classes at University of California, Santa Cruz and UCLA Extension Writer’s Program. My environmental-solutions-themed writing courses focus on the intersection of place and climate solutions. Over the years, my former students at California State University Monterey Bay, University of San Francisco, Foothill College, City College of San Francisco, Cañada College Cabrillo College, and at the tiny continuation high school in Los Angeles inspired in me a love for the hard and occasionally messy work of opening minds.

Above all my accolades as a writer, activist and teacher, I am most proud of my identity as a mother. My two sons, Kai and Nikko, remind me every day that making the world a better place is the only work worth pursuing.