Guests
TIFFANY TOLBERT is Associate Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In her position, she directs high-profile national preservation campaigns associated with African American cultural heritage such as the Nina Simone Childhood Home, John, and Alice Coltrane Home and the HBCU Cultural Heritage Stewardship Initiative, will advancing preservation priorities of the National Trust. Tolbert previously served as Director of the Northwest Field Office at Indiana Landmarks from 2006-2017. Tolbert is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Huntingdon College (Montgomery, AL) in Political Science and History and Master of Historic Preservation from Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA). She has previously worked for the Alabama Historical Commission and the Georgia Historic Preservation Division as African American Programs Assistant. She has also completed consulting work throughout the Southeast where she completed National Register of Historic Places nominations, [...]
Dr. Yvette McQueen (aka "The Travel Doctor") is a global physician on a mission to educate about health, travel wellness, and disease prevention. She is a nomadic Emergency Medicine physician who travels to work across the US and the Caribbean. Dr. McQueen also serves as a travel group physician ensuring healthy and safe travel of the clients before and during their international trip. Dr. McQueen is a best seller author, speaker, blogger, consultant, CPR and First Aid instructor; wilderness emergency care training, and international teaching for the American Heart Association. Dr. Yvette McQueen has traveled to 40+ international countries for exploring; organizes medical missions to Africa; hospital training/teaching in Rwanda and Tanzania; and participates in international church missions. This global physician also provides Wellness Lifestyle Coaching, Wellness Retreats, and a Board of Directors member of the Wellness Tourism Association. Dr. McQueen is CEO of MedQueen LLC a health education and CME [...]
Karen Gershowitz has been traveling solo since age seventeen when she flew to Europe and didn’t return to the US for three years. She got severely bitten by the travel bug and since then has traveled to nearly ninety countries and visited all fifty states—many of them multiple times. After studying ceramics in college and graduate school she abandoned that career and switched to marketing so that employers would pay for her travel. In her new career as a marketing strategist and researcher, she traveled the world conducting thousands of meetings, focus groups, and interviews. Her skills as an interviewer have persuaded total strangers to talk candidly about the most intimate of subjects: personal bankruptcy, illness, and religion. When traveling for pleasure, those same skills help her to draw out people’s stories. She learned about their lives, as well as local customs and fashions, and what makes them laugh. These [...]
Kimberly Stone is a Plus-size model who took to entrepreneurship at a young age after being encouraged by her family to start something of her own. She began sewing as a child and started off selling designs and accessories to friends at church and school. During her gifted classes as an anchor, she learned to read for the news. As a sports reporter in high school, Kimberly Stone filmed and edited her own stories. Her love for art, fashion, design, and media led her to start POSHGLAM, a luxury outlet in college, paying homage to talented designers in the space. With lots of humor, and footprints in over 147 countries, POSHGLAM is positioned as the international go-to platform for fashion devotees and hopefuls. Kimberly Stone has given advice and been featured in Yahoo!, Forbes, The Washington Post, Business Insider, Success.com, Open Forum, Women2.com, and many others. As a hands-on entrepreneur, her time is spent exploring new [...]
JoAnn Hill has lived in Washington, DC with her husband Thalamus and dog Jackson for nineteen years. An avid traveler and foodie, JoAnn writes about their DC living and dining experiences, as well as their global travel adventures on her blog dcglobejotters.org. Her writing has been published in BELLA Magazine, Escape Artist, and Triptipedia. JoAnn served as a DC Public Schools teacher for 17 years before co-founding Capitol Teachers, a tutoring company servicing the greater DC area. SECRET Washington, DC is her first book. Around the world, Washington, DC, is known for its powerful government, majestic monuments, and world-renowned museums. Secret Washington, DC: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure reminds us that the fabric of the city isn’t solely embedded in its callous political parties, exhausting lawmaking policies, and rampant tourism. Rather, it’s woven through its rich and complex history, mysterious relics, underground societies, forgotten and abandoned buildings, and [...]
Dr. Betty Moseley Brown proudly served her country as one of the first African American women to join the Marine Corps. She currently serves as Division Chief of Federal Advisory Committees, Veterans Experience Office at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Moseley Brown is keynote speaker, corporate training and a current member of the National Speaker Association (NSA). She has been personally certified by Sam Horn in Tongue Fu! ® in the art of how to deflect, disarm, and diffuse any verbal conflict. She is also certified by John Maxwell as a coach and trainer on his trademarked leadership programs. Dr. Moseley Brown earned a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Sarasota. As an avid Toastmaster, she achieved the highest level in public speaking of Distinguished Toastmaster. Dr. Betty Moseley Brown is a career employee with the Department of Veterans Affairs where she is nationally recognized for her [...]
Phyllis Wilson began her Army career as a Military Intelligence (MI) Voice Intercept Operator. During more than 37 years of active and reserve service, she has served at all echelons from tactical to strategic, with duty in Germany, Iraq and the United States. In August 1990, she was mobilized to support OPERATION DESERT SHIELD/ OPERATION DESERT STORM and served as the Signals Intelligence collection manager for XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, NC. In December 2002, she mobilized in support of OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM as a senior Counter Terrorism Analyst. She deployed twice to Iraq with a highly specialized Joint Special Operations Task Force. Chief Warrant Officer Five (CW5) Phyllis J. Wilson served as the 5th Command Chief Warrant Officer for the United States Army Reserve and a key member of the Executive Team managing an organization with an annual operating budget of more than $8 Billion. She was a Senior [...]
Matthew Maxey is the Director of Public Relations at Visit Franklin, where he leads media and government relations efforts. Since joining Visit Franklin in 2016, Maxey has worked closely with traditional media and a team of both in-house and outside content creators to spread the good word about Franklin, Tennessee. Before Visit Franklin, Matthew Maxey came from the worlds of sports and politics. He began his public relations career traveling the country with the American Junior Golf Association before serving as a sports information director at the University of Tennessee at Martin for six years. He also had his own public relations consulting business where clients included non-profits and small businesses, while also serving in various communications and political advisory roles for candidates to the Tennessee Legislature, Governor of Tennessee, and United States Congress. When not working in tourism these days, Maxey is still living the freelancer life as a [...]
Nehama Rogozen is an avid traveler, having spent time in 20+ countries. She has lived in several US cities, Israel, and the Philippines. These days, due to the pandemic, her adventures are confined to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives. Nehama is a Public Relations Officer for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, where she works with local communities and small businesses. Nehama Rogozen while in the Peace Corps Nehama spent two years in the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer, where she lived in a semi-rural provincial town, working with two local community youth organizations. Her time in the Philippines has shaped her views of the world; she is at work on a memoir about her service. This experience also inspired her to get her master's degree in international relations from UC Berkeley. While she works domestically these days, there are more similarities than differences [...]
Fatima Shaik is the author of Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free, Black Brotherhood (The Historic New Orleans Collection, February 2021). She was born in the historic Seventh Ward of New Orleans and bred on the oral histories of Black Creoles told by her family and neighbors. Only after she read the records of the Economie—3,000 pages of handwritten French stored in her family’s home—did she realize this community’s impact. She spent two decades reading the journals and documenting events with real estate records, legal cases, old monographs, and articles. A former Assistant Professor at Saint Peter’s University and daily journalist, Shaik is a trustee of PEN America and member of The Writers Room in NYC. Economy Hall is her first work of nonfiction and her seventh book. Shaik’s research on the Société d’Economie, an early Black Catholic mutual aid society, has received support from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and the Kittredge [...]
Dale Reardon is the Founder & CEO of Travel For All, a global directory for the Accessible & Inclusive travel community. He is legally blind and lives in Australia with his wife, Jo, and his faithful guide dog, Charlie. Travel For All serves as a TripAdvisor-type resource to give travelers with accessibility needs access to trusted, verified & complete information to plan, book & experience travel with confidence. The platform is a community that offers advice for travelers in need of accessibility and help through training, marketing and a toolkit for business operators to attract more customers from this large and loyal market sector. Travel For All has been created to assist tourism operators develop an Accessibility Statement for their business, allowing them to reach the accessible and inclusive travel market. Tourism operators provide information to people with accessibility needs who love to travel, so they can determine which tourism [...]
Cordell Reaves serves as a Historic Preservation Program Analyst with the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, developing educational programming and events that enable sites to tell complete and inclusive stories. He has a MA degree from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Museum Studies and a background in African American History with over 20 years of experience working with historic sites and museums. His research interests cover a broad swath of New York State history: from early Dutch settlement in New York, colonial slavery, the Underground Railroad, anti-slavery movement and the Great Migration. He has also spoken extensively on the relationship between tourism and historic sites and has worked with tourism professionals to share NYS history with a broader audience. Cordell Reaves currently sits on the advisory board for the Historic House Trust of New York City and the Albany Cultural Heritage Advisory Team. In 2017 Cordell was [...]
