Attention travel-loving women around the world: you don’t want to miss these virtual events! Whether you’re a travel content creator or a globally-minded woman who loves meeting fellow travelers, these are for you. You belong at Wanderful.
Some of these events are only for Wanderful members, so be sure to join our global community! We also host events that are open to the public at a fee for non-members while members join all events for free. Connect with women all around the world, make new friends, build your travel savvy, and come join us!
Here are our top virtual events for travelers and creators in July 2021.
Wanderful’s July Rundown
- 7 July: Wanderful Women Wednesday: Our Cornerstone Travel Chat!
- 10 July: Conscious Traveler Reading Club: Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power, and the Paradox of Voluntourism (+ Special Presence from Author!)
- 13 July: Creating A Financial Foundation for Your Solo Business
- 14 July: Taste of Asia Cooking Experience
- 21 July: Eco Eats: How Food Relates to Sustainable Travel
- 22 July: Anti-Asian Racism’s Impact on Chinatown Tourism
Virtual Events for Travel Lovers
July 7: Wanderful Women Wednesday: Our Cornerstone Travel Chat
Free for Wanderful members, open to the public
Sisterhood, snacks, and socializing: Welcome to Wanderful Women Wednesdays!
Wanderful Women Wednesday is our signature monthly event, connecting our travel loving community together in cities around the world. We’ll host themed conversations over our shared love of travel and gain forever friendships in the process.
Each event will be hosted by a different director of one of our 50+ amazing Wanderful chapters who will pick a monthly conversation theme and ask questions so we can share our favorite travel stories.
This event is great for:
- Anyone who loves to travel
- Travel creators + small business owners
- Members of the travel industry
- And more!
Free for Wanderful Members!
Are you a member of Wanderful? All members get *free* access to this event and events in Wanderful chapters around the world, plus an exclusive online member community, monthly webinars and learning tools, and so much more. To learn more about being a member, click here. Prices start at only $9/month, so it already pays for itself from our Wanderful Women Wednesday events every month!
Our prize this month: We’re excited to offer a super fashionable DELSEY PICPUS messenger bag to one lucky winner at this month’s Wanderful Women Wednesday! Make sure you’re there live when we do the drawing!
This month’s hostess + theme: Join Wanderful’s founder and CEO, Beth Santos, and our global membership director, Tiffany Pittman as they lead this conversation so we can share our favorite travel stories together.
How to participate: Bring a snack, beverage of your choice, and find a comfortable, relaxing spot. Turn your video on (or leave it off if you feel more comfortable that way). We welcome all Wanderful members for a fun time together!
July 10: Conscious Traveler Reading Club: Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power, and the Paradox of Voluntourism (+ Special Presence from Author!)
For Wanderful members only
Wanderful’s Conscious Traveler Reading Club is a community-led reading and discussion circle for our Wanderful members to be better informed and educated on how to be a better traveler.
Each month we’ll read and discuss a fiction or non-fiction book or reading centered around any number of topics that make us more conscious travelers, including: ethical travel, social impact, anti-racism, racial justice, and the experiences and worldviews of other marginalized communities.
Who this is for: This group is intended for anyone working to be better informed and educated on critical issues around being a better traveler. You can expect a safe space with open and honest conversation among women who want to learn and improve. Our meetings will never be recorded in order to respect privacy.
We are so excited to be joined by the book’s author, Pippa Biddle, for our discussion! Feel free to come with questions you may have for Pippa. Thrilled to have her with us!
About Pippa: Philippa (Pippa) Biddle is the author of Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power, and The Paradox of Voluntourism, an exposé of service-based tourism as contemporary colonialism (Potomac Books, June 2021). Ours to Explore can be preordered now.
Her freelance work has been published by Guernica, The Atlantic, Wired, BBC Travel, AMC Outdoors, the magazine of the Appalachian Mountain Club, Maine magazine, and more. She writes the Object Lesson column in The Magazine ANTIQUES alongside her husband, Benjamin Davidson, and has been featured in numerous online and print media outlets including The New York Times, The Independent, and Al Jazeera. She is a contributor to Modern Day Slavery and Orphanage Tourism (CABI, November 2019).
July 14: Taste of Asia Cooking Experience
Free and open to the public
About this event: Join us and Vietnamese-American food blogger Julie Tran Deily, who loves to share recipes that are inspired by her heritage as well as her travels. Julie will be taking us on a journey to Vietnam as she teaches us how to make Vietnamese Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce.
If you plan to cook along with us, check your inbox after you register. We will email everyone the ingredients & tools you will need along with music suggestions for you to listen to while we cook.
July 21: Eco Eats: How Food Relates to Sustainable Travel
Wanderful members only
Food insecurities, what we eat, and where we dine all have an impact on tourism both as a traveler or the industry as a whole.
Join Abbie Synan to learn more about how food plays a role in responsible travel and what we can do to be more mindful about our meals both on the road and in our kitchens at home.
About your host: Abbie Synanis the voice behind Speck on the Globe, a blog focusing on ways to make travel more ethical and sustainable. As a journalist and freelance writer, you’ll find her articles on sites like Matador Network, Unearth Women, Inside Himalayas and Rewire News among others. She has been working remotely since 2012 and traveling full time since 2013, slowly moving from country to country, while uncovering sustainable travel stories to share along the way.
Speck on the Globe was created as a means to highlight the stories of people, programs and organizations that are changing the tourism industry for more conscious global citizens. In addition to her blog, Abbie often writes about health and wellness and is on the board of the American Association of Birth Centers Foundation, an organization that provides funding for the midwifery model of care and promotes access to quality women’s healthcare options in the US.
July 22: Anti-Asian Racism’s Impact on Chinatown Tourism
Free and open to the public
The rise of anti-Asian racism has dominated our headlines over the last year, but the travel and tourism industry has largely remained silent on the issue. In what ways has anti-Asian racism impacted tourism, especially in Asian-dominated neighbourhoods, like the vibrant Chinatowns across North America?
How have these communities and neighbourhoods been impacted by the double-edged sword of the pandemic and racism? How is the travel and tourism industry implicated in the rise of anti-Asian racism and what role does our industry have in supporting these local communities?
Join Wanderful for a conversation with leaders from across North America’s largest Chinatowns including the Mott Street Girls’ Anna and Chloe (New York), Chinatown Girl’s Judy Lam Maxwell (Vancouver), and SF Chinatown Ghost Tours’ Cynthia Yee (San Francisco). We’ll tackle these difficult questions together and attempt to carve an equitable and just path forward.
About the Panelists
Anna & Chloe of Mott Street Girls, are second-generation Chinese Americans, want to make Chinese American history and culture more accessible to the public through educational walking tours, social media, and by partnering with local organizations. Anna, a Boston native, was a former Chinatown tour guide. She has been practicing Chinese dance for almost two decades. Anna became a tour guide to share Chinese American history in New York City. Chloe spent nearly every weekend of her childhood in Manhattan’s Chinatown – shopping for groceries on Mott Street and taking piano lessons. She became a tour guide to share her love of Chinatown with others.
Judy Lam Maxwell specializes in Chinatowns around the world, the history of the Chinese in Canada, and the Chinese Diaspora. Judy is third-generation European Canadian on her dad’s side and first-generation Chinese Canadian on her mother’s side. She has deep roots in the foundation of the city of Vancouver.
She completed an M.A. in History from the University of British Columbia, and a Certificate through the Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness at UBC’s Faculty of Education. She is currently a board member of numerous organizations in Vancouver’s Chinatown: the Vancouver Chinatown Revitalization Committee, the Chinatown Society Heritage Buildings Association, and the Vancouver Chinatown Heritage Committee. She is also on the board of the Chinese American Forum, and a past board member of the Organization of Chinese Americans and the BC Historical Federation. Judy enjoys teaching, research and writing, cooking, and people.
Judy gives Historical Chinatown Tours, as well as tours of Gastown, Granville Island, and the University of British Columbia. She also teaches people how to make Masterclass Dumplings in Vancouver and in Hawaii.
Cynthia Yee is the founder of the Founder of Chinatown Magic Tours & Events. She is an active member of the Chinatown Community serving as past president of the Chinese Hospital Auxiliary, Chinatown Opti-Ms, Friends of On Lok, and Vice President of Clarion Performing Arts Center.
Growing up in a Taoist Temple that her mother founded, Cynthia learned at an early age, the superstitions and traditions of the Chinese culture. With a passion for sharing the history of Chinatown, Cynthia has been a tour guide since 1977.
Justine Abigail Yu (she/her) is the Communications Director at Wanderful, as well as the Senior Advisor for RISE Travel Institute. She is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Living Hyphen, a community and multimedia platform that explores the experiences of living in between cultures as a hyphenated Canadian – that is, an individual who calls Canada home but who has roots elsewhere.
Her work has been featured on national and local media outlets including Yahoo! News, NextShark, CTV National News, and the CBC. Justine Abigail is a fierce advocate for equity and anti-oppression.
Virtual Events for Travel Content Creators
July 13: Creating A Financial Foundation for Your Solo Business
For Wanderful Creators Members Only
Making and managing money is liberating… especially if you are on the path to profitability! With women owning 4 out of every 10 businesses in the United States, the next step to sustaining the meteoric rise in women entrepreneurship is guaranteeing that money and profits are managed successfully.
In this session, national TV Budgetologist and Founder of iFind You Close, Phylecia Jones, will lead a highly energetic talk on money, business, budgeting and personal finances for the successful businessperson. You will leave with your big girl pants pulled on and strutting in the CFO shoes your business is craving! Phylecia will break down the core principles it takes to have a big wake-up call when it comes to money. You will walk away with a simple, and powerful, action plan to instantly get started with a business budget and spend plan.
Phylecia Jones is a two-time TEDx speaker, national TV financial contributor for Daily Blast Live, women in STEM advocate, co-host of the Humans Exhaust Me podcast, and Founder of iFind You Close helping speakers research and book more speaking engagements.
When Phylecia is not deep into researching the internet, she blogs about her eclectic list of ever-growing life experiences including baton twirling, performing with a circus, RVing across the USA, being a professional cheerleader and achieving 100hrs towards being a yacht captain.
About Your Host: Phylecia Jones is a two-time TEDx speaker, national TV financial contributor for Daily Blast Live, women in STEM advocate, co-host of the Humans Exhaust Me podcast, and Founder of iFind You Close helping speakers research and book more speaking engagements.
When Phylecia is not deep into researching the internet, she blogs about her eclectic list of ever-growing life experiences including baton twirling, performing with a circus, RVing across the USA, being a professional cheerleader and achieving 100hrs towards being a yacht captain.
What She Can Offer: iFind You Close helps speakers take the guesswork out of finding events around the world that book speakers. Getting on stage is a gateway to traveling the world, building a brand and getting your company’s message out to potential clients. Phylecia’s expertise will help you sort through the steps of searching for speaking opportunities, crafting a pitch that wins or getting on stage with a message that converts and wows the audience.