On October 18, 2011, we will be hosting our second annual nationwide event in 17 cities to inspire people to fulfill their career break and long-term travel dreams – and you can get your tickets now!
The event will offer attendees the opportunity to MEET inspirational speakers and like-minded travelers; get motivation, contacts and resources necessary to PLAN the trip of a lifetime; and start taking concrete steps forward to GO on that global adventure.
“Because we live in a society that doesn’t find value in taking time off, we wanted to create a community for people who do want to break out of the norm and travel for an extended period of time,” says co-founder Sherry Ott.
Casual local meetups are also being held in the time leading up to the October event. “It’s about creating a peer group of people with the same dream. Whether it’s a career break, running a marathon, or earning an advanced degree; we all need people to keep us accountable, energized, and focused on our goals,” added Ott.
Every event will feature individuals who have either fulfilled their own world travel dreams or are currently in the planning stages. In addition to offering tools and resources for planning a career break, they will also address the main concerns that prevent people from taking a career break, usually centered around financial, career-related, societal, and safety concerns.
Over 2,400 people registered for last year’s inaugural event – 23% of which were in a trip planning stage pre-event. In a post-event survey, that number rose to 41%. [see “Attendees Who Said Go!“]
“We want career breaks to be more acceptable in North America,” says co-founder Michaela Potter. “In fact, we would love to see a career break on every resume. And with the support of our 17 inspiring hosts, their panelists, and our sponsors, including Intrepid Travel, we are making great inroads to achieving that goal.”
Katy attended last year’s event. “I was amazed at all of the people that have already done this and it was so helpful to see that this idea I had to leave my job and travel was not a crazy idea.” Katy has since joined their ranks, having experienced her own six-month career break.
“Over the past 6 months on this amazing journey I have seen so many amazing places, had unforgettable experiences and made friends from all over the world. I was once quiet, shy and afraid to fly but now I have taken off and have come back a whole new person – bolder, more confident, more independent.”
This year’s Meet, Plan, Go! locations include 10 returning cities and 7 new ones:
Tim and Robin were directors in corporate America who decided they wanted to get off the rollercoaster and take a break. They planned and budgeted for two years before quitting their jobs and taking five months to travel and volunteer in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Before their break, they had traveled to at least 30 other countries, mostly using vacation days.
Keith Savage spent nearly eight years as a writer at a high-tech electronic medical health software company before trading it in for a shot at his passions: travel and writing. Though married and saddled with a mortgage, Keith and his wife Sarah refused to give up his professional happiness and plotted a course to make a new lifestyle work. After more than a year of strict budgets and hardcore saving, Keith was ready to take the plunge.
Polly Letofsky traveled across 4 continents and over 14,000 – by foot – to become the first woman to walk around the world. As an awareness campaign for breast cancer, strangers welcomed her into their homes. But it was never an easy road. Polly struggled with earthquakes, muggings, languages, even religious riots. The ultimate challenge came in the middle of her journey when September 11 flung us all into a crossroads in world history.
In 2010, Diana Edelman decided she needed a change. She was no longer satisfied with her career in public relations, she had always dreamed of traveling the world so, on March 7, 2010, that is exactly what she did. Diana put her belongings in storage, drove her car back to Maryland and parked it in her parent’s drive, strapped her backpack on, and headed over to Europe and Africa. For seven months, she backpacked solo, writing about her adventures on her blog.
When Julie DuRose quit her teaching gig at The Ohio State University to travel the world for a year, she let her appetite guide her. She shucked oysters at the Russian River; picked cranberries in the Arctic; tried stingray in Malaysia; ate jellyfish in Singapore (that was revenge); popped oven-roasted tarantulas in Cambodia, and ate fruit she’d never heard of – jackfruit, salak, rambutan, and the sexiest of all, the delicate mangosteen. All of it surprised her, as did the hospitality of her fellow humans. From Carmel to Anchorage to Kona, HI, throughout New Zealand, India, and S.E. Asia, she never imagined how many folks would be part of her extended travels – not to mention her life thereafter.
Spencer is a traveling writer and blogger, originally from North Carolina and outfitted with a fierce Southern drawl, who currently calls San Francisco home. While he has traveled around the world, Europe is his first love, a love that is sustained back home by micro brews, fish and chips, soccer and golf. Spencer took a more non-traditional approach to his career break, choosing to use writing to support himself while traveling, instead of saving money to travel. This allowed him to travel indefinitely, spending most of his time road-tripping across the U.S. and living and traveling in Central America. When he arrived somewhere he didn’t want to leave, San Francisco, he decided to settle down until the road calls again.
Journalist Chris Gray Faust is no stranger to career breaks. In 1991, she delayed her job search so she could bartend in London, explore literary haunts in the British Isles, and backpack around Europe. Then in 1998, she took a year-long break from the New Orleans Times-Picayune to give graduate school a try. And now Chris is a weekly columnist for Frommers.com, and is working on an e-book with Wiley Publishing on how to use social media when planning a trip. She’s also a contributor to CruiseCritic, the former travel editor of USA TODAY, and editor/publisher of her own website, Chris Around The World. She won a Lowell Thomas travel writing award in 2010.
While contemplating a cross-country move, Megan Seper discovered the blog of a couple on a round-the-world trip and immediately realized that traveling and not working sounded like much more fun than working and not traveling. Once her husband, Adam, was on board with the plan, they set to work planning and saving for a year-long trip that ultimately took them to 89 cities in 11 countries.
Nancy has a distinguished career in national security, leadership, and human capital, primarily in the government and non-profit sectors. She is a founding partner of Reboot Partners LLC, which conducts individual and corporate workshops and consults with corporations on Reboot Breaks. The four Reboot Partners principals authored the book Reboot Your Life: Energize Your Career and Life by Taking a Break on the whole process and benefit of taking sabbaticals. (April 2011, Beaufort Books).
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