My name is Jodi Morris, and my career was in the investment industry, so global investing has, is my thing. And a couple of years ago, I left that and founded my own company, which is called ConnectingGrowth Globally, and really my mission is connecting people and ideas across the world to the United States. I had a career in global investing. Personally,I was also a big traveller, and I began to see things as I went around the world. I particularly love going to emerging markets, and I saw things there that I felt like other people were missing. I saw the opportunity, I saw some of the issues, and beyond just doing safaris in Africa and Khmer ruins inCambodia, I wanted to go deeper that was very people-connected.
So one of the things I did as my mission atConnecting Growth Globally was to organize really immersive, people-connected global travel. I started doing this in 2018, and as you can imagine, COVID put a damper on that. So, COVID hit... I did a little personal pivot, which was I decided to move from San Francisco to Santa Fe. And what happened was that I discovered, in Santa Fe, the same things I was discovering when I would travel to emerging economies, that people visited and it was all very surface level.And I was seeing things differently and I wanted to go deeper.
So I began also offering an immersive, people-connected travel experience in Santa Fe, which I just completed inAugust. The themes I was seeing in Santa Fe and broader New Mexico were around technology. There's a lot of interesting things going on economically that I think are gonna be a big part, I'm excited about for the future of the state, the movie industry. I love the Native American community, I'm really interested to see how that evolves economically within our state. And, of course, we dive into the traditional art and food, but I try and do it in different ways. So, for example, Meow Wolf is one of the most popularly visited tourist attractions, but I love Meow Wolf because it's a Santa Fe export, having now opened in Las Vegas and Denver and soon to the other cities. So I really brought people in to experience Meow Wolf but also understand the social impact that Meow Wolf is having in Santa Fe and the broader New Mexico community.
My hope is, for 2022, that I can do a combination, continue to do the immersive travel right here in Santa Fe, but also go back to these amazing trips that I and others are really anxious to take in 2022. So plans are Guatemala, Rwanda, and Tanzania, so fingers crossed.My hope is that I won't need to make adjustments to the trip, assuming everybody is COVID-safe, but a lot of the same immersive experiences that I've had in the past, which is really understanding the use of technology. And the leap frog applications in Africa and Asia, that will remain the same. And also diving into things, media arts, creative culture that you're gonna find in these urban environments, that will continue to be the same theme as it had been pre-COVID.
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