Travel and Personal Growth: Nneya Richards of ‘N A Perfect World On Why & How Traveling Can Help Us Become Better Human Beings
An interview with Maria Angelova
Start journaling. Writing things down is an amazing release and once you get in the habit, it’s amazing to journal your travel experience. You’ll be able to look back and see your growth. The more attune you are with your mind, the more potential there is for discovery.
Thankfully, the world is open for travel once again. Traveling can broaden our horizons and make space for people to become more open-minded. How can travel give us the opportunity for personal growth? What are some ways that travel can help us become better human beings? As a part of our series about “How Traveling Can Help Us Become Better Human Beings”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nneya Richards.
Founding TeenVogue multi-hyphenate and blogger at ‘N A Perfect World, Nneya Richards is a writer, published author, content creator & public speaker who is also a contributor to publications including Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue and Popsugar. Living between NYC and Northern Italy, Nneya aims to empower people to travel, as she believes it is through exploring the world that we will bridge cultural gaps and misunderstandings.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I grew up in NYC and being exposed to so many different people and cultures (especially food) informed who I am and still does to this day. I was born in NYC but my family are immigrants from Jamaica, travel is a necessity to us, seeing family, whether it was in London, Toronto, Florida, etc. While attending prep school, Trinity School on the Upper West Side, I was tapped to be a founding contributor to TeenVogue magazine. From 16 years old, I already had a trajectory in the fashion and publishing industry despite going to Amherst College, studying Women and Gender Studies. The majority of people from Amherst with that major continue on to law school or public policy… still interests of mine, but I wanted to shape the public in a different way. I studied abroad in Milan. Fashion and travel were calling me, I just didn’t quite know how….
What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.
It’s cliche to say but I watched Samantha Brown travels as a kid, devoured travel magazines but couldn’t quiiiite figure out the exact career path there. And, despite being from a family of avid travelers, I didn’t really see people that looked like myself of family members in the travel sphere being represented in advertisements, commercials. I actually wrote about this for Condé Nast Traveler, re: Black Travelers often being depicted as the locals but not the travelers. My grandmother, and her love of traveling and exploration was not being depicted! Do you know how much older Black women spend on travel and cruises?! She loved Alaska, that was one of her favorite destination that is still on my bucket list. So from a young age, my first time in first-class was with my grandmother. She worked at a hotel in Lincoln Center. I loved traveling, but again, I didn’t see it as a career.
One of my mentors Tai Beauchamp, an intelligent, beautiful Black woman that was creating change in the fashion and beauty space advised me to start a blog while I was fashion styling. She noticed that I often used fashion as a caveat to travel and friends would come to me for travel recommendations. I also started writing travel articles for lifestyle publications during that time.
My grandmother, Tai, these well heeled, well traveled Black women inspired me to pursue my career because I felt like the travel industry wasn’t speaking to us. Putting a face to my bylines let BIPOC people know I went into these spaces and you can too. We belong here.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?
My community, my family and friends are strong sources of support for me, even though many of them are not in the travel space. They are my personal board of directors that I can bounce my ideas off of and who check in.
It has been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or takeaway did you learn from that?
There is that cliche about creatives not being business minded. I do consider myself business minded but, well I hate sticking with a budget. So, when a consulting client continued to not pay me even though I was doing excellent work for the brand, I rationalized “she’s a creative” “we’re doing such great work the money will come” “people are taking notice of my work for her and hiring me so I’m getting paid that way.” Naturally, this is not sustainable. To this day, I am out a great deal of money. Myself and many others. I learned that it is important to walk away if your time and work are not being honored by the parameters that you set.
Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?
I’m a mad F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, have been since high school. Naturally I rushed to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in theaters and a quote that deeply resonates with me, that guides my internal check-ins: Eric Roth’s words from the screenplay.
“For what it’s worth, it’s never too late, or in my case, too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s not time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. And I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. And I hope you feel things that you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. And, if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”
I felt a deep tremor within me when I first heard this quote. When I first moved overseas, it was because I felt I had grown complacent in New York City, deeply looking to be shaken, startled. This search is what drives my travels and explorations. And sometimes I find it, right here in NYC, but it took leaving and coming home to see that. I passionately feel that life should be guided by the experiences and emotions in this quote. I want to live a life that I’m proud of, that my mother, grandmother and ancestors would be proud of and that hopefully, my future child would be proud of.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
I am currently working on a project exploring our favorite, most traversed destinations, through different a lens and the local communities. I deeply believe that travel bridges gaps and misunderstandings. We are ambassadors. With this project focused on social exploration, I hope to highlight demographics and cultures that have been too often ignored or exotified by the travel industry.
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview about travel and personal growth. Let’s dive deeper into these together. Based on your research or personal experience, why do you think travel can lead to personal growth? Can you share a story?
In the summer of 2017 as my mother booked our tickets for an August trip to France, I declared “Just get me a one way. After our 10 days around France, I’m going to stay in Europe.” For the previous 10 years, beginning with studying abroad in Milan in 2006, I had started to spend a lot of time in Europe, managing to make at least one trip a year. During this time, aided by the powers of Facebook, I managed to scrape together a community and personal life there. I’m a born and raised New Yorker and while I realized the luxury of “going home” meaning going back to NYC, I had developed a sort of ambivalence to “the city.” I felt as though I were resting on my laurels. I craved a challenge. Late nights at my local in Crown Heights lead to many a conversation with my dear friend and confidante about whether NYC was the right place for us. Maybe I should finally try to live in London. My travel writing career can’t flourish if I’m tethered to NYC rent.
In 1984, at nearly 60 years-old, during an interview for the Paris Review, James Baldwin was asked why he had chosen to live in France. “It wasn’t so much a matter of choosing France — it was a matter of getting out of America.”
Like hundred of Black American artists before me, I imagined days spent creating — for me that meant working on my blog — , with wine and a baguette. The charm of Josephine Baker, the prose and finesse of Baldwin. This is Paris after all, the city where Black American creatives escaped and were revered. In the era of Trump, Paris would welcome me. Macron welcomes those shunned by this administration! That’s what I saw in the headlines. I had a few introductions of family friends: one woman in Paris who along with her sisters (Black Americans) had made a life in France, with husbands and children for decades. Maybe I’ll end up staying too, I thought.
Paris is a great place to be alone. I can work a room and party like no other but I’m a bookish, only child at heart and in Paris, I could go for days without having a real conversation with someone. A woman, alone at a restaurant is part of the city’s fabric. One week when I went on three Bumble dates, a lot at the time; I was so starved for conversation. I devoured the beauty that is Paris. I walked along its boulevards, ate, ate and ate some more. I went to a farmer’s market every other day. It was during these walks where I saw the other side of Paris: the Syrian refugees who made their home in the parks and under buildings along the canal, washing up in the fountains in the morning. It was also at one of these markets where I realized the strange and precarious place I occupied as a Black American in Paris.
I’ve been on wonderful press trips with the French tourism board — my favorite among those being to the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe and the city of Bordeaux. It was during these trips that I really began to piece together the complexities of colonization from all angles, tracing the triangle trade as I munched on my favorite Bordeaux dessert, cannelés. I felt my face flush as an unassuming “French food expert” discussed how the desert’s creation represented 1700s France and Bordeaux’s richness with the new commodities of rum and sugar being introduced into the economy and funding Bordeaux families. No mention of the slave trade. Martinique and Guadeloupe were indeed a wonderful blend of all things French, Caribbean and West African, but you look hard enough you can see the cynicism in a Guadeloupeans eyes as they tell you this — this was the island that rebelled the most between the two. The French West Indies are just another, albeit further, department of France they remind you. No different than Nouvelle-Acquitaine or Brittany. In Paris you see it, with many of the young hotspots filled with young people from the French West Indies studying in Paris, or newly living there. They too occupied a strange place in the French racial hierarchy vs. my black American otherness or someone from Sierra Leone say.
With French President François Hollande playing Jay-Z & Kanye West’s Niggas in Paris during his 2012 election campaign, it’s no surprise to note that Black American culture is still revered in France. In the recent century you can date this affinity from the post war GIs bringing Jazz, food and well, that Black American je ne sais quois. Being from New York City, in Paris, that put me on a whole other pedestal, but my skin color is indeed my skin color and makes it super difficult for racists! How can they tell?! Back to the market.
I was standing in line, waiting to ask the farmer how much for the melons in my broken french. I hadn’t said anything yet, but I knew I was being ignored. Three white French women came and were served before me. Finally, I interrupted and asked “c’est combien…” I lost my nerve. But weirdly, the look of disinterest, maybe even disgust, soon turned into a smile as he corrected my French and asked where I was from. “belle New York!” As he rattled off his dreams of New York, I walked away. I didn’t need melons from that stall.
As I spoke with the family friend, the youngest of the sisters, Desiree, she wasn’t surprised. She shared her experiences living in France and raising a mixed race son. I picked Desiree’s brain about her life in Paris; she took me to her favorite haunts from her days as a student. We got into real talk about what it’s like being Black in Paris. It wasn’t exactly the “relief” I felt in London, being American first, where my skin color wasn’t the overarching part of my identity. Sure, I could capitalize on the exotification of Black American culture but this was a strange time: the era of Brexit, Windrush backlash, immigration and the raise of those figures like Marine Le Pen. Desiree while fluent, doesn’t speak perfectly pronounced French and that has shielded her from that specific colonization racism. Much like what I felt from the fruit vendor. This was the Paris where Hermes wouldn’t let Oprah Winfrey buy a handbag.
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“Egalité, Liberté” I jokingly screamed with French friends while watching fireworks in the harbor of Bordeaux, and later, again with a large French crowd while watching the World Cup in London. As declared by King Louis X in the fourteenth century, “France signifies freedom.” He also declared that slavery was not authorized on the French mainland and any slaves setting foot on French soil would be free. Benjamin Franklin worried about this with his favorite enslaved peoples he brought to France. During the French revolution of the 1790s this freedom was extended to the French colonies as well, though in some places, it was ignored. America, too has freedom in its DNA, and yet we have kids in cages and systemic equity is still being fought for. No place is perfect. Did I feel the freedom that Baldwin, Baker, Wright, Kanye West and so many Black creatives, American creatives before me felt? Yes. Did I take it with a dash of hypocrisy knowing it was not readily extended to brethren that looked just like me? Absolutely.
In 1986, a psychiatrist coined the term “Paris syndrome” to describe the stress that some Japanese tourists experience when they discover that Paris isn’t the charming paradise often depicted in films and magazines. While I still love Paris, my rose colored glasses for the city have certainly gotten a little less tinted. That fall, I underwent my own Paris syndrome.
A recent survey from Psychology Today showed that over 80% of participants found that travel helped them with problem-solving or decision-making. Why do you think this is true for so many people?
My grandmother always said, “you won’t know someone until you travel with them.” Travel puts you in situations that the average person avoids. You exercise that problem solving muscle in your brain and you have memory and reaction recall. A lot of travel forces you out of your comfort zone and deepens your sense of independence, valuable tools in decision making. Whether it’s navigating a new language or city, or even an uncomfortable situation at a foreign bar, you gain strength and confidence!
Do you think travel enhances our mindfulness, optimism, or sense of gratitude? How? Can you please explain with an example or story?
The aforementioned independence gives you a lot of space for soul-searching. Strengths, weaknesses, you have to confront who you truly are as you learn to rely on yourself and your surroundings. Having time disconnected from everything and in your own head can be a great thing. Restore your faith in humanity. This seems like a lofty statement but trust me, it’s true. From that person that helps you take your carry on down on an airplane to the person that shows you your way to the hotel and ends up becoming a close friend. Traveling alone really shows you the kindness in strangers. Sayulita was just a small village on a map that I heard about through word of mouth over a decade ago. I wanted to surf, write and fall in love with myself again and needed ample sunshine to do so.
This was not the first time I’ve traveled alone, but definitely would be the longest period without a host and I relished in the ability to challenge myself. I find traveling alone forces you out of your comfort zone. There’s something beautiful about not only finding the independence within yourself but also, at times, relying on the decency and good will of other human beings. Upon getting off the bus, someone, asked me if I needed help finding where I’m staying. “You don’t tell a strange man where you’re staying I thought.” Well, a few turns around the plaza and a delicious coconut shrimp lunch, beautiful Joaquin is a life long friend.
I took out my headphones and roosters crowing, reggae and ocean breaks became my daily soundtrack. Getting from point A to B took a little longer as I stopped and chatted with local characters. Getting to point B suddenly wasn’t the point. I ate the freshest ceviche; I slurped the worm from the bottom of the mezcal bottle; I watched the sunset to the sounds of waves and a rhythmic wooden flute; I danced salsa into the wee morning hours with a bronzed-god of a surfer. Sayulita made me realize the power of a smile.
Surely not everyone who travels automatically becomes an exemplar of human decency. What are a few reasons why some people completely miss out on the growth opportunities that travel can offer?
Travel, especially traveling solo can be scary! There are bad experiences that can come your way. I experienced horrific racism in one country in Southeast Asia that left my husband and I shaken and on that same trip felt relaxed, safe and welcomed in another country. That country where I experienced the racism was so visually beautiful, some of the people, incredibly kind, but there were incidents. I could shut down and write off the whole country, or even traveling solo, but I wouldn’t do that. I chose to make it an opportunity for growth, a reason that people like me needed to be out in the world more… they’re going to have to get used to me!
Thank you for that. Now for our main question; What are your “5 Habits You Should Develop In Order Make Travel Into An Opportunity For Personal Growth?”
Do one thing each day that takes you out of your comfort zone. This could be as simple as going out to dinner by yourself once a month.
Start journaling. Writing things down is an amazing release and once you get in the habit, it’s amazing to journal your travel experience. You’ll be able to look back and see your growth. The more attune you are with your mind, the more potential there is for discovery.
Spend 30 minutes per day listening to world news. This could be BBC World Service, Al Jazeera. It could be news or editorial programming like an interview with an author, but most likely you’ll get some world perspective far from home. Get ready for this. Travel could be a crash course in world perspective. This will ease you in.
Practice savoring the small things. That first sip of coffee in the morning. The rush of endorphins when your cardio kicks in, the fresh smell of cilantro when your grocer puts it out. Traveling is a series of small moments that you will come to revere and cherish. Practice this in your day to day.
And one of the most important traits, hone your practice of compassion and empathy.
From your experience, does travel have a negative impact on personal growth too? Is there a downside to travel?
Travel can lead to a lack a roots. I’ve seen people travel to escape personal growth, after all, its not necessary to form community when you travel.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)
Absolutely, Prince Harry, Tess Longfield, Aromica Bhattacharya and the Travalyst team. The travel industry is at a crossroads right now and it has the ability to come back and make monumental change. I want to be apart of this with Travalyst. I think BIPOC communities often get left out of the sustainability and conservation conversation. Safaris and preservation areas are RARELY marketed to Black people and media. This is just one of the ways I would like to help Travalyst in changing the narrative in a field I’m so passionate about. We are all ambassadors and it’s only through traveling and education are these bridges built. When whole swaths of people are left out of these conversations, they are not given agency and capacity for change.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.
About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.
