Co-Founder & CEO, Kind Traveler
Jessica Blotter is CEO & Co-Founder of Kind Traveler, an internationally recognized speaker, and a journalist. The moment she discovered the love of travel can’t be separated from the state of the world after witnessing devastating poverty on a trip to Belize, she wondered how the $7-trillion travel industry could be harnessed to benefit local communities, the environment, and animals. This experience led her and her co-founder to harness their entrepreneurial backgrounds to launch Kind Traveler, the first socially-conscious Give + Get hotel booking and sustainable travel media platform empowering travelers to positively impact the destinations they visit.
Blotter has been featured in more than 300 news outlets including The New York Times, Forbes, CNN, Conde Nast Traveler, and Travel + Leisure for her accomplishments with Kind Traveler. As a speaker, Blotter delivered a TEDx salon talk The Future of Travel: Purpose is King, was a finalist at both the 2019 UNWTO Travel Tech Adventure Pitch Competition in Chile and the 2019 Lufthansa Innovation Hub Changemaker Challenge in Germany and was the Keynote speaker at the 2019 Tahoe Chamber Summit on Responsible Tourism. She’s also been a speaker on the stages of Sonoma County Tourism’s 2019 Annual Summit, Travel & Adventure Show, UCLA Marshall School of Business, CREST (Center for Responsible Travel) Annual Forum, Women’s Travel Summit, Impact Travel Alliance Summit, Lodging Magazine’s Green Lodging Summit, Boutique Lodging & Lifestyle Leadership Summit, BLLA’s TIEWN (Travel Industry Executive Women’s Network), Enlightened Entrepreneur Summit, Travel and Tourism Marketing Association, Female Founder University by LAUNCH, and more. She’s also a regular guest lecturer on social entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism at both UCLA and USC.
As a journalist, she’s contributed to Fast Company, Hotel Executive Magazine, Hospitality Design, One Green Planet, CBS Los Angeles, Spa Insider, and the Boutique Lodging & Lifestyle Association (BLLA), and more. When it comes to awards, she received a ‘2020 Travel + Leisure Global Vision Award,’ was a finalist for a BESSIE Award as a ‘2019 Startup of the Year’ by Women in Travel Summit and received the ‘2017 Rising Star in Travel & Tourism Award’ by WITTI (Women in Travel & Tourism International), amongst others.
She started her career as an earth science educator teaching 130 underserved students each day at UCSD’s Preuss School and later spent 10 years working with travel and lifestyle media startups as an associate publisher where she played a key role in the growth and expansion of multiple media companies. She holds an M.A. in Education from Ottawa University and a B.S. in Biology from Arizona State University. She currently resides in Manhattan Beach, California. Find inspiration to do more than travel on KindTraveler.com. Learn more about Jessica on her LinkedIn profile.