Brenda’s interest in seeing the world began with books. From an early age, she enjoyed reading about places and cultures far different from her Pennsylvania home. Her first international trip was a college-sponsored spring break in London, which left an impression she remembers to this day.

As a young mother and a school librarian, she kept reading and began planning trips for her unsuspecting family. The first big leap was an online villa rental in Italy (years before that was a legitimate thing), followed by trips to France, England, and then back to Italy three more times with her husband and children in tow. With each experience, she found the increasingly persistent itch to travel harder and harder to ignore.

And that’s about the time when Caroline came calling with a Facebook post looking for help with her thriving business. In 2014, after leaving the library and after her children left the nest, Brenda joined the CTTW team. She’s come a long way from that first intimidating villa rental and has since seen much more (but not enough) of the world. She continues to read and write about far-off places, wanting to see and share them all, but she can’t stop going to Italy.