Interview with Tonya and Ian of Travel’n On Radio Show
April 2nd, 2009 Posted in InterviewWelcome! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! =)
When we first moved down to California, we really didn’t know tonnes of people, and so I went to town joining groups and organizations. Through one of them, Women 2.0, I met Grace (who’s now also part of GeckoGo), and Grace met Tonya (who’s affiliated with Women 2.0). One thing led to another, we all got to talking, realized how much we had in common and decided we had to sit down for a chat.
So here’s our conversation with Tonya and Ian who are two lawyers that quit their jobs to follow their passion and pursue a career on travel. We’re excited to share their stories and experiences are below.
Pokin: So tell us about your background! How did you get started travelling?
Tonya: Growing up I traveled vicariously through an uncle who lived abroad as a senior executive with the Army/Airforce Exchange Service. He was based in London and married my aunt who was British. We loved to hear aunt Susan speak. I remember being on the playground at Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, MI with my younger sister practicing our British accents because it was different and we gained a lot of attention from the other kids on the playground. I decided as I little girl I was going to move to London and, indeed I did. I moved to San Diego for several years after high school and shortly after graduation I moved to London to pursue graduate studies. When I lived in London, I took the opportunity to travel all around Europe. I actually lived in Saint Petersburg for a summer before starting Grad work. Then after I moved back to Michigan and subsequently enrolled in law school, I did a summer of comparative law in Shanghai, China where I studied at East China University on Politics and Law. My main reason for studying abroad was to take advantage of multiple travel opportunities. The student visa allowed me to spend extended time and get great travel credentials. Travel’s always been one of my first loves.
Ian: I grew up in the East Coast in the Maryland / DC Baltimore area. As a kid, I lived in the kind of world that stretched from New York to see relatives down to North Carolina. My mom spent her life in North Carolina and never left the state until she was 18, so when I was young, she made up for that by taking me some significant trips. I went to Montreal when I was 5 to visit the Expo/World Fair shortly after the actual fair. And just spending that time in Montreal was eye opening. A few years after, I spent a week in Toronto. That was back in the 70s and it had a significant impact. I next spent time on the west coast in San Francisco before following up with a long trip in Hawaii in 1979. After that my life really started to change in terms of new opportunities that really helped shape me and who I was today. When I was 16, I moved to Ann Arbor Michigan where I caught the journalism bug that stayed with me. There I spent a few years doing radio before putting it aside for 20 years until Travel’n On. I next went to do law in Buffalo New York before going back to school and teaching law in Detroit. This helped shape my professional career. I joined Northwest Airlines in 1995, decided I’d definitely come back east, made my way to DC unexpectedly, found myself working in corporate law and litigation, decided I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in major law firms. After a while, I realized there was more to life than working and making money, and started exploring things that would make me happy. To make a long story short, after separating from the legal community, I went back to Baltimore and worked as an Assistant General Counsel, which is where I met Tonya. Lo and behold I met someone who had a passion for travel and wanted to know if I had a passport – which I had – and the rest is history.
Tonya: Let me share the story of how we met.
My first job after law school, was as a prosecutor. When I moved to the Washington, DC area I went to work on Capital Hill for a congressman who informed me of his plans to run for governor of Maryland. He recruited me to assist on his campaign and ran against Robert Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. I ended up meeting Ian’s cousin at a campaign event and we became fast friends and kept in touch. At the end of the campaign, as I was clearing out my business cards I found his card again, called him and decided to catch up. I then spent dinner ragging on men (I had just broken up with someone a few weeks before), when Ian’s cousin said “I have a great guy for you”, to which I said “whatever.” Then I found out he was a lawyer and it was like “Hell No”
I then found out that his home state was Michigan, to which I asked the crucial question – “Does this guy have a used passport?” (i.e., has this guy traveled outside of the boundaries of his state?)
Luckily Ian did and we met and the rest was really history.
Pokin: I like that.
Tonya: True story!
Pokin: It’s such a great precursor to what you ended up working on. So tell us more about Traveln’on and Bronze World Travel. How did you get started?
Tonya: We were travelling in San Francisco – it was a few months after we got married – probably about two months or so. We were both practicing law at the time. Ian was with a firm and I was a senior legal advisor at homeland security as a contractor.
We were both feeling disgruntled with the field of law and very disillusioned with its promises. Unbeknownst to us, we ended up meeting a women and her sister during cocktail hour. Her name was Vivian Van Lier (a pretty well renowned life coach). We were complaining –
Ian - Let’s be clear Tonya was doing most of the complaining 
.
Everyone laughs
Tonya: I wanted to know there was something more fulfilling out there and didn’t know what it was Vivian asked us a couple of the questions that she asks her clients – like “when you think back to your childhood, what makes you happy? What makes you happy now?” She encouraged us to consider these questions as we contemplated our next moves.
When we returned to our hotel room we started Ian started life coaching me and when he asked me to consider those questions—what makes me happy–two things came up – horses and travel. We talked about both of them. Well first of all, we had no money to buy a race pony. So let’s look at travel.
And that was the pivotal moment.
We created Bronze World Travel, and within the first month of opening it, we partnered with a top travel agency, designed a logo and was up and running. It happened all really quickly. From there I did a lot of networking – and realized that I had a childhood friend who was a producer at a NBC affiliate station. I reached out to her, pitched her about the show, and have appeared multiple times on both NBC and CBS. Then we were invited to do a cable cast on national television station, Retirement Living, which in turn caught the attention of a local radio station and the rest is history. The life lesson here is that it hasn’t been easy, it’s been an adventure that we don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but you’ve got to be happy in life and do what you live. Just go for it and not worry about how things will turn out. Just press forward. And that’s what we’ve done.
Eric: I certainly hear you on that. Now you’ve already talked about how travel has influenced your life – do you have any other specific experiences you wanted to share?
Tonya: The thing that touched me the most was living my dream – being able to see the Great Wall, Tiannamen Square. That and the people I’ve met along the way. In my travels to Russia or specific cities in China – these are people who have lessor means than we do, but they gave so much of themselves and gave it so graciously with no expectation of return. And when I travel I strive to do the same for local people. If I had to point to one travel experience it’s the generosity and graciousness of people that we’ve met.
Ian: I would say for me it was the early travel experiences to Montreal when I was 5. That was an eye opener. It got me out of seeing my own community from a very narrow perspective in terms of black people and white people, and just seeing a different world. Being in a rich multi-cultural city and seeing that – had a great influence. I also saw great architecture – the new city hall had opened in Toronto back in the 1970s – truly amazing stuff. That set the stage about my desire to learn more about and to see the world.
When I was in graduate school in 1995 I had the opportunity as part of international business class to spend two weeks in Paris. The great thing about that was that it took me to Europe for the first time and allowed me to put to use some of the French that had gone unused all those years. That was a great experience that just intensified my desire to see more of the world.
Fortunately since being married to Tonya I’ve been able to see a lot more. We’ve had some great trips – Costa Rica was very powerful for us – then a trip to South Africa in 2006 was an eye opener – a real life changing trip. All of these trips actually have had a hand in shaping the next steps for the next point in life.
Tonya: Kind of a hard question – what’s your favourite country – there are countries that really speak to your soul. Ian proposed to me in Toronto, we started life off together in Bermuda where we married surrounded by our family and a few close friends, and we honeymooned in South Africa. Every step of the way has involved travel unintentionally, and thinking about it now, travel is really one of our strong values.
Ian: Again, how travel prepends chapters that unfold later on in life. One example – in 1986 my mom and I took a trip to Vancouver. Along the way, we passed through Minneapolis. Years later I ended up moving there. I would have never considered it if I didn’t drive by, so it speaks to how travel can open up these frontiers.
Pokin: As Canadians, we approve of your choices of cities to visit. =)
Tonya: We love Canada – if only taxes weren’t so high and it wasn’t so cold!
Ian: Having lived in Buffalo, when I was there for law school and living in Michigan and being relatively close to Southwestern Ontario, I’d often travel through Canada on my way to Detroit. For what it’s worth, we have had some of our best trips in Canada.
Eric: This is something I remember my dad telling me when we were younger. Our most important decisions that we make are usually made while we are on a trip. He decided when he was 21 or 22 that he was going to go around the world – at the time it was still a fairly adventurous thing to do. Trips really help to clear your head and give you a lot more perspective on what you’re doing in life.
Ian: Absolutely, for us having lived in this pressure cooker environment – particularly for Tonya – getting outside of the beltway has been important. Some of the best thinking goes on when you liberate yourself from your immediate circumstances.
Tonya: It’s like the old cliché – you can’t see the forest through the trees. Getting out of the environment that is causing the stress – removing what is taking up your mindspace – travel provides that. We interviewed a great guy who wrote a book – Escape 101 that talks about taking an extended sabbatical. He talked about how easy it is to do – he and his family and the kids take year long sabbaticals. I ask what he does with the kids and he says he takes them with him, placing them in local schools wherever they are instead of homeschooling.
Eric: You mentioned that one of the goals of Travel’n On is to encourage cross-cultural understanding. How do you feel you can promote this?
Tonya: Well you know, I see travel as a way to eradicate racism. I think all of these isms are really based on misunderstandings. One of the things I learned early on is that we may speak different languages, have different tastes, but we’re really all one race – human – and we’re all the same.
I’ve travelled where I met the “ugly American” and that really bugs me. I was in China with a fellow law student from Seattle. The whole time we were there she complained about the food and only ate at KFC and McDonalds. I can understand if there are dietary concerns but to complain to the “cook” when you’re in their “home” is obnoxious. That’s my pet peeve – meeting people who take their culture with them, don’t immerse themselves to the local culture and expect the locals to change to their standards. Folks who are well traveled become ambassadors to the rest of the world.
Eric: You’ve also talked about being a global citizen. How does a person become a global citizen?
Tonya: I’m a global citizen. Global Citizens give back. Global Citizens show tolerance, love and understanding. I’m going to partake as an observer to see, to touch, to feel – to better sensitize ourselves to the world. That’s one of the important things we can do. It’s important to have a broader world view, to think global and act local. I look at how we can use the world – as a learning experience. Enjoy these teachable movements and use them to guide what we do in our daily lives back home.
Let me share a story – we interviewed Andrew Zimmerman who does bizarre foods from the Travel Channel. At one point he passed out freeze dried crickets and we were having them on air and he said “In some places, this is the only protein these guys have. Some people may think our tastes or interest in velveeta cheese is weird.” It was a sobering moment and it really dawned on us – this is a good reminder that we shouldn’t make fun or judge.
Eric: It reminds me of a book I read – Collapse. It talked about a settlement in Greenland that starved to death, and the whole time, they were surrounded by fish. Yet it never dawned on them to eat fish.
So what do you think are the most important things to know or do while travelling?
Ian: Definitely to keep an open mind and embrace the opportunity. Allow ourselves to shift our perspectives so we’re not burdened by things that hold us back. Also to capture the memories. Appreciate how blessed and rich life is when enhanced with travel. Capture as much as you can. I like photography because it allows you to look back and continue the thinking process we often go on when we travel.
Tonya: I would add respect the culture, respect the place where you are from a practical standpoint. Read a guidebook Take photographs – but be aware in some places and religions they may feel that you’re capturing their souls. Also though people need to be aware of their surroundings and not be reckless. Just exercise some common sense. There are some places around Washington that I wouldn’t go around at night. Likewise while travelling be careful of your surroundings as things do happen. Don’t stick out like a tourist.
I would also say focus on conservation – be smart green travelers. Pack light – it’s more environmentally friendly and there are lots of great local products out there.
Eric and Pokin : Thank you both for your time!
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