“Really lit up the room with her humor and relaxed sense of speaking”
Colin Weir, Alberta Birds of Prey Center.
Carol Patterson, Nature Gal and Travel Writer
In the two decades since I left my career as a senior supervisor of seventy oil and gas accountants, I have been a wildlife explorer sharing my love of creatures with fins, fur and feather. I write about the best places to find wildlife on your next day off and I speak to groups on how thinking like explorers will add fun and success to your life.
My travel writing has been featured in Fodor’s Travel, BBC Travel, Roads & Kingdoms, The Globe and Mail, Avenue, Alaska magazine, and Red Deer Advocate, among others and I’m the author of several books including Sustainable Tourism: Business Development, Operations and Management. I am the proud two-time winner of best Environmental/Responsible Tourism Feature by the Travel Media Association of Canada and a media finalist in the Travel Alberta’s 2016 Alto awards.
In my work as a product development consultant, I help destinations determine what they have to offer tourists and the steps needed before they welcome the world. My work provides innovative new travel products; in one case a tourism business increased revenues 25% in one season. Other ideas gain support from DMOS like the strategies to diversify adventure tourism that garnered an Excellence in Tourism Award from the Nevada Commission of Tourism.
I used my private pilot’s license to create and operate the Calgary Zoo’s Flying Zoo program in 1985, the first step in leaving behind my career as a desk-bound accountant to follow my dreams and the open road.
I was also was named Merit Winner in the Pannell Kerr Forster Research Award competition and in 2008, received the prestigious Woman of Vision.
I am also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the department of Geography at the University of Calgary.