Meet The Team
Founders
Ross Borden / Co-Founder of Matador / Twitter: @rossborden
Ross Borden is one of the founding members of Matador. He has lived in Spain, Kenya and Argentina and currently resides in his native San Francisco.
Ben Polansky / Co-Founder of Matador
Ben Polansky is one of the founding members of Matador. He has lived in Spain, traveled in Asia and Africa, taught in Central America, and trekked and surfed his way through South America. He lives in San Francisco, where he manages a youth leadership program and travels vicariously through the Matador community.
Editorial Team
David Miller / Senior Editor / Twitter: @dahveed_miller
David Miller is senior editor of Matador. As both a writer and editor, his main goal is publishing stories that, while rooted in a particular place, resonate with people everywhere.
Lola Akinmade / Matador Goods, Editor / Twitter: @LolaAkinmade
Lola Akinmade edits Matador Goods. She is a writer, photographer, cartoonist, artist, GIS consultant, and many more personalities in between . She regularly shuttles between Sweden and the US and maintains a personal site – Geotraveler’s Niche. Drop her a line if you’ve stumbled across the coolest (yet practical!) gear out there.
Ian MacKenzie / Editor, Brave New Traveler / Twitter: @ianmack
Ian MacKenzie is the founder of Brave New Traveler. He has since taken over managing the network. Aside from writing, designing, and filmmaking, he spends his time exploring the fundamental nature of existence and wishing he did more backpacking.
Christine Garvin / Co-Editor, Brave New Traveler / Twitter: @livingholistic
Christine Garvin is a certified Nutrition Educator and holds a MA in Holistic Health Education. She is co-editor of Brave New Traveler and a featured author at Healthier Talk. When she is not out traveling the world, she is busy writing, doing yoga, and performing hip-hop and bhangra. She also likes to pretend living in her hippie town of Fairfax, CA is like being on vacation. Visit her website.
Tom Gates / Matador Nights Editor / Twitter: @waywardlife
Tom Gates is a writer and a constant traveler, having spent most of the past two years wandering Earth with his Macbook. He is also pretending to be a third person right now and is obviously writing his own bio. He knows that you knew that, despite the deft maneuvering of pronouns. He’s co-editor of Matador Nights
Julie Schwietert Collazo / Matador Network Managing Editor / Twitter: @collazoprojects
Julie Schwietert Collazo writes, edits, researches, translates, and produces multimedia projects in collaboration with her husband, Francisco Collazo, going wherever a story beckons. She currently lives in Mexico City and New York City. She is the managing editor of Matador. She’s always looking for untold stories… so if you’ve got one, shoot her a line.
Carlo Alcos / Co-editor, Matador Trips / Twitter: @vagab0nderz
After spending the last two years living and working in Melbourne, Carlo finds himself homeless and unemployed. He’s currently traveling with his wife and their Bike Fridays for the next, oh, say 1.5 years. Follow them at Vagabonderz.com.
Hal Amen / Co-editor, Matador Trips / Twitter: @halamen
Hal and his wife are experimenting in root growing, having recently purchased a home in Austin, Texas. He feels a little weird living only 80 miles from where he was born, and so has decided he should keep traveling as often as possible. His job co-editing Matador Trips is another great excuse to spend copious amounts of time on the road. His personal blog is at WayWorded.
Adam Roy / Editor, Matador Sports / Twitter: @adnroy
Chicago native Adam Roy is editor at Matador Sports and a freelance journalist focusing on sports and the outdoors. The best part of his job: business trips that involve crampons. Check out his blog at illadvisedadventures.com.
Sarah Menkedick / Co-editor, Matador Abroad /Twitter: @SarahMenkedick
Matador Contributing Editor Sarah Menkedick is a freelance writer based in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her writing has appeared in print and online publications, including Literary Traveler, Abroad View magazine, and National Geographic Glimpse. She has traveled, lived, and taught on five continents, and is constantly in pursuit of spicy food, dark beer, and new places to run. Keep up with her on her blog.
Josh Johnson / Matador Video Editor / Twitter: @joshywashington
Joshua Johnson is a soggy Seattle based adventurer with a penchant for misty mountains and black coffee. He wishes to extend greetings & goodwill to all life in the kosmos and invites everyone out for some sushi. With his super heroine wife, Bridget O’Neill, he founded Confluence Creative Media in ‘07 and is well on his way to taking over the world.
Michelle Schusterman / Associate Editor, Matador Goods / Twitter: @Mi_Schu
Michelle is a musician, writer, and teacher just trying to see the world while doing what she loves for a living. After a fantastic year in Salvador, Brazil, she is now teaching ESL in South Korea with her husband and chocolate lab. In addition to traveling and writing, Michelle plays the steel drum in several bands and is an aspiring novelist. She’s addicted to coffee and loves trying new food, the spicier the better.
Leigh Shulman / Matador Life Editor / Twitter: @thefutureisred
Leigh moves around a lot. She’s lived in five countries and spent the last three years traveling with her husband Noah and daughter Lila. For now, she’s finding home in Salta, Argentina where she writes, teaches and is taking a deep breath before the next move. You can read more about her travels on her blog.
Kate Sedgwick / Matador Nights Editor / Twitter: @KateSedgwick
Kate Sedgwick edits Matador Nights from Buenos Aires where she teaches English, learns Spanish and thoroughly enjoys herself. Her art and writing have appeared in print and on-line publications and her novel in progress will be received with prurient glee by critics of American culture if it ever gets into their grubby little hands. Learn more about her than you ever wanted to know at her blog YesThereIsSuchAThingAsAStupidQuestion.com.
Juliane Huang / Contributing Editor / Twitter: @JulianeH
Juliane Huang currently resides in her native California, serving as a medic in a community clinic and writing for Matador. As a child of immigrant parents, she has a strong, vested interest in stories of people experiencing life through different cultures. Follow her writing on julianehuang.com.
Tim Patterson / Contributing Editor / Twitter @tcpatterson
Tim Patterson splits time between Colorado, Vermont and the wilds of Southeast Asia. He contributes across the Matador Network.
Candice Walsh / Associate Editor / Twitter @candicewalsh
Candice Walsh works in a lighthouse and is a technical writer for a deep sea technology company in Canada. When she isn’t writing about sonar equipment, she’s shooting whiskey and hitting on men, or eating nachos and dreaming about travel. She’s currently stationed in St. John’s, Newfoundland, although the soul-sucking winters are encouraging her to hit the road again. Check out her blog, Candice Does The World.
JoAnna Haugen / Associate Editor / Twitter @joanna_haugen
JoAnna Haugen is a globe trotter, former Peace Corps volunteer and avid recycler who writes from Las Vegas, where she can often be found planning her next great adventure. Follow her journeys at Kaleidoscopic Wandering.
Nick Rowlands / Associate Editor / Twitter: @Pharaonick
Nick has lived in Egypt since 2006, and worked as a tour leader, an English teacher, and editor of a Cairo city guide. He’s a lapsed juggler and intermittent yoga practitioner, and isn’t so good at poker as he likes to think. You can follow his sun-crazed hallucinations on his blog, Delicious Chaos.
Paul Sullivan / Editor At Large / Twitter: @paulosullivano
Paul Sullivan is a freelance writer, author and photographer covering music, travel and culture. His work has been published in The Guardian, The Independent, Intelligent Life, National Geographic Music and more, and he has written/photographed several guidebooks for Time Out, HG2, Cool Camping and others. He currently lives in Berlin, where he runs the Slow Travel Berlin website, flirts with history and fiction and continuously tells jokes no one gets.
David Page / Contributing Editor At Large / Twitter: @davidtpage
David Page has run sled dogs into the Maroon Bells, seined for salmon off the Kenai, and traveled from the Algerian Sahara to Paris in the back of a Belgian floral delivery van. He has written for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, and The New York Times. He lives on the edge of one of the largest calderas on earth, on the backside of Yosemite, with his wife, his two boys, and an illegal migrant canine representative of the Aztec god Xolotl.
Twitter & Facebook Ninja
Andy Hayes / Twitter & Facebook Ninja / Twitter: @andrewghayes
Andy is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. When he’s not hanging out with the Twitterati or lining up ammunition for the Matador Twitter account, he’s helping small businesses in travel & tourism understand blogging and social media. He also writes for travel blogs and magazines, including his own, Sharing Travel Experiences.
Interns
Nancy Harder / Intern / Twitter: @nancyharder
Nancy Harder is a musician, writer, and photographer with an affinity for yoga and meditation. She holds an M.M. in Collaborative Piano. When not capturing paradigms and reflections through different mediums, she is searching the globe for the best vegan cuisine. Check out her blog.
Abbie Mood / Intern / Twitter: @milesofabbie
Abbie Mood is a freelance writer and preschool Special Ed. teacher who spends her vacations experiencing as much of the world as possible. Check out her blog at MilesofAbbie.com.
Cathey Franke / Intern / Twitter: @crfranke
Cathey Franke is a writer in Texas who is plotting her epic escape to cooler climates. When she’s not dablling in photography or wandering around airports, she’s obsessing about music and activism on her blog.
Mike Lynch / Intern / Twitter: @RyukyuMike
Mike Lynch, aka Ryukyu Mike, is an outdoor photographer and writer living in Okinawa, Japan. Visit his blog here.
Neha Puntambekar / Intern / Twitter: @neha_pkar
Neha Puntambekar is a freelance writer from Mumbai, currently based in Zagreb. She started off writing advertising copy before realizing there wasn’t much writing to be done there. These days she spends her time between her laptop and her favourite cafe. She’s probably there right now sipping coffee, paperback in hand. Check our her blog.
Matt Scott / Intern / Twitter: @mattscottparis
Matt Scott has spent the majority of his adult life traveling and working abroad. His writing and photos have appeared in publications around the world, both online and in print. Originally from the UK, Matt now lives in Paris where he works as a tour guide and trip leader for an active travel company. His blog is The World Is Too Big.
Eileen Smith / Intern / Twitter: @bearshapedspher
Eileen Smith is from Brooklyn, NY and currently lives, breathes, and works in Santiago, Chile where she cycles, writes, edits, translates and photographs anything that will stand still, or not. She travels when she can and admits to frequent overpacking and other quirks on her blog, bearshapedsphere.
Richard Stupart / Intern / Twitter: @wheretheroad
Richard lives and works in South Africa, exploring as often as possible the strange and unknown places that his continent is so rich in. What stories of far flung places and mischief he is able to trap and bring home are stuffed and mounted on his blog at www.wheretheroadgoes.com.
Sarah Park / Intern / Twitter: @itsmesarahp
Sarah Park is currently spending her quarter-life crisis shuffling between the endless sunshine of San Diego and the incredibly long winters of the Eastern Sierra. She lives and works in Mammoth Lakes, against the beautiful backdrop of trees, mountains, and grungy snowboarders who smell. When not out snowboarding, Sarah occupies her time hiking with her boyfriend and their dog, making disastrous mistakes in the kitchen, and trying to decide where they should live next. Read about her latest exploits on her blog, which she occasionally remembers to update.
Heather Carreiro / Intern / Twitter: @expatheather
Heather is a secondary English and ESL teacher who has lived in Morocco and Pakistan. She enjoys jamming on the bass, haggling over saris in dusty markets and cross-country jumping on horseback. Currently she’s a grad student attempting to wrap her tongue around Middle English, analyze Salman Rushdie novels and eat enough to make her Portuguese mother-in-law happy. Learn more on her blog at ExpatHeather.com.
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