Hi everyone and welcome to episode 44 of the Holding Court podcast. Today I'm chatting with

Steph B, a travel blogger and founder of Travel Break and Buena. She'll share how she turned a gap year

into a career. We'll discuss how she got her startup off the ground, the challenges she faces

as a woman in tech, and we'll both share some of our favorite travel tips and destinations.

All coming up right now on Holding Court.

Boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Bala la la la.

Um, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Um, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Hi, Stephanie. How are you?

I'm good. Thanks for having me.

Of course. I keep inviting women on here that have really, really cool, unique careers,

because I obviously love to hear about their story and how they got to be where they are,

but I'm also kind of just living through

them. All right. As a fellow UCLA alum, let's start with your post-college life, wrote on your blog that

you traded corporate life for a gap year, which is really, really cool and obviously probably really

scary. So share with us how that all started. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny because

it feels like a lot of people are doing it now. And back in 2014, it was a pretty, like, wild idea.

I was even making headlines in the news for traveling solo as a woman. Like, people couldn't

believe that a woman would travel alone, which is crazy to think of

now because there's so many communities. And a lot of people have kind of taken this more non-conventional

path. I went to UCLA. I go, whoo. Woo, go Bruins. And I mean, my parents are immigrants, so they

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