Journalist, photographer, and editor with a passion for leisure/luxury/family travel, quality craftsmanship, handcrafted artisanry, adventure, photography, music, art, musical theater, literature, and nature. Editor of European Traveler; Writer for Family Travel With Colleen Kelly and Round Trip With Colleen Kelly; and Lead Editor at Inizio Evoke. A born journalist, I spent my childhood writing articles for "The Neighborhood News," a newspaper my sister and I developed in our hometown, and creating silly issues of "Cool Girl" magazine. Having earned my BA in Journalism as well as German for Modern Studies from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and my MS in Communications Management from Webster University in St. Louis, Mo., I went on to work in editing and communications as well as travel writing and photography. I love baking, vintage jewelry, my amazing family, high-quality gear and products ("life is too short to use bad pens"), choral music, the Germanic languages, musicals and theatre, art, crafting, birds and hippos (especially when they hang out together), and reading historical fiction, thrillers, and romance.