About
Travel Fearless, Pack Light
Dawn Booker founded Pack Light Global with the mission to inspire women to travel the world fearlessly and joyfully. Grounded in reverence for sustainable and equitable travel, Booker facilitates shared experiences and creates life-long memories with the women who choose her thoughtfully curated cultural adventures.
With an emphasis on Black women over 40 who are often overlooked by the travel industry,
Booker caters to a niche group of women who prefer experiences over things and privilege meaningful connections between travelers and local cultures. Her bespoke travel itineraries have taken women to Costa Rica, Croatia, France, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Morocco, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, and Tanzania. Her customers and their circumstances are as diverse as the locales Dawn selects: they are at a career crossroads, recently retired, empty nesters, child-free, recently divorced, happily married, blissfully single, life changers, or work-life balancers. These are labels that Dawn strongly encourages her clients to leave at home.
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Packing light isn’t just an action but a state of mind. For Black women, removing the psychological barriers of guilt associated with indulging in self-care is one of the most challenging hurdles to travel. Prioritizing yourself when you have spent a lifetime caring for and nurturing children, spouses, a career, siblings, friends, and aging parents can be daunting. It is a feeling that Dawn is all too familiar with. In 2003, she took her first trip to France at 38 years old and the life-changing experience planted the seed that would become Pack Light Global. Through her personal experiences with travel, Dawn inspires clients to “give yourself the time and permission to discover the beauty, culture, and fantastic food that can be found all over the world.”
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Throughout her years of travel, living abroad, and a 25-year career in marketing and strategic communication, Dawn is a thought leader who has amassed a wealth of knowledge and cultural acumen that makes her a trusted advisor in her professional partnerships with brands, corporations, and publications focused on equity and diversity in tourism. She earned a Master's in Global Communication at the American University of Paris and is an independent global marketing and communications consultant. Booker is an Adjunct Professor of Journalism specializing in International Media, Marketing, and Public Relations at Bennett College. Dawn was selected to launch and serve as the first editor-in-chief of McClatchy Media's syndicated digital travel journal DETOUR: Best Stories in Black Travel..
As a writer and public speaker, Dawn is driven by storytelling, recalling the experiences she’s had and the people she has connected with during her travels. As a global citizen, Dawn believes that these enriching experiences build the cultural competencies that are necessary to create and sustain equitable, diverse environments both in the workplace and within our personal lives.
To travel fearlessly means to be an informed traveler. “Knowing leads to confidence,” and the best way to confidently travel and demystify a new location is through research. To pack light means to be free from the incumbrances that hold women back from experiences that will bring them joy and lead to Freedom.
Make room for joy.
Travel Fearless, Pack Light
Dawn