Lucy Edwards
“Travel opens up my eyes,” says Lucy Edwards, the British activist, founder, and journalist who has been blind since she was 17. “When I first lost my eyesight, I thought there would be no point in traveling. But I think not being able to see the world allows me to create stronger connections with people when I meet them.” Stories like Edwards’s remain severely overlooked—and underserved—within the travel industry. And it’s this lack of representation that has fueled her career and taken her all over the world to report on the realities of traveling with a disability (from BBC documentaries highlighting accessibility initiatives in other countries, to videos streamed on her own YouTube channel). Recently, her award-winning work has connected her with monks in Japan and conservationists in Kenya, and given her a platform to discuss accessibility in front of large audiences. “I feel so emotional when I think about traveling, because I truly did not like my blindness before,” she admits. “But putting myself in situations where I feel so out of control and not within my comfort zone, like in Kenya or in Japan, has made me a better person. It’s because I lost my eyesight that I am able to go deeper—I can become totally immersed beyond the visual elements.” That immersion was captured on film in collaboration with Condé Nast Traveler late last year, when Edwards ventured to South Africa and experienced a safari for all the senses. “I think [blindness] gets rid of any presumptions or misconceptions. I can’t just glance at something and then make my mind up about it or judge a book by its cover. People have to show me things from their perspectives. Getting to make these connections with different people has allowed me to love myself more deeply.” —Olivia Morelli
Courtesy Tracee Ellis Ross
Tracee Ellis Ross
“Solo travel is not just an opportunity to see the world,” Tracee Ellis Ross says. “It’s an opportunity for me to be myself in the world.” With stints living in New York, Paris, and London, the actor and producer began globetrotting alongside her mother, Diana Ross, as a young child. But it was in her early 20s that she discovered traveling alone “gave me the courage to make space for myself, to honor myself, and to do so in places that aren’t home.” It’s a sense of freedom Ellis Ross wants other women to experience, which is why her new show, Solo Traveling With Tracee Ellis Ross, streaming on Roku later this year, is centered on solo exploration, complete with her own stories from the road and tips for viewers on how to do it themselves. (“If you don’t know if solo travel is for you, start by going to the movies or dinner by yourself,” she advises.) And because she’s traveling alone, she’s capturing her experiences alone too. “A lot of it was self-filmed on my phone,” Ellis Ross says. “You get to see me in my private moments really talking through what is going on in my mind. I hope that what is captured shows that it’s okay for a trip to not be perfect. Solo travel is full of glorious feelings of discovery and beauty, but [I also wanted to show] those moments of loneliness, discomfort, and awkwardness when doing wonderful things in an environment that you’re not used to.” Known for her playful wardrobe and maximalist dressing, there is, of course, plenty of fashion to look forward to in the show. “Wearing beautiful clothes in beautiful places is just something that really fills my cup and makes my heart sing,” she says. Because for Ellis Ross, anchoring travel in joy and self-expression is an essential act of self-care. “How to honor yourself is something that we, as women, particularly as Black women, are not necessarily trained to do or taught to do,” she says. “Learning how to discover delight and joy for yourself is revolutionary.” —Lale Arikoglu
Listen to the full interview on the Women Who Travel podcast:
Gina Fiorito/Courtesy Jennifer Holmgren
Jennifer Holmgren
Like a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin, Dr. Jennifer Holmgren spins straw into gold—only in her case, it’s garbage being reimagined as travel essentials like shoes and leggings and even airplane fuel. As a chemist and CEO of carbon-recycling company LanzaTech, Holmgren oversees a cutting-edge process that takes waste products—think pollution from factory smokestacks, landfill contents, agricultural residue—and turns the waste carbon into ethanol using a special type of bacteria. That ethanol then becomes polyester, EVA foam, and the gear you wear on your biggest adventures. LanzaTech’s fabrics aren’t niche, either: They can currently be found in technical jackets from REI, cozy fleeces from Craghoppers, yoga leggings from Athleta, and running shoes from On. Holmgren has dreamed of doing this kind of oh-wow science ever since she was a child in Baranquilla, Colombia, in the ’60s. “I was one of those kids who wanted to be an astronaut,” she says. “But I realized that what I loved was not space, necessarily, but solving problems—making a big change.” The next ground-shaking movement in her sights is greening up the heavy carbon impact of traditional planes with LanzaTech’s CirculAir fuel (produced with sister company LanzaJet), which reduces the fuel’s life-cycle emissions by 85% and is made from the same garbage-to-gold technology. Holmgren estimates CirculAir will be powering commercial jets in the next four years, and LanzaJet has already partnered with British Airways, All Nippon Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and Southwest Airlines. Moving around the world to connect with others shouldn’t implicitly mean leaving a massive carbon footprint—Holmgren’s work is shaping a future where this is possible. “I believe aviation is not a luxury,” says Holmgren, whose own favorite trip is an annual whale-watching sojourn to Kona, Hawaii. “It’s necessary. It brings people together, and when you actually meet someone from another culture, you understand that everybody’s the same. Travel is a great unifier.” —Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan