Marinel de Jesus was a former human rights lawyer from Washington, DC. In 2016, she founded her social enterprise, Peak Explorations, and media site, Brown Gal Trekker. Both entities aim to create equity and inclusion in the outdoor and travel spaces.
In 2019, she launched the nonprofit organization, The Porter Voice Collective, which utilizes media to advocate for the rights of porters in the trekking industries of Peru, Nepal and Tanzania.
Marinel is also a writer who focuses on stories that elevate the voices of women, people of colour and immigrants.
She has recently discovered filmmaking as a means of advocacy for social changes and completed her first film project, We Are Nomads, in Mongolia where she currently stays as a result of the pandemic.
Marinel is an avid trekker and a full-time global mountain nomad.
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Show notes
- What Marinel does
- Being born and raised in the Philippines
- Getting into hiking due to having a stressful job
- Joining a meet up group to go hiking
- Giving hiking a second time
- Starting to lead treks around the world
- Speaking to us from Mongolia due to Covid
- Thinking about making the transition from a lawyer to a hiker
- How can you make a career out of hiking?
- Taking a year long sabbatical from work
- Making the decision to sell her house
- Becoming a minimalist
- Not having the confidence to start her own company
- How the website and blog evolved
- Losing her mum in 2017 and leaving law
- What Peak Exploration is and does
- Educating people through the blog - Brown Girl Trekker
- Becoming a global mountain nomad
- Being inspired by being in the mountains
- Working and running her business from Mongolia
- Focusing on writing
- From a lawyer to a mountain nomad podcast
- Advice for making the transition from a full time career to digital nomad
- Having thinking time outdoors
- Advice for women who want to travel solo
- The power of taking small steps
- The preparation and planning for a trip
- Film project - ‘Don’t date a girl who treks’ and ‘We are Nomads’
- Final words of advice
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