I attended Skidmore College in Upstate New York, where I was thrilled to be reading and writing as I worked towards my BA in English literature. And as if I weren’t writing enough in my creative writing and other classes, I was Opinions Editor of The Skidmore News.

Using my English literature degree as a pretense, I studied abroad at Durham University in Northern England. The experience expanded my world view in a way nothing ever had.

And while I worked as a bartender (making £3.50/hour) in a part of the world where virtually no one tips, I still managed to scrape together enough to visit more of England, in addition to Scotland, Ireland, France and Greece; where I backpacked alone for a month, sometimes sleeping on the beach or within construction sites. I was in heaven.

Still aspiring to write for a living, I moved to Los Angeles to earn my MA in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California. While there I honed not simply my writing of short stories, but novels, feature-length screenplays and scripts for television dramas and sitcoms.

I was wrapping up the program at USC and working several odd jobs when I heard of an opportunity to tell people where to urinate and when to clap. JEOPARDY! was hiring an audience page.

Soon thereafter, I was hired onto the staff where, since everyone else had been there since the Taft administration, I was the baby. I said, “yes” to every opportunity and was thrilled to travel with the show when we produced it remotely in places like Radio City Music Hall. Better still, my executive producer wanted “video clues” produced outside of the JEOPARDY! set and on location.

From humble beginnings (recording clues at places like the La Brea Tar Pits), the “Clue Crew” as it was called, only grew. Before I knew it, I was producing and directing outside of the state, and ultimately beyond America’s borders.

Following twenty-five years with the show, I had shot segments in every state and fifty countries. I also had the opportunity to meet and record material with world leaders and celebrities like President Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Her Majesty, Queen Rania Al-Abdullah.
 
Along the way I also met more than my fair share of actresses, but my favorite by far was a young woman from Tupelo, Mississippi, by the name of Zee James. She was like no one I’d ever met. The fire in her belly…you could almost hear it.

Zee shared my passion for travel. In fact, our second date was in Harlem and our third at Mammoth Mountain. Our travels never waned and as I adopted for myself Zee’s practice of spending birthdays abroad, we would find ourselves getting our passports stamped both in the depths of winter (Zee’s birthday) and the height of summer (my own).
 
More than ever before in my life, I’m focused upon my writing, and together, Zee and I are growing Voyagers Escape so that we can share our experiences with others, and in doing so not only encourage but help them to achieve their dreams when it comes to travel.