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

Teara Fraser

A Métis girl 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 needed to fly. “It was one of the crucial pivotal moments of my life,” Fraser remembers. “I returned to Canada and began flight coaching. A 12 months 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 world wide had been desirous to be taught extra about these communities, transportation to these locations was restricted—a big barrier to rising tourism. “Culturally, we’re taught to do good with the information 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 resolution was Iskwew Air, Canada’s first Indigenous-owned and woman-owned airline. Launched in 2019, Iskwew operates each day service between Vancouver Worldwide Airport and Qualicum Seashore, 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 “girl” in Cree, a language spoken by some Métis individuals; Fraser selected it to represent matriarchal management, a touchstone of Métis tradition.

For the reason that launch, Fraser has continued to champion a extra various, inclusive, and sustainable aviation trade: 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 centered on improvements resembling absolutely electrical planes. Most just lately, Fraser ventured into hospitality with the opening of Liberty Wilderness Lodge, a distant sanctuary in northern B.C. that she co-owns together with her husband, Trevin. 

“I at all times say that getting my wings gave me wings for every part else in my life,” Fraser says. “It gave me braveness and inspiration, and taught me the worth of exhausting work.” —Gina DeCaprio Vercesi

Sarah Dusek

“Can we construct a enterprise that helps save the planet?” That’s the query Sarah Dusek is asking together 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, nevertheless it’s not Dusek’s first rodeo: She’s the founder, alongside together with her husband, Jacob, of the glamping operator Below Canvas, which the couple bought for $100 million in 2018. Her new enterprise sits amid the Soutpansberg Mountains, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that’s residence to wildlife together with giraffes, leopards, and the endangered pangolin. An natural farm provides the kitchen and, by means of the replanting of endemic flora, the mission goals to finally sequester greater than 100,000 tons of carbon a 12 months. “It is 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, received Michelin accolades, and, in 2024, opened the buzzy restaurant Bungalow in New York Metropolis. However one in every of his best 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 residence nation, a mission 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 mission, 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 at all times come from damaged hearts.”​ —Hannah Selinger