Panelists
Evita Robinson – NOMADNESS Travel Tribe
Evita Turquoise Robinson is the Founder of NOMADNESS Travel Tribe, an international community of over 25,000 travelers of color, started in 2011. She is also Founder of the Audacity Festival, an annual event for travelers of color and our allies. NOMADNESS Travel Tribe is known as the community that spearheaded the entire Black travel movement known on social media. Robinson has been noted as National Geographic’s 21 Most Visionary Women in Travel History, Entrepreneur Magazine’s 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs, The Root 100, and is an AFAR Travel Vanguard Award recipient. In addition to her work on her own brands, Robinson is also Contributing Editor at CondèNast Traveler Magazine and the host of ‘Made In with Evita’ on CondèNast Traveler’s Instagram.
Dr. Alana Dillette – Tourism RESET
Alana K. Dillette is an Assistant Professor in the Payne School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at San Diego State University. She also serves as a Co-Director for Tourism RESET, an organization focused on promoting race, ethnicity and social equity in tourism. Her research interests include issues around diversity and inclusion, more specifically looking at the intersection between tourism, race, gender & ethnicity. Currently, she is conducting research to better understand the Black travel experience.
Dr. Stefanie Benjamin – Tourism RESET
Stefanie Benjamin, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management Department at the University of Tennessee and the Co-Director for Tourism RESET. Her research interests include social equity in tourism around the intersectionality of race, gender, sexual orientation, and people with disabilities. She also researches contents tourism, implements improvisational theater games as innovative pedagogy, and is a certified qualitative researcher.