3 Individuals Altering Journey for Good by Making It Extra Inclusive and Sustainable

Teara Fraser

A Métis lady from Canada’s Northwest Territories, Teara Fraser by no means deliberate to develop into a pilot. However on an aerial tour of Botswana’s Okavango Delta in 2001, she had a revelation: She wished to fly. “It was some of the pivotal moments of my life,” Fraser recollects. “I returned to Canada and began flight coaching. A yr later I had my pilot’s license.”

Fraser was working for an aerial-survey firm when the 2010 Vancouver Olympics introduced international consideration to Canada’s First Nations peoples. She acknowledged that whereas guests from all over the world had been desperate to be taught extra about these communities, transportation to these locations was restricted—a major barrier to rising tourism. “Culturally, we’re taught to do good with the data and abilities we’ve been blessed with,” Fraser says. So she launched into a mission to attach vacationers to the distant communities of northern and coastal British Columbia.

 Her answer was Iskwew Air, Canada’s first Indigenous-owned and woman-owned airline. Launched in 2019, Iskwew operates day by day service between Vancouver Worldwide Airport and Qualicum Seaside, on the northeastern coast of Vancouver Island. The airline additionally runs personal charters to different hard-to-reach locations in British Columbia. The identify (pronounced iss-kway-yo) means “lady” in Cree, a language spoken by some Métis folks; Fraser selected it to represent matriarchal management, a touchstone of Métis tradition.

Because the launch, Fraser has continued to champion a extra various, inclusive, and sustainable aviation business: Her nonprofit, Give Them Wings, encourages Indigenous youth to discover careers in aviation, whereas Iskwew Air offsets its emissions by buying credit from the Nice Bear Forest Carbon Venture. In 2023, she based Elibird Aero, a “clear aerotech” firm targeted on improvements equivalent to totally electrical planes. Most not too long ago, Fraser ventured into hospitality with the opening of Liberty Wilderness Lodge, a distant sanctuary in northern B.C. that she co-owns along with her husband, Trevin. 

“I all the time say that getting my wings gave me wings for the whole lot else in my life,” Fraser says. “It gave me braveness and inspiration, and taught me the worth of laborious work.” —Gina DeCaprio Vercesi

Sarah Dusek

“Can we construct a enterprise that helps save the planet?” That’s the query Sarah Dusek is asking along with her newest hospitality endeavor, the six-suite Few & Far Luvhondo, in South Africa. It’s the primary safari lodge for her new firm, Few & Far, however it’s not Dusek’s first rodeo: She’s the founder, alongside along with her husband, Jacob, of the glamping operator Below Canvas, which the couple offered for $100 million in 2018. Her new enterprise sits amid the Soutpansberg Mountains, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that’s dwelling to wildlife together with giraffes, leopards, and the endangered pangolin. An natural farm provides the kitchen and, by way of the replanting of endemic flora, the challenge goals to ultimately sequester greater than 100,000 tons of carbon a yr. “This can be a place to immerse your self within the wilderness and let it communicate to you,” she says.​ —Elaine Glusac

Vikas Khanna

Celebrated Indian chef Vikas Khanna has written cookbooks, gained Michelin accolades, and, in 2024, opened the buzzy restaurant Bungalow in New York Metropolis. However considered one of his biggest achievements had nothing to do with high-end eating. Quickly after the pandemic started—whereas “issues had been falling aside,” as he places it—Khanna set his thoughts to getting meals to households in want throughout his dwelling nation, a challenge he dubbed Feed India. “It began so small,” says Khanna, who was directing deliveries and fund-raising remotely from New York. “By the point I needed to decelerate to open Bungalow, which was my sister Radhika’s dream challenge, we’d delivered 84 million meals.” Although his sister died after a protracted sickness in 2022, he opened the restaurant on the day that will have been her fiftieth birthday. “The best artworks have all the time come from damaged hearts.”​ —Hannah Selinger