The Women Who Travel Power List 2025

Every International Women’s Day, we take stock of the women changing how we travel and release our annual Power List. It’s our big moment to spotlight the kind of work we can’t stop talking about here at Condé Nast Traveler. The women on this list are the personalities taking over our screens to become travel hosts, the conservationists encouraging us to travel more thoughtfully, and the hoteliers creating community within their highly curated spaces. The connective tissue linking all 15 names together? Each woman is forging a path for the next generation within their respective industry.

This year, we are celebrating women in television that you may recognize, like Tracee Ellis Ross, Kristen Kish, and Harper Steele, who, through sharing their own travel experiences on the screen, help us understand our own. There are innovators who toil behind the scenes, striving to make air travel more sustainable (Dr. Jennifer Holmgren), our gear smarter (Stephanie Hon), and our access to space exploration more inclusive (Sian Proctor). There are also women designing hotels that you dream of staying at—not just for the experience, but for the shared set of values among their staff and guests. Take a look at the dreamy Jnane Tamsna in Morocco, founded by Meryanne Loum-Martin—or the windswept Fogo Island Inn on Canada’s Atlantic coast, an innovative tourism hub led by Zita Cobb.

Travel is a dialogue, a back-and-forth between visitor and host, and the mark you make on the place you leave and the place you’re headed. It also means that our storytelling extends well beyond this list, with in-depth podcast interviews, immersive videos, and conversations across our Women Who Travel community that reflect what women travelers are excited about right now, and the conversations they’re driving. Keep reading—or hit play on the video above—to learn more about how the list came together and the women it honors.

Zita Cobb

When Zita Cobb returned to her childhood home of Fogo Island in 2006, she was met by a depleted community. Over 14 years, a moratorium on cod fishing had gutted the island’s economic engine, but the devastation on its traditional fishing community ran deeper still. “It was a cultural collapse. Our lives were defined by cod. When you take that away, overnight you’re facing an irrelevance of centuries of knowledge,” she says. What Cobb did next is now part of hospitality lore: She dreamed up Fogo Island Inn, a community-anchored hotel that would help fuel the economic recovery of this hard-to-reach island off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, Canada—while remaining in service to its people. “The key was community ownership,” she says of the hotel’s model. “If the community is not setting the table and extending the invitation, it’s not community-based tourism.” Since it flung open its doors in 2013, those founding principles have lured purpose-driven luxury travelers to the 29-room inn on stilts—as have its incredible North Atlantic views that include everything from passing icebergs to breaching whales, locavore menus spotlighting seafood fished from local waters, and innately warm community hosts who orient guests to the island (and invite you to their sheds for a drink and a singalong, if you’re lucky). An economic nutrition label online details how every dollar earned is spent, and the profits are funneled to Shorefast, a social enterprise that reinvests in local businesses. Recently, Shorefast launched an initiative to extend the reach of its knowledge, tools, and resources to “more people in more places.” It’s part of Cobb’s strategy to plug Fogo into wider ecosystems. “What we’ve learned in the last 15 years is that we can’t solve everything from our little island. We are nested within a region, which is nested in a province and within a country, so it takes all of us,” she explains. As part of that initiative, this April the inn will host Money in Place, a gathering of economists and thinkers seeking to identify ways in which community economies like Fogo can tap into more global capital—while pursuing the kind of development that doesn’t leave its people behind. “It’s like Gill-Chin Lim, a renowned professor of urban planning, once said, ‘We need to create a global network of intensely local places,’” Cobb continues. In an increasingly flattened world, Fogo is that “intensely local” place, and Cobb is intent on keeping it that way. —Arati Menon

Lucy Edwards

“Travel opens up my eyes,” says Lucy Edwards, the British activist, founder, and journalist who has been blind since she was 17. “When I first lost my eyesight, I thought there would be no point in traveling. But I think not being able to see the world allows me to create stronger connections with people when I meet them.” Stories like Edwards’s remain severely overlooked—and underserved—within the travel industry. And it’s this lack of representation that has fueled her career and taken her all over the world to report on the realities of traveling with a disability (from BBC documentaries highlighting accessibility initiatives in other countries, to videos streamed on her own YouTube channel). Recently, her award-winning work has connected her with monks in Japan and conservationists in Kenya, and given her a platform to discuss accessibility in front of large audiences. “I feel so emotional when I think about traveling, because I truly did not like my blindness before,” she admits. “But putting myself in situations where I feel so out of control and not within my comfort zone, like in Kenya or in Japan, has made me a better person. It’s because I lost my eyesight that I am able to go deeper—I can become totally immersed beyond the visual elements.” That immersion was captured on film in collaboration with Condé Nast Traveler late last year, when Edwards ventured to South Africa and experienced a safari for all the senses. “I think [blindness] gets rid of any presumptions or misconceptions. I can’t just glance at something and then make my mind up about it or judge a book by its cover. People have to show me things from their perspectives. Getting to make these connections with different people has allowed me to love myself more deeply.” —Olivia Morelli

Tracee Ellis Ross

“Solo travel is not just an opportunity to see the world,” Tracee Ellis Ross says. “It’s an opportunity for me to be myself in the world.” With stints living in New York, Paris, and London, the actor and producer began globetrotting alongside her mother, Diana Ross, as a young child. But it was in her early 20s that she discovered traveling alone “gave me the courage to make space for myself, to honor myself, and to do so in places that aren’t home.” It’s a sense of freedom Ellis Ross wants other women to experience, which is why her new show, Solo Traveling With Tracee Ellis Ross, streaming on Roku later this year, is centered on solo exploration, complete with her own stories from the road and tips for viewers on how to do it themselves. (“If you don’t know if solo travel is for you, start by going to the movies or dinner by yourself,” she advises.) And because she’s traveling alone, she’s capturing her experiences alone too. “A lot of it was self-filmed on my phone,” Ellis Ross says. “You get to see me in my private moments really talking through what is going on in my mind. I hope that what is captured shows that it’s okay for a trip to not be perfect. Solo travel is full of glorious feelings of discovery and beauty, but [I also wanted to show] those moments of loneliness, discomfort, and awkwardness when doing wonderful things in an environment that you’re not used to.” Known for her playful wardrobe and maximalist dressing, there is, of course, plenty of fashion to look forward to in the show. “Wearing beautiful clothes in beautiful places is just something that really fills my cup and makes my heart sing,” she says. Because for Ellis Ross, anchoring travel in joy and self-expression is an essential act of self-care. “How to honor yourself is something that we, as women, particularly as Black women, are not necessarily trained to do or taught to do,” she says. “Learning how to discover delight and joy for yourself is revolutionary.” —Lale Arikoglu

Listen to the full interview on the Women Who Travel podcast:

Jennifer Holmgren

Like a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin, Dr. Jennifer Holmgren spins straw into gold—only in her case, it’s garbage being reimagined as travel essentials like shoes and leggings and even airplane fuel. As a chemist and CEO of carbon-recycling company LanzaTech, Holmgren oversees a cutting-edge process that takes waste products—think pollution from factory smokestacks, landfill contents, agricultural residue—and turns the waste carbon into ethanol using a special type of bacteria. That ethanol then becomes polyester, EVA foam, and the gear you wear on your biggest adventures. LanzaTech’s fabrics aren’t niche, either: They can currently be found in technical jackets from REI, cozy fleeces from Craghoppers, yoga leggings from Athleta, and running shoes from On. Holmgren has dreamed of doing this kind of oh-wow science ever since she was a child in Baranquilla, Colombia, in the ’60s. “I was one of those kids who wanted to be an astronaut,” she says. “But I realized that what I loved was not space, necessarily, but solving problems—making a big change.” The next ground-shaking movement in her sights is greening up the heavy carbon impact of traditional planes with LanzaTech’s CirculAir fuel (produced with sister company LanzaJet), which reduces the fuel’s life-cycle emissions by 85% and is made from the same garbage-to-gold technology. Holmgren estimates CirculAir will be powering commercial jets in the next four years, and LanzaJet has already partnered with British Airways, All Nippon Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and Southwest Airlines. Moving around the world to connect with others shouldn’t implicitly mean leaving a massive carbon footprint—Holmgren’s work is shaping a future where this is possible. “I believe aviation is not a luxury,” says Holmgren, whose own favorite trip is an annual whale-watching sojourn to Kona, Hawaii. “It’s necessary. It brings people together, and when you actually meet someone from another culture, you understand that everybody’s the same. Travel is a great unifier.” —Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan

Stephanie Hon

Each time Stephanie Hon packed her bags, whether it was to study abroad in Australia, backpack across Europe after college, or travel the world alongside professional rock climbers and skiers for her first job post-grad, the pain points she felt with reusable toiletry bottles were exacerbated. As someone with sensitive skin and a robust daily routine, Hon struggled to bring all of her personal care essentials with her on the road. “I opened my suitcase a million times to find my products had leaked or exploded, and it’s always something you end up remembering.” Plus, traditional travel bottles have tiny necks, making them nearly impossible to clean or reuse—the average person tosses six single-use travel-sized bottles every year (that’s over 400 in their lifetime). Hon was frustrated with the plastic bottles she was using: “When you’re packing for a trip, you’re so excited, and you want to feel your best—you shouldn’t struggle to bring the things that make you feel most yourself with you.” All of this led her to dream up Cadence capsules, launched in 2019, a thoughtfully designed and more innovative take on the tired, cheap plastic toiletry bottles we all know. The completely leak-proof, customizable, and magnetic capsules are built to have a longer lifespan than the plastic ones currently in your toiletry bag, and they’re made from a blend of ocean-bound plastic and manufacturing scraps, eliminating additional waste. “I think about my grandpa’s red corduroy button-down that I love and is still great after all these years, but we rarely have things made that way anymore,” she says. “You cannot be innovative without being sustainable.” Simply put, Cadence’s philosophy is buy once, use for years. In 2025, Hon says she and her largely women-led team are looking for opportunities to create more products that eliminate stress and allow travelers to worry less about their stuff and focus more on the place they’re in—or going: “How can I remove the things that are occupying your mind so that travelers can enjoy where they are a little bit more?” —Meaghan Kenny

Bindi Irwin

Bindi Irwin knows the value of learning to love the planet from birth. The Australian conservationist cites tagging crocodiles and studying their ecosystems as her earliest memories. “My parents were so good at including us kids and giving us the ability to see the world and the real issues,” she says. Her parents, of course, are the legendary environmentalists Terri and the late Steve Irwin, whose dedication to global wildlife preservation helped teach their daughter that travel and conservation are intrinsically linked. “They took us to the far corners of America and Africa and helped us understand the plight of the planet.” As such, Bindi is carrying on her parents’ legacy by inspiring a new generation to care for the natural world. Her just-released picture book, You Are a Wildlife Warrior!, teaches kids to respect wildlife and its habitats and helps them understand our interconnectedness with nature. Much of her work at her family’s Australia Zoo in Queensland encourages travelers to spend time assisting at its animal hospitals and wildlife sanctuaries (“We have had volunteers from the US, UK, Europe, and Asia who come to make a positive change during their holiday”). Her family’s Wildlife Warriors foundation continues to raise money for causes around the world like wild tiger care in Sumatra and anti-poaching units in South Africa. Yet perhaps her biggest focus is raising her three-year-old daughter, Grace, to love the world just as her parents taught her, with an upcoming four-week road trip around Australia and the hope to take her to US National Parks like the Grand Canyon and Great Sand Dunes, which Bindi fondly remembers visiting with her parents and brother at age seven. “You want to save the things you love,” she says. “When you experience the natural world through travel, you want to protect it.” —Erin Florio

Asma Khan

The Urdu word junoon, which translates to madness or obsession, is at the heart of chef Asma Khan’s purpose. “I’m driven by a junoon to help women,” she says. “When women stand by women, it’s a game changer.” In her all-female kitchen at the celebrated London restaurant Darjeeling Express, the Kolkata-born Khan empowers South Asian immigrant women like herself, many of whom have no formal culinary training, to earn a living and bask in recognition for work that’s all too often taken for granted. After all, as anyone far from family knows, when you want a solid meal that tastes like home, an auntie will sort you out better than anyone with fancy knives and Michelin-starred pedigree. “It wasn’t that I wanted women—I wanted cooks who cook with their heart, with intuition, with instinct, who learn by looking,” she says.“ Khan’s junoon spills out beyond the kitchen, driving her work to feed and empower women and girls with the World Food Programme as well as her own foundation, Second Daughters Fund, which celebrates second daughters—an oft-neglected position in a South Asian family. Everything Khan does is a tribute to the women in her life: “I pay homage to the women who never got thanked, never got paid. This is my salaam to that generation of women—unloved, unwanted, who cooked in this magical way, who did not come and ask you for your review,” she says. Her dedication has earned her a feature on the Time 100 list and an episode on the Netflix docuseries Chef’s Table along the way, but she’s still just getting started. This year, she has two new shows in the pipeline: the cooking program Secrets of the Curry Kitchen on Food Network UK—which will actually explore the idea that curry is not an Indian concept as she examines regional cuisines—and the travel series Tiffin Stories, filmed in India and the UK, where she meets and cooks with prominent personalities while exploring their relationships with food. This month, she’s releasing her eagerly anticipated third cookbook, Monsoon: Delicious Indian Recipes for Every Day and Season. “It’s a very nostalgic book,” she says, describing fond childhood memories from her favorite season in India. “Our food is very layered and nuanced—it’s like a symphony where each flavor is an instrument.” —Sarah Khan

Kristen Kish

A trek-to-table restaurant in Panama’s cloud forest. Swimming in the eyeshot of polar bears on the Arctic Sea. Cooking beside the neon blue waters of Curaçao. Chef and television personality Kristen Kish has done it—with each remote adventure cast onto national television. “I take great pride in sharing stories that might otherwise go untold,” says the Emmy-nominated host of Bravo’s Top Chef, and the previous host of National Geographic’s Restaurants at the End of the World and Travel Channel’s 36 Hours. Kish, with her instantly recognizable jet-black coiffure, is willing to travel to remote parts of the planet to showcase a story or person that matters, like, say, the passionate chef of a floating restaurant in southern Brazil and the Amazonian ingredients she serves. Kish is also game to put herself on full display for the sake of creating greater representation. Her memoir, Accidentally on Purpose, which comes out April 22, chronicles her journey from Korean adoptee in the Midwest, to coming out and falling in love, to ultimately finding purpose in speaking up for a greater good. “Moving forward, I hope to continue being a voice and a representative for diverse communities, serving as a conduit for connection [among travelers] both on and off the screen,” Kish says. It’s all part of her ongoing work to chip away at expectations of what a chef and travel-show host could look like. To Kish, storytelling is advocacy work. “Now more than ever, the media needs to be a true ally—not just a platform for one-off stories, but a force that consistently breaks through the barriers so many people face.” Her next frontier takes Kish back to where it all began: the kitchen. Kish will open her second restaurant, at New York City’s Ned Nomad Hotel, in 2025. The exact details are yet to come, though Kish’s definition of success remains the same: “I want [others] to see themselves in what I do—and feel motivated to pursue their own dreams.” —Megan Spurrell

Natalya Leahy

When the Uzbekistan-born cruising executive Natalya Leahy was eight, she asked her mother for an English tutor because she wanted to travel. Few people were able to venture outside the borders of Soviet Uzbekistan, but Leahy vividly remembers the sole trip of her childhood to the Chimgan mountains near Tashkent, where, she recalls, “I discovered completely different worlds.” That sense of curiosity propelled Leahy into an illustrious global career with the United Nations, The Coca-Cola Company, and eventually, the cruising industry where she most recently oversaw a nearly 40% increase in women ship officers as president of the ultra-luxury cruise operator Seabourn. “Travel transformed my life,” says Leahy. “Even one week spent outside your country can completely shift your perspective.” With her appointment as the CEO of Lindblad Expeditions Holdings this January, Leahy seeks to continue this push for new approaches. Lindblad pioneered the concept of expedition trips over five decades ago, when founder Lars-Eric Lindblad brought private citizens to Antarctica for the first time in history. Today, it operates 21 medium-size ships (ranging from 28 to 148 passengers) in destinations like the South Pacific and the Mediterranean in partnership with National Geographic and a team of environmental scientists, historians, and cultural experts onboard. Leahy is driven by the purpose of helping travelers see places through a local lens. “It creates this closer connection to our planet,” she explains, “and to another human being where we celebrate each other’s differences versus fearing them.” Instead of tapping celebrities for the maritime tradition of naming a vessel, an upcoming christening ceremony for two new ships in the Galápagos will celebrate the local Ecuadorian community. On board, Leahy is driving conversations about more women in positions of power—specifically with men, because “otherwise we are talking to ourselves,” she says. For all the recent gains, Leahy acknowledges that changes at the executive level across the industry are not happening fast enough. “We need diverse faces in leadership that [represent] the world we’re working in,” she says. To do that, Leahy is excited to implement ship- and shore-side diversity mentorship programs at Lindblad with the goal of establishing a culture that recognizes subconscious biases—and challenges them through dialogue. Leahy’s own trajectory from Uzbekistan to the furthest reaches of the globe informed her stance. “When you experience people who are different from you, you learn and you [become] a better leader, a better person in the end.” —Yulia Denisyuk

Meryanne Loum-Martin

Meryanne Loum-Martin is in the business of finding beauty wherever she goes, an appreciation that imbues her luxurious hotel in Marrakech. Opened in 2001, Jnane Tamsna remains the only boutique hotel owned by a Black woman in Morocco—but Loum-Martin was never aiming to be the first of anything, she was simply being herself. Fascinated since childhood by her exposure to different cultures, Loum-Martin spent a big part of her childhood in France with a Senegalese diplomat father and a lawyer mother of Guadeloupean ancestry. “I am influenced by the many places I have loved to travel, like India, Mexico, and Brazil, but the crossroad between West Africa and the West Indies has been a major influence on my life,” says Loum-Martin. Based in Marrakech for the past 25 years, she uses the space she’s created to put the beauty, creativity, and intellectual brilliance of the African diaspora on full display. The 24-room hotel features five swimming pools, a clay tennis court, and nine acres of gardens. But there remains a cozy, communal feel as guests stay between five houses threaded together by cultivated walkways. A salon-esque library, complete with a fireplace, is located right across from the dining room, creating ample opportunities for visitors—often creatives or writers who might just happen to be Pulitzer Prize winners—to connect. “People speak to each other because it feels like you’ve been invited to someone’s home for the weekend.” This year, she took this sentiment one step further with the inaugural The Diaspora Salon, a four-day event held at the hotel. The event drew guests from more than 20 countries to engage with speakers and panelists, view film screenings, and dialogue with one another on themes of art, culture, business, and history. For Loum-Martin, Africa and the cultures of its diaspora have so much to show the world. “Because of colonialism, Africa as a continent and destination was for so long seen as only wildlife and beaches, when it is home to so many fascinating cultures,” she says. “[Spotlighting the power and diversity of] culture is key for me.” A current expansion of the hotel will be unveiled in June, with six rooms added and possible new locations in Morocco on the horizon, meaning the list of lifelong visitors to Jnane Tamsna will only grow. Loum-Martin seems to have mastered the power of creating real community through hospitality. —Enuma Okoro

Sian Proctor

In Sian Proctor’s Futurism artwork, female astronauts prance across the cosmos, pirouette among the stars, meditate on the moon, and spin atop Saturn’s rings. The images are a stark contrast to how many of us see commercial space travel. But for Proctor, PhD, the first Black woman to pilot a spacecraft and the first artist to visit space, opening up this final frontier to civilians is a utopian ideal, not a dystopian one. It’s how the Phoenix-based community college geoscience professor was selected to lead the Inspiration4 mission in 2021, the world’s first all-civilian spaceflight, on a three-day orbit around Earth. She credits her background as a Black artist and poet (in addition to being a geoscientist and NASA astronaut finalist) for allowing her to experience space travel in a new light: namely, earthlight. Earthlight, as Proctor explains, is our planet’s “distinctive luminous signature that’s visible from space,” the byproduct of Earth filtering harsh solar radiation into life-giving energy. “We wouldn’t exist if our planet did not filter sunlight into Earthlight,” Proctor says. “Sometimes, just like a fish jumping out of water, you have to leave the medium that you’re in in order to realize how beautiful and special it is.” Since that pivotal moment, Proctor has written a book exploring Earthlight’s significance for the overview effect, environmental studies, and climate research, and continues to advocate for what she calls a JEDI (just, equitable, diverse, inclusive) space industry. Throughout this year, Proctor will continue to share her ethos that “space is for all” as a US Science Envoy for Space, a role appointed to her by the Department of State in 2024, through which she will help strengthen US science and technology relationships with different nations around the world. “The more we can open [space] up, the better it is for all of humanity,” she says. “I think that we have to go out there, to some extent, to realize how precious it is to live here [on Earth].” —Hannah Towey

Natasha Rothwell

Right before filming the third season of The White Lotus, Natasha Rothwell was at a silent Buddhist retreat. The actor, who returns in the new season of the show as Belinda, the nurturing spa manager in Mike White’s hit HBO dramedy, has deep spiritual roots. “I’ve been in therapy for 20-plus years, so I’m constantly curious about the human condition—why we are the way that we are—and trying to meet myself and not run from myself,” Rothwell says. It’s apropos of a season that finds its cast at a resort in Thailand. “The concept of a wellness retreat is not foreign to me at all.” At its core, though, The White Lotus continues to put a mirror up to the bourgeoisie’s neuroticism, with luxury travel as its lens. Each season, we’ve found characters so desperate to find something—true love, ancestral connections, a basic understanding of who they are—that they’re willing to pay any amount of money for it. Rothwell’s character, who we met in the first season, was refreshingly different because she was grounded with the stoicism so many Black women develop from years of being an emotional dumping ground for everyone around them. Rothwell simply defines the upcoming season as being “about class.” She adds, “It’s about masking the truth of affluence. They can throw money at all of these amazing programs and wellness centers, but it can’t heal the parts of them that are deeply broken. It can’t prevent them from having to face who they really are. And I think that audiences are seeing [that] really rich people have really fucked up problems.” Outside of filming at the stunning Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, the Emmy-nominated actress is looking for a new home for How to Die Alone, the beloved comedy series she created and starred in featuring an airport employee who takes control of her life after a near-death experience. The character’s newfound openness and sense of possibility mirrors her own right now. “Because of White Lotus, I’ve been able to show that I’m a bit ambidextrous when it comes to performance. I want to be able to explore all things. Give me horror; give me historical; put me in a bodice—like, I’m excited to play it all. And I’m open to exploring characters that have toes down, that are grounded.” —Danielle Kwateng
(Additional reporting by Lale Arikoglu)

Harper Steele

For Harper Steele, taking in the scenery of a Walmart parking lot is akin to soaking up a famous piece of art. “It’s like walking into a museum, looking at a Jackson Pollock, and saying ‘What do you see [that’s] beautiful in that?’ There is beauty in a Walmart parking lot, and there’s definitely beauty on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere,” she says. “I think people miss so much of the beauty in America looking for the treasures that we all know about or the tokens that everyone tells us we need to see.” The Saturday Night Live writer has been a passionate road tripper for decades, but it wasn’t until filming the award-winning documentary Will & Harper, in which she in embarks on a cross-country journey with longtime friend Will Ferrell after transitioning, that Steele found herself in her early 60s and “stepping into places I once haunted, now as my true self.” At the heart of the film lies the pair’s 30 years of friendship, captured on screen as they pass through the Grand Canyon and the Mojave Desert, as well as lesser known corners of the US like Meeker, Oklahoma, and Steele’s hometown of Iowa City. There is, of course, a lot of time to kill in the car, and we see the pair doing what all road trippers do: talking. “I would recommend it for any deep friendship,” Steele says. “To be in a car [together] is a great way to be intimate without having to stare at each other. There’s peace to the conversation because you can be looking out the window at nothing, but also talking about the most serious things.” Often, that meant processing the challenges of traveling across America as a trans woman, whether it be an encounter with an anti-trans governor at a basketball game or a hostile crowd at an Amarillo steakhouse. There are many scenes of acceptance, too—and “overwhelming joy”—as Steele walks into what she calls “bro-y” settings, such as a suburban dirt car race track, and claims her space in them. “There was a lot of legislation and legal battles going on across the country [while we were on the trip], and a lot of state houses that were fairly anti-trans, and I just thought there was something positive to do here.” It’s a message that continues to grow in relevancy as transgender rights are stripped back by a new administration, including how a person’s identity appears on their passport. Steele says, “I don’t want to be afraid in places that belong to me as much as they belong to anyone else. The more we challenge that, just by allowing everyone in, the better off we’re all going to be.” —L.A.

Listen to the full interview on the Women Who Travel podcast:

Michelle Zauner

Before Michelle Zauner released her New York Times best-selling memoir, Crying in H Mart, an unflinchingly honest book about contending with her Korean American identity while losing her mom to cancer, she was worried that South Korean readers wouldn’t understand her “daughter of immigrant” feelings. But to her surprise, it was “received so warmly” in the country, says the writer and artist, who has released music under the moniker Japanese Breakfast for more than a decade. “It was more well-received than my music.” Her 2021 album Jubilee did however send her on a blowout world tour that spanned two years and clinched her status as an indie rocker turned multifaceted superstar. Zauner got a firsthand glimpse of the response in her homeland during her past year living in Seoul, where she tasked herself with studying Korean for what will be her second book—a “lighter” memoir about “all the mistakes you make and misunderstandings that arise” while learning a language in your 30s, she says. Before penning that draft though, she’ll be back on the road for her new album, For Melancholy Brunettes (and Sad Women). Inspired by her travels in Europe and the time she spent recording it in Los Angeles with megaproducer Blake Mills during the winter holidays of 2023, the LP is a romantic, contemplative meditation influenced by “incel canon literature” in the form of Italian epic poetry and tales of Greek mythology where “greed and narcissism lead to downfall.” After spending the last three years battling the stage fright that came with her sudden ascension to fame after H Mart and Jubilee, she’s looking forward to bringing the intricate record to life—bolstered by the new side of herself she unlocked in Korea. “I used to be so impatient. It used to drive me crazy, all the rules. I really got into it this time,” she says of immersing herself in the culture. “I had to learn a lot of patience, and I had to learn to be okay with being quiet, listening a lot, and having a different personality [from my own].” —Michelle Hyun Kim

Sara Zewde

“Travel is a big part of my job—it’s the first step to designing,” says Sara Zewde, the 38-year-old founder of Studio Zewde, a Harlem-based multidisciplinary firm specializing in landscape architecture, urban design, and public art projects. She’s on the road more than she’s home in New York City, with commissions ranging from reimagining 220 acres of newly acquired land in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park, with a goal of welcoming visitors from underrepresented communities, to working with the Africatown Community Land Trust and developers in Seattle to preserve the neighborhood’s cultural identity in the face of gentrification. Eschewing an aesthetic-driven approach, Zewde initiates her design process with qualitative research; she prioritizes on-the-ground conversations with locals whose voices have historically been obscured by the architecture space and colonization. “If we start to tap into native legacies of the land, the native ecologies of a place, and the community that sits in and around these landscapes, we start to tap into other formal languages, and our idea of what design can look like will expand,” she says. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for example, illuminated the intersection of culture, ecology, and design for Zewde, a first-generation Ethiopian-American raised in Louisiana. Her voice is one desperately needed today: in the US, Black landscape architects make up less than one percent of the profession. “Growing up as a Black woman in the South, I have always responded really well to environments that affirm my identity, my presence, and my life,” Zewde says. “I hope the landscapes we build affirm people, create a stronger connection between them and their environment, and amplify their voices and sense of self.” For Zewde, design is also a way to tackle the challenges brought on by climate change. To save Graffiti Pier, a cultural icon on the Delaware River in Philadelphia threatened by rising tides and increasingly powerful storms, she’s implementing adaptive solutions: The first phase will make the site safe and accessible while preserving its “grit” and natural terrain; the second will update the sea wall to fortify the site and expand opportunities for street art. In upstate New York, she reimagined eight acres of art museum Dia Beacon’s 32-acre grounds with input from local Indigenous communities, who shared that the site was once a crossing point over the Hudson River for the Lenape people. “Colonization cannot erase [those histories] from the land. You just have to know how to look for them. They’re there.” —Katherine Gallardo

Credits

Lead editors: Lale Arikoglu, Megan Spurrell

Visuals: Matthew Buck, Andrea Edelman, Pallavi Kumar, Zoe Westman

Social: Emily Adler, Mercedes Bleth

Video: Tina Detchon, Dana Kravis, Jess Lane

Audio: Jude Kampfner, Stephanie Kariuki

Talent Booking: Eugene Shevertalov

Newsletters: Colleen Byrnes, Claire Leaper

Copy and Research: Mariana Martinez, Zoralis Perez

Global Content Planning: Jessica Rach

Communications: Erin Kaplan