All the way from New Zealand, Vanessa came to live in Chicago just over one year ago.

She has a background in Event Management and Education and for 10 years worked at the University of Otago in both recreation services and event management, coordinating large scale concerts, markets days, stage shows and parades. She also was involved in organizing recreational classes that had participants enrolling in experiences such as yoga, stone carving, wine tasting and life drawing.

She is into biking, adventures, new ideas, travel and crafts. Her favorite experience has been cycling around Europe for six weeks with just some friends, a map and a tent.

She volunteers almost full time with an anti human trafficking non profit called Traffick Free, for whom she organizes their annual 5K run in September as well as other awareness events through out the year.

She loves to bring people together and to talk about their goals and aspirations and how they plan to get there. She also loves to find out about new ideas, innovations and entrepreneurial happenings. Her favorite topic though is encouraging people to travel, especially to New Zealand.