Interview Tammy Leland, Co-Founder of Crooked Trails

Last Tues, I had the pleasure to interview a colleague and friend of mine, Tammy Leland. As a co-founder of Crooked Trails an inspiring travel company creating cultural exchange through sustainable means.

We met through another sustainable travel company specializing in Seattle based tours and realized we both share a passion for travel, cultural exchange and sustainability.

What Tammy and Chris MacKay, her friend and co-founder, have created is a company that strips away the barriers to true cultural exchange while guiding their clients safely through remote regions of the world to gain insights into whom we share our time on Earth with.

Tammy and Chris founded Crooked Trails in 1998 after a long period of travel and graduate study. They looked long and hard at who was practicing sustainable travel, which didn't exist then. Tammy called what they started, 'Community Based Tourism' which meant the community was involved with the decision making on who travels there, how they interact and what they are allowed to do. They also provided tools to the community on how the manage the impact of tourism would have on their economy, society and environment and how to make it a sustainable practice. This practice went one step further then eco-tourism by giving the community the power decide how the world could interact with them.

As their business grew, their clients struggled with just a straight cultural exchange without giving back to the community they visited. At first they called this travel, 'bearing witness', which was living with a family and learning how other people lived, grew rice, etc. Tammy felt strongly that service would not become the reason for travel since it tends to eclipse the cultural exchange aspect of the trip.

They did find ways to engage the communities they traveled to and find out what they needed and would accept these gifts. Most communities did not understand why people would come over and work, since they were concerned about being good hosts to their visitors and not their labor.

The result was a blended experience of shared work and enhanced cultural exchange by sharing  the labor and talking about it in the evening. This program morphed Crooked Trails into a non-profit since the cost of their service projects needed to a different structure for the fund raising. Their programs evolved around cultural exchange with only half the time committed to service to make sure the memories wre primarily of the people they met versus the bragging rights of what they built. Their belief in this method is a paradigm shift for most people who believe in the service of others as the cultural exchange. Now they are contacted by dozens of different groups ranging from high schools and universities to non-profits and religious groups to help facilitate their trips and service projects.

What keeps Crooked Trails sustainable? The guidelines they set down for themselves, the communities and the clients have evolved and maintain the backbone to how they interact. They set boundaries to make sure there is leadership in the communities in the form a tourism committee to guarantee guidelines are followed on the local level. Tammy provides a 30+ page trip packet with detailed guidelines on cultural understanding, money exchange, and appropriate behavior. This is a rigorous, ongoing process, which has resulted in taking certain areas off the active itineraries and some clients being screened or asked to leave. This integrity has served them well as their business continues to grow as people seek more meaningful travel beyond the boundaries of the inclusive resorts and the insulated tours.