Women's Travel Fest

Freedom in Forgiveness 
As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, she began to travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road. Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives “wife lessons” from one of her captors, and risks a daring escape. Moved between a series of abandoned houses in the desert, she survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured. Vivid and suspenseful, hers is the searingly intimate story of an intrepid young woman and her search for compassion in the face of unimaginable adversity. A captivating, unforgettable speaker, Lindhout alights on the positive and leaves the audience with a fuller understanding of the freedom we can all experience when we choose to embrace compassion. What emerges is a celebration of resilience — a powerful portrait of the strength of the human spirit.

Find Your Purpose, Follow Your Path: Living Out Your Dreams
Kellee Edwards is the host of Travel Channel's Mysterious Islands and the co-host of The Trip, but just a few years ago, she was a Women's Travel Fest attendee aiming to get clear on her passions and make her dreams happen. In this empowering keynote, listen to the journey that led Kellee from adventure traveler to Travel Channel host, and get inspired to find your own true purpose and passion. 

Explorer, media personality, and journalist Oneika Raymond is the host of two Travel Channel digital series: “Big City, Little Budget” and “One Bag and You’re Out”. She also appears on television as the in-house travel expert for CTV Canada’s national news program “Your Morning”. A bona fide travel junkie, Oneika's adventures abroad have taken her to over 100 countries on 6 continents. Her most treasured travel experiences include bungee jumping over the Zambezi River, fishing for piranhas in the Amazon, and climbing active volcanoes in Guatemala, Ecuador, and Indonesia.

In this inspiring session, she'll tell us about her journey in starting a blog to ending up as a host on the Travel Channel. 

Learning how to pitch yourself and your work to brands is essential to getting to the next level in the travel industry (or in any industry, for that matter).  In this informative workshop, Kristen Sarah, who has worked with everyone from Toyota to Sony and Lonely Planet, will share her tips on her own journey to becoming one of the most influential women in travel, inspiring you to do the same.