How this Travel Exec Explores & Unwinds

Happy Monday! As we officially enter mid-November, our staffers share the seasonal products they consumed last week—including eye masks, hair gel, and facial treatments. Our Style Editor, Camille, also speaks with a long-time Swiftie and blogger on what Taylor Swift could be doing better with her fashion choices, and our Culture Editor, Andie Eisen, shares the personality you need to pull off a  bob. Plus, a new Close-Up with travel publication Lonely Planet’s Creative Director, Annie Georgia Greenberg. – Samantha

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THE CLOSE-UP

Inside the Life of Lonely Planet’s Creative Director, Annie Georgia Greenberg

Welcome to “The Close-Up,” where we indulge in conversations with tastemakers, entrepreneurs, designers, and others paving the way in their respective industries. Focusing on the people at the forefront of innovative and diverse companies, join us as we uncover their style ethos, guiding principles, challenges, and insights that have made them successful in the worlds of fashion, beauty, art, and beyond. 

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking to Annie Georgia Greenberg, Creative Director of the travel publication, Lonely Planet. Ahead, we chat about her day-to-day at Lonely Planet, where she gains travel inspo, and of course, the travel essentials she always packs.

Samantha Wu: What are your main responsibilities as a creative director and what does your day-to-day look like?

Annie Georgia Greenberg: I oversee our creative brand marketing; our commercial business; creative commercial business on the creative pitching and execution side; and our social, photo, and video teams. Every day looks different because the needs of the org are different, and also because I'm personally addicted to making things myself. I like to go into the field if and when I can. Sometimes I'll be in Mongolia in the middle of nowhere, but most of the time I'm in an office or in meetings, collaborating cross-functionally with members of my team that span a lot of different time zones all over the world. It's really fun to get to work on so many different types of projects across those business channels. I have a really fun job. I basically look after how Lonely Planet shows up in the world.

SW: Can you tell me how your role at Refinery29 set you up for your current role?

AGG: My role at Refinery29 was non-traditional from the start. My first role there was the New York editor, and I held that job right out of college. I was publishing eight articles a day and overseeing our New York Channel newsletter. I had to get crisp on managing budgets, planning content calendars, and writing. I evolved when we created a video team to be both in front of and behind the camera on commercial and editorial video content. Knowing what it was like both in front of the camera and behind the camera, what it takes to pitch and scale content for different brands, [I] eventually became the supervising producer of our original video series with doc projects that shot internationally.

I was really lucky in that I was able to get a lot of different kinds of experience that I now apply every day to my job as creative director at Lonely Planet. It was a winding journey, but I feel like I have a little bit of experience in a lot of creative fields that lets me be not an authority by any means, but be able to speak to a lot of different types of creatives that I work with and collaborate with every day.

SW: What has been your favorite project at Lonely Planet?

AGG: My favorite series that I've worked on today is our Best in Travel series. It's our big annual list of destinations, and we get to do a video series on that. This year's is all about the senses. So, what does a place look like? Taste like? Smell like? Feel like? Sound like? I actually got to produce episodes in Nairobi and Mongolia.

We work with an amazing production team on the ground of cool locals who help bring a place to life. I think that's a format that is very experimental. It's unlike anything we've produced before and was a big swing. It pays off because you really get a sense of a place from the people who live there and know it best. It's as close to an on-the-ground experience as you can get without being there.

SW: Where do you personally gain travel inspiration for work or otherwise?

AGG: A lot of it is based on the great content that comes out of Lonely Planet, our guidebooks, and what we publish, and getting inspired by these incredible destinations. The more you know about anything, the more interested you are in it. I want to go places based on things I haven't done and things I want to learn. I want to get better at surfing, so I want to take a surfing trip and that will lead to a certain type of adventure. I've never been to a concert at Red Rocks, so I want to take a trip there.

There are different categories of travel. For my personal travel, it's all about, what haven't I done? What can I learn? Who can I meet and what can I see that I haven't already seen? I try to make sure that I'm going places that really facilitate that type of enrichment and can answer the kinds of curiosity that I have just as a citizen of the world. I just went on my first overlanding expedition in Mongolia, and that was totally new and unlocked something within me. I was driving this big Toyota Land Cruiser over all of these unmarked roads, and that was really cool. I want to do that more. I have the privilege of working with other travel nerds who go places all the time, and so, from my colleagues, I get a lot of inspiration too.

SW: What are your travel essentials?

AGG: I always have an eye mask. Right now I have my silk slip eye mask that actually doesn't fall off my eyes. I love it. I have my Away suitcase with the laptop sleeve on the outside, the carry-on that they discontinued, but it has been holding me down for the past six years.

I wear compression socks—I am not afraid to admit it—on long-haul flights. I had an experience once when I was coming back from Paris Fashion Week, my feet could not fit in my loafers when I landed, so I wear compression socks. I have packing cubes. They're monogrammed and really cute. And then I have a case that has a makeup case on top and a jewelry compartment on the bottom. Footwear is very key for me. You can only pack a certain number of shoes, so it's usually like Birkenstock or Samba.

I always bring a tote bag in my backpack for spillover. If you go shopping, then you have the tote bag. Also, you forget that if you're on a beach trip, you're going to need a bag to go to the beach. There are bags, within bags, within bags systems that I have.

SW: What is your guilty pleasure when you're not doing all things Lonely Planet, traveling, and work?

AGG: Girl, I have so many. I watch Real Housewives of New York. I'll just say it. I watch Couples Therapy on Showtime. I love a martini. Putting a full sweatsuit on the second I get home. I try to get massages a lot, because again, you just need to de-stress and de-puff. Powder manicures are my other guilty pleasure.

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