Twelve years at Lonely Planet
From destination editor to leading a global content operation — five roles, three organizational transformations, and one constant: building systems that make good work scale.
Career highlights
Work history
Editorial Director, Destinations Content
Lonely Planet
Lead content and product strategy for a 15-person team across 10+ time zones — mobile app content, CMS implementation, and product development with engineering and design.
- Oversee $5M in annual content operations (ensuring guidebook production stays within $4M budget, managing $1M digital budget)
- Built the content pipeline for the mobile app launch in six months: 70k+ POIs structured with metadata and taxonomy, 99% content reuse across print, web, and mobile
- Designed POIs as connecting nodes between experiences, itineraries, and destinations — a unified architecture built to enable personalized recommendations
- Led the Contentful CMS build with engineering, product, and third-party teams — 10k articles migrated from Drupal, content now published across print, web, and mobile from a single source
- Scaled the editorial team from 8 to 15 direct reports — a distributed workforce that ships 200+ guidebooks a year across 10+ time zones
Managing Editor, Destinations Content
Lonely Planet
Led content strategy through the travel industry rebound and the organization's first steps toward AI integration.
- Drove 164% destination sessions growth and 46% overall traffic increase by shifting content strategy toward international destinations and tightening SEO-content alignment
- Built an automation suite in Google Apps Script that saves 420+ hours a year — faster production workflows, fewer errors
- Merged US and international destination editorial teams into a single operation with shared standards and workflows
- Shaped the organization's AI strategy by advising leadership on integration opportunities and helping prioritize where automation delivered real gains
Senior Editor, Homepage
Lonely Planet
Curated content for the lonelyplanet.com homepage — 500k monthly visitors — working with design and tech teams on editorial and interactive projects.
- Built a contributor database of ~1,000 writers weighted toward global diversity and destination expertise — improving coverage of regions LP had historically underrepresented
- Launched new formats — podcasts, video series, and features — expanding audience engagement beyond traditional articles
- Led editors and copyeditors on SEO-driven content; established standards that balanced search performance with brand voice
Managing Editor, US Magazine
Lonely Planet
Managed team of copyeditors and designers delivering quarterly print magazine (125,000 rate base). Served as company spokesperson for media appearances.
- Represented Lonely Planet as company spokesperson for TV and radio interviews during Best in Travel campaign launches, driving brand visibility across national media
- Co-led front-of-book redesign to sharpen content presentation across print and digital editions
- Aligned editorial calendar with subscription, sales, and company objectives, ensuring content strategy supported broader business goals
Destination Editor
Lonely Planet
Supervised all digital and print content for Canada and Western US, including guidebook production and video content.
- Planned and commissioned 35 guidebooks — new titles and updates — from author selection through publication
- Produced video for destination coverage and brand partnerships — extending the offering beyond print and web
- Collaborated across sales, PR, marketing, and trade teams to keep content strategy aligned with commercial priorities