Episode 195: The Road Less Traveled
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time, leaving the corporate world to go out on your own…and follow a dream occupation. Which can also mean rejecting expectations of what you should be doing…
“I was raised to want, you know, a spouse and kids and to be surrounded by all of these people. But now I'm like, you know, I'm really glad that I don't have responsibilities that I don't think I want. You know sometimes I like just spending time with myself. I mean, I make it a point of at least trying to take one solo trip a year.”
And traveling alone can feel liberating. Coming up on The Broad Experience.
Summer in the northern hemisphere has just come to an end and if we’re lucky some of us will have traveled during that time. And a lot of us if we were listing our interests would probably put travel down as one of them. But realistically, we don’t have that much time to do it. It’s the kind of thing we dream about doing when we’ve got more time, more money, or both.
Meena Thiruvengadam decided she couldn’t wait. Travel has always been a passion of hers, but today it’s her career as well. To date she’s been to 54 countries and nearly every US state. Born of Indian parents who immigrated to the US…she grew up traveling back and forth to India from her home in Dallas/Fort Worth.
She says like a lot of Indian kids, she knew what her parents wanted her to become: a doctor.
“That's really what I was raised for, I think, was to get into medicine. My dad was in the air force. My mom had gone to medical school in the Dominican Republic. So I actually spent the first couple of years of my life down there with her and with Spanish babysitters, Spanish was my first language.”
She says her early experiences of travel and immersion in different cultures…was the beginning of a lifelong interest. But as someone who hates needles she says medicine was NOT for her.
She headed down to San Antonio for college, and eventually landed an internship at the local paper, the San Antonio Express News.
Afterwards she got a job as a reporter there…covering crime, fires, accidents…basically anything the police were called out to. She says falling into journalism was the best thing that could have happened to her given how shy she’d been growing up. She says this job that involved talking to so many strangers, it helped her become comfortable with herself, to grow into herself.
At that point in her life – this is the early 2000s…she says she didn’t think much about her gender or skin color…
“I would say that having worked in San Antonio as my first job was really a bit of a blessing because everybody at the newspaper and really everybody in the city was a shade of brown. So it didn't really matter what shade of brown you were. Everything kind of worked. It was very much la Frontera, an area of the borderlands. So it wasn't until I got to DC that I started walking into rooms and looking around going, wow, I am the only brown woman in here - there might be maybe one or two other women in here, and it's just very much heavily male dominated.”
She moved to Washington DC to work in financial news. She covered the financial crisis of 2008/09…bank bailouts, monetary policy, and in this largely male world she did stick out. She was not only dark-skinned and female but rather diminutive at just under 4 foot 11. She was often overlooked.
Still, she had her champions…
“For all of the, you know, not wonderful white men that are in media, I've had a lot in my career who have showed me the way and kind of helped me find things out and just helped me come to terms with the fact that, you know, as a small, petite brown woman, I'm gonna get a lot of crap from a lot of different people. And I think that being in San Antonio, that's something that had really fallen away. I wasn't quite used to all of these levels of judgment that I was gonna get. And then the more I got into financial news, the more it became clear that there are a lot of very wealthy, very powerful men in this world who see women as accessories to tell you what you wanna hear and be pretty in what you want them to wear when you're looking at them.”
She says when she looked around her office, a lot of her colleagues looked similar, right down to their hairstyles. They’d also been to many of the same elite colleges. There was a clubby feel. She found navigating the invisible bumps in the road exhausting, even as her career progressed and she took on leadership roles…
“And I think that's one of the reasons that I find freelancing so much more fulfilling is I'm able to focus on the work, not the politics and not being, you know, what I'm supposed to be in this particular environment”.
So many women leave corporate jobs because they are fed up with trying to fit in. And yet, I said to her, isn’t there a danger that if that keeps happening, there’ll be no good women left to help change organizations and make them better for everyone?
“So I had one very, very toxic job and I tried my best to change and to make it work and to fight systems that had been ingrained long before me. Um, and I think the thing that that job taught me is if the organization chooses to be a certain way, one person may not be able to change that. You know, a lot of organizations codify things. I mean, racism and sexism is very much ingrained into what they do. The system is by design to make sure people like you get exhausted or get pushed out. I tried to fight to make it a better place, but the place had no interest in being a better place. All it had an interest in was quashing me. And no matter how good I did, nothing was gonna change that I was a brown woman with an opinion who was speaking while female.”
She tells a story of one thing that happened while she was in that particular job. The repercussions of which eventually drove her away.
“The worst part was when my boss tried to get me to hire someone who we knew was a sexual predator. His past was pretty well known. And I was like, as a manager, I'm not taking on this liability, why would I manage this guy? Now I knew some of the details, but not all of them. And you know, my bosses knew way more, but still pressured me to interview this guy. And now I look at it and I'm like, wow. You know, I mean, yes, that was a culturally accepted type of thing in that particular organization. But it was just one of those things that I never should have had to, um, go through. But the most troubling thing is when I spoke up, because I wasn't - it wasn't something where I'm like, I can keep quiet about this, but speaking up, it was ultimately the thing that made my life hell for the rest of the time I was there.”
She complained to the chief operating officer…to HR…and others…none of which endeared her to the company. The workplace felt ever more hostile.
Meena was itching for a different kind of work life. One where she wasn’t tied to a desk in an office in a big city, in an atmosphere thick with politics. She wanted to unite her love of travel with her love of writing.
“I'd always been, you know, one of those people I'm like, I wanna quit my job and freelance and travel the world, but I never quite thought I could pull it off. So after I'd left that one job, I was freelancing and I took another job at a tech startup and that company started to have problems and had layoffs. But when that happened, I had made very clear that I was gonna keep my side business and not be fully reliant on this other startup entity. And when I saw that my business has outlasted this business with actual investors and stuff, I was like, well, why am I not doing this full time?”
She has been working for herself full time for the last four years now. Things felt shaky at first.
For one thing in the US as a freelance worker you have to pay for your own health insurance - and that’s expensive. And there’s the uncertainty as you ramp up.
“My first year, like really freelancing, I did not make a lot of money. It was one of those things where I was like, can I do this? Should I do this? What am I doing with my life and my degree and all of my experience. So I started to figure out how do I actually make this a business and make more money and go after higher value work and things like that. So by the time the pandemic hit, I was doing a lot of digital strategy consulting, which kinda happened to be what everybody needed.”
She was working for media companies, whose business she knew well. So when Covid came along she was busy with that consulting work, while her travel writing initially dropped off a cliff. But then publications began asking her to cover all the Covid travel restrictions, and soon she was writing extensively about how the travel business was dealing with the pandemic.
Nowadays she’s busy with a mix of work. When I spoke to her she’d just come back from a cruise from Amsterdam to Basel, which she was preparing to write up for one of the publications she works for.
Meena is now based in Chicago. She has a partner. But she usually travels alone for work assignments, and she travels alone for pleasure too.
“Honestly, I think traveling alone is one of the best things I've ever done for myself. Um, and you know, the first few times I did it, I felt awkward and scared and you know, my family still is like, why do you go places alone? What is wrong with you? You know, you shouldn't be doing this. But I find it freeing. And it's really nice. I mean, you know that being a journalist, sometimes you're just talking to people all day, you're involved in so much stuff and some of it's just like horrible, you know, you're going to either crime scenes or just all kinds of things, there's a lot of news in the world that can be very stressful. And for me there was a point where I found solo travel to be nice because I could just be like, I'm gonna put my phone in my bag and I'm just gonna disappear into this new place and just be.”
AM-T: “Yeah, no, I remember when I was planning my first solo trip 20 years ago now, it was for my 30th birthday. I wanted to go to Chile and I thought if nobody can come with me, I'm just gonna go on my own. And I was quite nervous but all those things you just described, I experienced. I met someone who was updating a Lonely Planet guide who I kept up with for years. I had a wonderful time, I spoke decent Spanish. The best thing was I came back to a job… I wasn’t very confident in my job and when I got back, and it was just a ten day break, I felt on top of the world, I felt I could do anything because I had achieved so much on that trip. As you say it was freeing and it was a real confidence booster.”
“Yeah, definitely. I mean, I look at it now and I used to be very nervous about like, I don't wanna go out to a restaurant alone. I don't wanna do this alone. Like, it feels weird. I'm around here alone because what, I have no friends? Now I'm like, I have done some really cool things by myself and I haven't waited for anyone else. You know, I haven't had that regret of not going on that trip ‘cause I couldn't find friends. And then you have that successful feeling of like, oh my gosh, I pulled it off. I did it myself. Like I got here myself. I found friends, I found fun. I was able to be with myself and enjoy my own company. And I think that that's something that, it really took me a long time. I mean, I was raised to want, you know, a spouse and kids and to be surrounded by all of these people. But now I'm like, you know, I'm really glad that I don't have responsibilities that I don't think I want. Sometimes I like going by myself and just enjoying spending time with myself. I mean, I make it a point of at least trying to take one solo trip a year. Even if I'm traveling with people I’ll try to carve out a few hours where I’m like, look, I’m gonna go do a walk, you do whatever you want.”
AM-T: “Yeah that’s interesting that you mentioned how you were raised. A lot of us don’t even realize, I think, that that’s part of the reason why doing something by yourself - whether it’s traveling or even going to the movies - can seem odd at first glance. It took me a while to begin to really enjoy my own company and realize how wonderful it was to be on my own. This was when I was much younger and I was used to doing everything with friends. And I remember I was in Spain, I was studying in Spain for 2 months and I wanted to get out of the city into the countryside and look at these olive groves. Nobody could go. And I thought well I'm going to get the bus and just go on my own. And I remember walking around on those hills smelling the citrus fruit and thinking I love this, I love doing this on my own. But it’s something I think a lot of women don't allow themselves because of that message many of us have got from a young age, even if it’s subliminal, of what we SHOULD be doing.”
“I mean, mine was very clear: You should be married and have a family. Why would you be traveling by yourself before that? You should wait to do this or wait until retirement. But again, remember when I was a police reporter, I used to go to all of these car accidents. I went to all kinds of weird crime scenes, but the car accidents were the worst because these were people who were just going about their day and then they were dead. You know? So I was very much like that I think turned out to be just very impactful because I was like, no, I'm not gonna wait because a lot of people die before these things happen and a lot of things change and I'm gonna go and do these things. And you know, even now my family thinks I'm nuts because I will go places by myself.
But I look at it and I'm like, you know, I live this rich and wonderful life and if I die tomorrow, like I lived the hell out of it and I experienced it. It's like I lived, I didn't wait for someone else to come sit with me or to tell me it was okay. So I think, you know, ultimately it's been the biggest reward and that's the thing is when you're there and you're, you know, walking among the lemon trees and you smell them and you're not distracted by the conversation with your friend or whatever it is. You're just there in the moment with yourself. And I feel like that's where a lot of magic happens.”
Meena is one of many women who enjoy the adventure of solo travel and the opportunities it brings. But there are still plenty of people for whom the idea of traveling alone is a bit intimidating.
I asked her what she’d say to women who are worried about their safety as solo travelers.
“You know, no matter what you do out in this world, especially in this country, there are a lot of dangers out there. There are things that you can do to protect yourself. But I think that as women, we shouldn't be afraid to move around the planet. Society and people want to make us afraid. They want us to be here because it's such a scary planet out there. But in reality, everywhere is scary. I mean, I went to a lot of murder scenes in sleepy, San Antonio, Texas: when I was a college student, I had no idea so many people were getting killed there.
So while I might have been scared that first time I was in Europe by myself…the places that I've lived, the places that we all live, they also hold dangers for us. So I think that, you know, we let our fears hold us back and sometimes they're not always warranted. Like I look at it now and I'm like, honestly, I feel a lot more afraid going places in the US with our gun laws than I do being in a country where I'm like, I don't speak the language, but you guys don't have AR 15s. So no matter what it'll work out. I mean, I'm just back from two weeks in Europe. And I was like, I didn't hear about one mass shooting on this continent. I don't know what I'm gonna do. 53 people were shot in Chicago this weekend.”
AM-T: “You have said that it’s very important to you that the world become a friendlier place for solo travelers of color. It’s interesting, I’ve seen in the past decade that I've been doing the podcast more and more resources spring up specifically targeted at women of color who are traveling.”
“Definitely. I mean, a lot of women of color, especially brown south Asian women, we are not encouraged to travel. We are especially not encouraged to travel solo, and then traveling while brown is a hard thing. I have somehow managed to get status on United Airlines, except status as a brown person is completely different because no one will believe - how dare you have status? I had to fight my way into an aircraft airport lounge the other day, even though lounge access was written on my boarding pass because, you know, yes, I rolled in, in T-shirt and yoga pants for a 10 hour flight. But, like, I shouldn't have to fight to tell you I belong here. And oftentimes when I take a business class or first class seat, those are the kinds of looks that you're getting - a little less so nowadays.
But when I had fancy toxic jobs, that was very much a bunch of old white guys going, what's this little girl doing here? I was checking out of my hotel and this older gentleman was gonna just come and check out in front of me. And I gave him this look like, if you step in front of me, I am going to just punch you in front of all of your colleagues. And I think sometimes they're surprised, especially when you stand up for yourself. But it's kind of wild to me that travel as an industry doesn't realize that brown and black people have money.”
A study from last year shows US-based Black travelers spent almost 130 billion dollars on travel in the US and abroad in 2019.
Meena says when she’s on the road it’s becoming as common for her to see women traveling alone as it is men…
“Like it’s wild, I'll tend to meet guys who've been on the road so long where you're like, you should live somewhere because your disconnect from society is not great. But I think nowadays it does feel like it's a lot more women and it feels like a lot more women are like, we're gonna do this. We'll go, we'll buy the ticket and we'll do it. Um, and I think, you know, things like Eat, Pray Love and Under the Tuscan Sun, say what you want about 'em, they encourage women to just go and live in a way that men have been encouraged for years. Um, and I'm hopeful that, you know, we're at least seeing some of that.”
Today Meena writes for Travel and Leisure, Trip Savvy, and Fortune, among others. She also works as a media strategist so as she said before, her eggs aren’t all in one basket if there’s another big downturn that affects travel.
“Even despite the stress of like health insurance and losing clients and clients going out of business and figuring out, you know, okay, how am I gonna make money? All of those things, this life is so much less stressful than figuring out office politics and having to do a commute that doesn't always make sense. And, you know, having to deal with all of these performative things that makes workplaces so painful. I've never had the quality of life that I have now where everything just feels like, it really does feel like work life chemistry.
AM-T: “I was gonna say, I like the term chemistry as opposed to balance.”
“Yeah. Cause I don't think you can have balance really. I mean, when I was, you know - my fanciest jobs would have me in the office for 10, 12, 15 hours a day. And you know, at one point I managed a team that was London, New York and Hong Kong. It was just waking up to one fresh hell and going to bed to a different fresh hell. And then everybody being mad at you if you schedule a meeting that's convenient for the Asian team for once. But those are the kinds of stresses it's like, I don't want, you know? I mean working for myself, I approve my vacations. I say yes to the opportunities that interest me. I don't have to, like, I'll never forget the time I had to get permission to speak to a community college journalism class that I had been speaking to for years.
I don't have to do those things anymore. And all of those little things just take so much stress off of my shoulders. I don't have to figure out, how am I gonna get out of all of these meetings to go to a doctor's appointment? I just plan everything around there. And it's so much more control over my own life that it's hard to think about ever going back because I feel like work isn't set up for me to have a good life, and I wanna have a good life because I'm gonna die. And I wanna live before I die. I don't wanna just be in front of my computer.”
Meena Thiruvengadam. You can find her at TravelwithMeena.com - that’s Meena spelled M-E-E-N-A.
We also discussed her thoughts about being a global traveler during a time of climate change, which air travel is a big contributor to. I’ll post that snippet of our conversation under this episode at TheBroadExperience.com.
And if you are someone who can do your job from anywhere, check out an article Meena wrote for The Muse about things to consider when working from abroad, and her five favorite countries from which to work - I'll link you to that under this episode on the website.
That's The Broad Experience for this time.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks for listening.