We recently gathered for the first ever Ungala, a celebration of 40 years of UnTours and the vital work of the UnTours Foundation. The celebration was a happy meeting of tribes, a place for people working in all aspects of UnTours to connect. Current UnTours employees gathered with UnTours Foundation board members, foundation loan recipients, and a handful of local donors, many of them Untourists who have taken multiple trips with us!
UnTours Foundation loan recipients and community supporters were there, including some impressive speakers. Gabriel Manujan (left) is the founder of Wash Cycle Laundry, a laundry service that makes its pickups and deliveries by bike. The foundation loves a project like his because it has an eco component, it creates jobs for people in vulnerable populations, and it is replicable. Wash Cycle has expanded to Austin and Washington DC. When I asked Gabriel about expansion, he was candid about its challenges. He’s an agile leader who spoke about the foundation with gratitude. Beyond the seed money that allowed him to start and to court bigger investors, he expressed gratitude for the practical, hands-on business support the foundation offered, including consultation with a business advisor.
Yasmine Mustafa (third from left) is the founder of ROAR for Good, another of the foundation’s investments. She also spoke at the party, telling the story of the assault in her neighborhood that lead her to the big idea for her business. Roar is a small personal safety device women can wear as jewelry or easily clip to a pocket or purse. If they are in danger, they can activate it, and it will sound a loud alarm and send messages with location details to friends and family. The company is also investing in educational efforts in the community to foster the kind of respect and empathy that make assaults less likely to happen. Yasmine expressed her gratitude for foundation support.
Elizabeth Killough (second from right) is the UnTours Foundation Director. She coordinated the event. Alix Rabin (right) is the president of the UnTours Foundation. She had the honor of introducing Jay Coen Gilbert (center). Much more on his comments below…
UnTours president Brian Taussig-Lux (left) made some nice comments before we sang Happy Birthday, thanking UnTours staff members for their hard work, loyalty, and dedication. He called us a fine group of people, and I would agree. As many of the staff have worked for UnTours for 15 years or more, we certainly are a loyal, experienced, worldly, and knowledgeable gang. We’re fun party guests too.
Brian also serves on the foundation board. He knows people in all tribes, so even he was a little surprised to admit that there were a number of guests he had not met before. He enjoyed networking with loan recipients and community supporters as much as the rest of us did. There was a lot of mixing and “Oh! I’ve heard about you!” We are all busy in our specialties, whether on the business side (coordinating trips) or on the loan recipient side (creating new businesses and jobs) or on the foundation side (fundraising). It is good to see the whole operation, and how interconnected our work is.
Case in point: Mia Lehmann (left), Jane Miluski (center), and Mary LeFever (right). Mia has worked for UnTours at three very different points in its history, in three different capacities. She is currently running The Right Vacation Rental, our apartment-only rental service. And she is working on our UnTours in Spain and France, as well as our new Ireland and London UnTours.
Jane is a loyal client and a donor. I remember her fondly from a Tuscan Untour I helped her arrange for a group of painters she was leading. Their Untour was a fun and extremely fruitful artistically. My colleagues and I went to a nearby community art center to see the exhibit of their Tuscany paintings later that year. Jane has returned for other UnTours trips since then and has become a faithful donor to the UnTours Foundation. It delights all of us to see how many of our UnTours travelers donate to the foundation!
Mary is all of the above and then some! She was honored in a lovely speech by Elizabeth, who pointed out that Mary and her family were the first Untourists, when her dear friend Hal heard she was going to Switzerland and offered to make arrangements and lead them personally. Mary went on to become the first loan recipient, long before the UnTours Foundation was born, when UnTours founders Hal and Norma Taussig lent her seed money to start a Montessori School in Media (the Walden School). Watching her success and seeing the fruits of investment may well have inspired them to start the foundation. In retirement, Mary joined the office staff of UnTours, working as a helper on the Swiss team, handling everything from customer service to sales calls. She was a graceful and warm presence in hectic times. She served on the UnTours Foundation Board from its inception. As Hal and Norma moved away from the functioning of the foundation, she played a vital role as a guardian of her dear friends’ vision. Now that the company has been inherited by the board, she is stepping down.
UnTours is nothing without its staff. Anna Greeley (left) is our secret weapon here at UnTours, a beautiful soul with an unsinkable spirit. She helps behind the scenes, with mailings, database maintenance, clerical support, and other odd jobs. There are no words to describe how much we love Anna. She makes us laugh and smile every time she comes in for a work shift. And she can bake the pants off of anyone, as her cheesecake proved to everyone at the event who was lucky enough to grab a slice!
Patti Kirkpatrick (right) is the director of Private Access Journeys, UnTours’ new luxury company, offering very customized experiences in Paris and Florence, and personal travel arrangements anywhere in the world. Though Patti has only been with us for a year, she brings 30 years of travel experience to her work here. She is a bright light in our office and was a critical help to party planning and execution, busy in the kitchen for much of the event. She blushes when I compare her to Martha Stewart, but if the apron fits…
And then there was the keynote speaker, Jay Coen Gilbert (left) and his poignant reminder of why we are all here–in this room, in the UnTours family, and on this earth!
Jay is a co-founder of B Lab and the B Corporation movement, which serves, promotes, and certifies businesses that value people and planet as well as profit. Their rigorous certification process examines companies’ governance, transparency, community impact, diversity, ecological impact, and employee policies. In a world where anyone can and does claim to love the planet, they force companies to prove it and encourage business to be a force for good and progress in the world.
UnTours is a proud founding B Corporation. But in Jay’s keynote speech, he talked about the very special, very personal role that Hal Taussig played in his vision. Jay met with Hal early on, when B Corp was just an idea, and Hal encouraged him to set a plan and put the idea on paper. Hal continued to be an inspiration to Jay as he founded his organization and grew it into a global movement. In his remarks, Jay spoke about the importance of taking chances, of trying and failing, and of doing meaningful work. Some of us were moved to tears. Others (like Elizabeth, to Jay’s right in the photo) were beaming the entire time.
See segments of Jay’s speech here.
Jay also reminded all of us to take an Untour and spread the word to family and friends. As UnTours thrives as a business, the UnTours Foundation grows and furthers its reach!
We missed Hal that evening, but Jay’s comments brought him into the room with us and made it clear that his inspiration and values continue to inspire all of us and the larger business world. We were all so proud of our Hal and this company he created 40 years ago!
I toasted with Cathrin Baumbach (right), the coordinator of our UnTours in Germany, Austria, Greece, and Eastern Europe. We’ve been colleagues and friends for 14 years. Earlier in the evening when chatting with a loan recipient, we realized that we are both foundation donors. As a staff, we are very invested in the mission of the foundation and labor hard to make profits to support their work. But a number of us actually make periodic donations as well! We aren’t the big donors, but our modest contributions are celebrated.
We sipped fair trade wine and enjoyed the post-speech lull indoors while our kids gathered at the fire circle outside, roasting marshmallows. We were so cozy in the home of Wendy and Tom Hibbard! The space is filled with beautiful and eclectic furnishings, paintings, and pictures, including some framed childhood art by their grown sons. It was the perfect setting for a gathering of new and old friends. In true UnTours style, a portion of the food arrived potluck. I brought a fruit salad and Cathrin brought a veggie tray. More like a family gathering than a tribal one.
Long live UnTours! Long live the UnTours Foundation! Long live the vision of Hal and Norma Taussig and the entrepreneurs, philanthopy, and social movements they’ve inspired. Cheers!