I have been an adept of independent travel - and writing about it professionally - for two decades. Today, my lifelong passion for and practice of sustainable and local travel has landed me squarely in the responsible/ethical travel camp. Among many other things, I founded BikeAbout Inc. (www.bikeabout.org), an early educational Internet adventure non-profit organization (a massive travel blog before blogging existed); I was an editor/producer for GORP.com, an outdoor lifestyles website; I am a Lonely Planet author; and I manage media and communications (as Chief Communications Officer) for the WHL Group (www.whl-group.com), the largest local-travel company in the world, for which I also oversee a couple of busy travel blogs: The Travel Word (www.thetravelword.com), which showcases responsible, sustainable and local travel, and the Local Travel Movement (www.localtravelmovement.com),a non-profit platform for people passionate about local travel. My freelance writing (lately for lonelyplanet.com, BBC Travel, Huffington Post Travel and Travelllll.com), editing, translations and media wrangling experiences, large and small, has involved both print and the Web in the mature and emerging markets of industrialized and developing nations.