Discover how Travis built a career connecting communities across cultures without a traditional path.
Travis is a Cross-Cultural Community Strategist and Learning Experience Designer who helps people connect, learn, and grow across cultures. His career has taken him from classrooms in Florida to communities around the world, including Canada, Colombia, China, Haiti, and Kenya. Along the way, he developed expertise in cross-cultural communication, instructional design, event coordination, and global project management—not through a traditional path, but through hands-on experience, continuous learning, and a commitment to building bridges between people.
Travis’s journey began early. As a child, he watched his mother lead a daycare center, and by high school he was already working as a teaching assistant and after-school instructor. His education followed a nontraditional route, starting with online learning long before it became widely accepted and later expanding through studies in the United States, Canada and Colombia. Despite building valuable skills and real-world experience, Travis encountered the paper ceiling throughout his career. He was sometimes screened out of opportunities because he did not have a bachelor’s degree and often found himself needing to prove his abilities beyond what was listed on paper. Those challenges affected his confidence and access to professional networks, but they also strengthened his resilience, adaptability, and determination to create opportunities for himself.
A defining breakthrough came when Travis moved to Colombia and established Paradox and Poetry, a community-centered platform that brings people together through storytelling, poetry, music, workshops, and live events. What began as a response to a community need grew into a space where people from different backgrounds could connect and belong. Through that experience, Travis realized that his skills—writing, facilitation, public speaking, bilingual communication, and community-building—were powerful enough to create a meaningful impact. His story reflects what many STARs know firsthand: opportunity doesn’t always come from waiting to be chosen. Sometimes it comes from taking action, investing in yourself, and building something that helps others thrive. As Travis puts it, “Err on the side of action.”
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