Episode 237 - Christine Sperber, MEA
In this episode of Soul of Travel, Season 6: Women's Wisdom + Mindful Travel, presented by @journeywoman_original, Christine hosts a soulful conversation with Christine Sperber of MEA.
Christine Sperber, Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer at MEA, is chief architect of the embodied, experiential aspects of its workshops and programs. She is a former World Cup snowboarder and serial entrepreneur who has launched and grown successful hotels, businesses, and industry-evolving ideas in the sports and hospitality worlds and beyond. The word her workshop participants use most often to describe her is “badass” in recognition of her irrepressible energy and ability to make shit happen.
Christine has managed pro athletes and world-class snowboard camps. She has founded award-winning hotels and innovated game-changing hospitality concepts. She introduced the first machine-groomed half pipes on glacial snow when no one else thought it could be done. She has created sporting event series that are still happening decades later and worn the hats of writer, restaurateur, multimillion dollar sales rep, and more.
As MEA co-founders, Christine and Chip worked together to turn the idea of a Modern Elder Academy into a reality. She is a devoted team builder whose authenticity, values-based leadership skills, and empathetic engagement create community wherever she focuses her attention. She is a passionate activist and steward of the land and is dedicated to creating transformative experiences that change people’s lives. She makes everything she gets involved in more fun, more meaningful, and more human.
Wisdom-Keeping, Second Adulthood, Midlife Chrysalis, and Middle-escence: The Power of Naming to Reframe
Together, Christine and Christine ask: if “first adulthood” spans ages 20–50, how will you shape your “second adulthood” from 50–80? Christine Sperber’s own path, from professional snowboarder to Baja hotel pioneer, taught her the power of embodied learning: micro-adjustments, whole-body presence, and experiential curriculum. At MEA, those lessons become tools for intentional reinvention, guiding participants out of stale patterns and into a deliberate next act.
Midlife rarely comes with rituals or community support, even though it often brings career shifts, empty nests, hormonal changes and a cultural idea of “crisis.” Christine Squared (Christine and Christine) discuss the power of naming to actually create new concepts, new perspectives, and new ways of interacting with experiences and information.
In naming the Midlife Chrysalis phase, MEA provides a container where peers can share and mourn what’s lost while co-creating new purpose. MEA (Modern Elder Academy) provides destination workshops and online programs designed to give you the tools, practices, and support to navigate midlife challenges and thrive in the second half of life.
“As you know, we age out of traditional caretaking and perhaps even like traditional roles of power in the workplace into feeling irrelevant. And I don't know that it's necessary. I think that this trap of like, what I have to say and contribute has to be this gigantic lifetime of experience, which of course is valuable… But, you know, a ride to the train station sometimes is, is life changing for that single day? And maybe that's the platform. Maybe those are like the micro steps that get us to reimagine the way that we show up for each other.”
Women’s Health: Agency, Advocacy & Healing
Aging in a female body remains shrouded for so many of us. Christine shares that even “with all its ills,” social media does provide the chance for community and belonging and has found value in the communities and connections she has made. Christine shares how she believes that social media is shifting: “The visibility of these voices that would have been silenced systematically…they’re there, and we’re hearing from them.”
Finding connection and support for this period of aging is one first step to interact with the power and wisdom in ourselves and others. Christine and Christine discuss the different wisdoms folks tap into at MEA and the importance of paying attention to our own experience in evolving the understanding and tools we have to navigate perimenopause and menopause.
Christine led the intention into a real-world application of everything she was learning through her work with Dr. Suzanne with plans for a menopause-friendly retreat center. “I got really curious and we started searching around for the right thought partner, the right voices. Um, and this is going back like maybe five or six years. And I said I, I wanna have like a, um, pro changing female, you know, awareness friendly, like almost a perimenopause friendly retreat center. We wanna be able to advertise that we have cooling pillows and that the windows open and that we have the right food to support, you know? Um, and it was a radical idea at that time.
Every area of the body has estrogen receptors and it’s systematically undertreated, in some part due to the lasting effects of leading studies like the Women’s Health Initiative study, which set back HRT and similar research by issuing a blanket perspective on breast cancer risks. The facts are much more nuanced; as Christine shares, we are not doctors, but so much emerging research reveals that hormone replacement therapy can be preventative and an integral part of the symptom management of perimenopause and menopause.
“That conversation is not just happening in our fifties and our forties, but even younger now, and they are arming themselves with information. So kudos to younger generation,” Christine shares.
Sustainable Tourism & Community Empowerment
The conversation shifts into sustainable travel and how community empowerment can completely change the course of a community.
When Christine began working in Pescadero, Baja, she learned that what was needed wasn’t just jobs – it was creating roles for managers and leaders in the industry. “Any kid with any ambition was leaving… the opportunity just wasn’t there.” Christine and local leaders and partners insisted on career ladders, so she led the investment in fair wages, training, and mentorship pathways. Today, many part-time staff have advanced to supervisory roles, funding water and electricity for their families.
The same approaches have ensured MEA’s sustainable travel outcomes; retreats not only transform guests, but also fuel a thriving middle class while preserving the town’s agricultural and artisan traditions.
Joy as Resistance
Amid global crises and personal challenges, joy can feel frivolous or even shameful. But doesn’t need to.
Edward Abbey’s declaration in Desert Solitaire shatters that notion: “Where there is no joy, there can be no courage, and without courage, all other virtues are useless.”
Christine and Christine want every single one of us to reclaim joy. We can let joy become a virtue amplifier, which leads to magnifying empathy, strengthening courage, and reminding us why the struggle is absolutely worth it.
“If you look at other points in our lives that are so filled with change, we have built tools, schools, rituals, scaffolding to help us move through that… When you say midlife, the next word that comes into almost everyone’s mind is ‘crisis.’ It is not really the truth. You see people blooming, stepping into such incredible power and groundedness.”
Soul of Travel Episode 237 At a Glance
In This Episode, Christine shares:
Transforming the idea of a “midlife crisis” into a Midlife Chrysalis
Creating community for important conversations and meaningful connections
Seeking wisdom and knowledge during life transitions and the need for more support, including during menopause, empty-nesting, retirement and more
MEA’s upcoming Women’s Health: Reclaim Your Agency, Power, and Freedom retreat
Joy as Resistance
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Resources & Links Mentioned in the Episode
New listener? Welcome!! Get to know Christine here on the Soul of Travel website and take a listen to past episodes and more.
Visit Christine’s summer & fall book recommendations below!
Rise Sister Rise: A Guide to Unleashing the Wise, Wild Woman Within
Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential by Caroline Myss
Your Inner Physician and You: CranialSacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release by John E. Upledger
About the Soul Of Travel Podcast
Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of people making a positive impact in the tourism industry. In each episode, you’ll hear the stories of women who are industry professionals, seasoned travelers, and community leaders. Our expert guests represent social impact organizations, adventure-based community organizations, travel photography and videography, and entrepreneurs who know that travel is an opportunity for personal awareness and a vehicle for global change.
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Credits. Christine Winebrenner Irick (Host, creator, editor). Christine Winebrenner Irick (Guest). Original music by Clark Adams. Editing, production, and content writing by Christine Winebrenner Irick
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Monthly Soul Circles: Gatherings to Begin This Month!
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Soul of Travel Episode 237 Transcript
Key Words: women’s travel, transformational travel, sustainable travel, social entrepreneurship
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Welcome to Soul of Travel podcast. I'm your host Christine, and I am very excited today to be welcoming Christine Sperber, who is the co-founder of MEA. And this is your Christine Squared episode, which I'm super excited for as well. Um, I have, I was just, uh, sharing with Christine what a fan I am of your work and that I feel kind of like a total groupie at a concert or something to be having this conversation.
Um, and as I was preparing, I was thinking, oh, if only we had like three hours, five hours, so that, so much that we could get into. But, uh, either way, I'm really excited for this conversation and happy to welcome you to the podcast.
Christine Sperber: Thank you, and it's a mutual admiration society. It goes both ways. I'm thrilled to be here and uh, thanks.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Thank you. Well, to begin, I am just gonna let you, um, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit more about who you are and the work that you're doing right now.
Christine Sperber: Oh, thank you. Um, so currently, um, we are just about eight years into launching MEA, the Modern Elder Academy, which was designed to reframe the idea of aging and let us really be intentional about what we wanted to do with what we call the second adulthood. So if first adulthood is kind of like 20 to 50 and that journey from 20 to 50 is the same amount of time as 50 to 80, what are you gonna do with that second adulthood?
We really do choose, get to choose and be intentional about that. So creating the space and the tools and the school. To ask those big questions in community was the idea of MEA. Um, leading up to that, I worked in hospitality for a time and before that I was in the snowboard industry, um, as both an athlete and a event manager, and an athlete manager, and ultimately a camp manager.
Um, and it was a snowboard camp operating on a snowfield. And from there I kind of leapt into launching hospitality operations in southern part of Baja Mexico. And there was a strange amount of overlap between operating a snowboard camp on a snowfield and operating, opening and operating the first luxury hotel in a very remote and rustic place.
So that's, it's been a, a winding road and lots of fun, I would
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I, I did wanna ask you a little bit more about your background and how, you know, I mean, you kind of mentioned, but how those years you, you spent as an athlete, as a snowboarder and an entrepreneur, like how that really influences the work you're doing now and maybe how you even think about re-imagining what the future looks like for you.
Like, have, have those parts informed what you hope for in the future, or what you hope for others.
Christine Sperber: Oh, that's a great question. I think what I realized when I started working kind of outside the bubble of snowboarding was what an embodied learner I had become. I don't know that I was always an embodied learner, but you know, in, in snowboarding it's about, you know, being present to your body and micro adjustments and learning new tricks and, you know, constantly adjusting to gravity really.
And so to, you know, kind of fast forward to now a life and experience design, which is really rooted in empathy. Um. We built about 160 page workbook together with the curriculum that was our original curriculum at MEA. And that came out of a 13 work week long beta program that we did with 153 different people who came to Baja and kind of let us test on them.
And we realized that there were concepts that were conceptual, that we're scholarly, that we're classroom based, but that not everyone learns the same way. And so what we collaborated on together was how do we take what's in the, in the curriculum and take it out of the classroom into experiential so that it might land for an embodied learner in a different way.
And that has become pretty native to me from my time as being an athlete. So I didn't even realize it until I started working with Chip and Jeff, my two co-founders. And Jeff is just like. Such a massive thinker, such a just, he worked in like green supply chain innovation for 30 years before he came to MEA.
And so he's always looking at the big levers where I think I tend to look at the little levers. Um, and you know how sometimes when someone sees you in a certain way, it changes the way that you see yourself. So Jeff kind of explained a lot of me to myself and, you know, where before I might've been dismissed, I'd be like, yeah, of course.
Everyone would see that the way to this lesson is to balance rocks, but I didn't. And so, um, I think being an athlete made me an embodied, embodied learner, which made me able to design experience to land lessons for embodied learners. And then moving forward, I know that I want to stay strong and powerful in my body.
I know that that frailly is almost inevitable, right? We see that a human body changes over time. Um, but there are things that we can do to support ourselves and our strength and our vitality. And that means a lot to me because I've always been, um, and I suppose you and I, I'm assuming you and I have this, um, in common and a fierce independence, right?
And so I see kind of a, a vital physicality part of that independence.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. Um, I think we'll probably tap more into that, um, in the, in a later moment in this conversation. But I definitely, that definitely resonates with, I think, some of the transitions that I've faced in this moment because it is a very strong awareness that that, uh, vitality and that independence might.
It was like I took for, took it for granted. And you come up against the real, real realization that like, it's not a given. And so I think that can be a, a very humbling moment in our, in our lives.
Christine Sperber: Right? When you have like your first major injury or your back hurts for the first time, you're like, wait, what is happening? I can't just live on fruits.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Such a disappointment. Um, well I wanna start this conversation with really, um, understanding where this space comes from and kind of reimagining our relationship with midlife and, um, even the idea of becoming an elder. And as we were talking about this, you were saying, you know, that's a word that people have a lot of resistance towards.
And then I was thinking about how so many of my friends, like, I wonder if it's changing because so many of my friends kind of feel like. Bring it on. Like I'm really ready to be in that phase of my life where I feel like confident and wise and like ready to like turn around and pass things to those behind me.
And I don't know if that is my peers and I'm lucky or if that is a, a, a generational shift. But like for me, when I was in my thirties looking towards my forties, I was looking at people who seemed like they were like walking away from this first chapter of their life and like tearing things down, building things new that seemed like so alive and aligned with who they were.
They seemed really just like dramatic. And I'm thinking of. You know, some of my favorite authors, like Glennon Doyle and Liz Gilbert, like when they went through that phase, I was like, what's happening? This is incredible. And I was like, I cannot wait to get there. And then there was this moment where I was like, okay, so when I get to the, my forties, like this is gonna magically appear.
It's like you're gonna walk through this threshold and be confident, like be ready to be wise, like have all the answers. And then I realized that it wasn't really a threshold and I wasn't arriving anywhere, but it's just a another journey that I'm on. And it's this crazy transition period where I felt like nobody's talking about it.
Like there was information to help me transition into college and into the workforce and into, you know, being married or parenthood. Like there's all of these things that kind of exist, but as you trans transition into midlife. Yeah, there's all these kind of reckonings and, and I have felt and see in my colleagues and friends like this untetheredness and we don't know where to grasp.
And so when I saw MEA, I was like, Ooh, these are conversations I wanna be having. And this looks like a incredible container. So I, what I really wanted to start with is just kind of understanding like why this is so important. Did you see that same thing that I did where it was like a lot of people didn't want to be associated with being in that category.
Now people are maybe embodying, embracing, and ready and also the struggle that people have in the transition maybe between the two spaces.
Christine Sperber: Um, um, absolutely amazing. You have nailed so much of the premise of MEA, which is, you know, this midlife is this time just rife with transition. It is absolutely filled with emotional, physical, situational change, all of it. Our jobs often change, our relationships change. Our bodies certainly change. We're facing empty nest for the first time, right?
Many people, and if you look at other points in our lives that are so filled with change, we have built tools, schools, rituals, scaffolding to help us move through that. But midlife is kind of like, it's so ripe for a rebrand. When you say midlife, the next word that comes into almost everyone's mind is crisis.
Right? And it is. Not really the truth. It is not really the truth. As you said, you see these people just blooming stepping into such an incredible power and, and groundedness is, is kind of what I feel is like this different level of groundedness. But because we're so often doing this without a cohort, we're doing it alone because we've been focused on career or family or whatever it is that has subsumed like, you know, from 25 to 50.
Often what I see at MEA is so many people kind of showing up ripe to have these conversations, but without language to address what's going on. And certainly without community, right? So, so many even third places have gone away, at least in US culture. And that level of tenacity and focus it takes to raise a family, to have a community, um, to have a, a career.
And then pick your head up and go like, wow, I'm alone. I'm without tools, I'm without schools, I'm without ritual, I'm without community. And those are all things that we know we use as a, uh, a species really to move through thresholds to move into next stages. So it was designed to create the space to have those conversations in community.
Um, I do have to say we started almost eight years ago. I'm 55 now, so I was kind of mid late forties and, and Chip saw this coming. His, his zeitgeist radar is unbelievable. And so for me, when he came and said, I wanna do this thing, and we, you know, we played with a few different incarnations of what MEA would be before we ran through this beta.
And, and really the research was, this conversation was so, so resonant this needed to exist. Um, I thought coming from like an action sports, I lived in ski town for 32 years. That was based outta Breckenridge. And I thought quite honestly, quite transparently, everyone just wanted to retire. Like, why wouldn't you retire?
Because then you have more time to ride your bike and more time for powder days. And it just seemed like ultimate freedom. Um, and so I have a ton of respect for Chip and I was like, okay, you see something cool and I'm on board and um, and you know, Cheryl Sandberg said, when someone offers you a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask which seat you just get on.
That was part of my decision making when I decided to, to. Jump into this project with Chip 'cause I was kind of in like a downshifted, semi-retirement, working enough to get by, um, with lots of free time to run my bike and have powder, days, and travel. Um, but the resonance of it was really undeniable and I also saw the opportunity to create an engine for, I'd also been living in Pescadero, the town where we opened, which is on the Pacific coast of Baja, almost all the way down to Peninsula.
Um. To create opportunity for a local community. And so I really came at it from more of like a sustainable tourism lens where Chip came at it from this social science. This is a, a conversation that needs to happen. I have to admit, I'm thrilled to admit actually that. As I've evolved and my community has evolved over these last eight years, I have aged right into our work.
My community has aged into our work. I'm hearing from people, um, from action sports world who are like, Hey, I'm really thinking about purpose. I'm thinking about what my second half is going to look like. Um, and I'm was really surprised to see that come to my community and as like, just personally, the last eight years have been, I'm sorry, last year or so, year and a half filled with almost every transition that we talk about at MEA from health, right?
I had my own like perimenopause into perimenopausal journey. Um, I had a hip replacement, a total hip replacement last November, which I had no idea was in the cards. I'm part of that gray divorce wave. I got divorced about a year and a half ago, and so almost every single day I'm using tools and language.
That have come out of conversations and thought leaders that have come and participated and collaborated with us at MEA. So I'm incredibly grateful that this is the work that I fell into kind of in the right time of my life. Um, it's been been incredible.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: I think it's so great when people I, well, I think often people build the thing they need for themselves, and you just, I guess we're lucky to be building the thing you didn't know you needed
Christine Sperber: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: but then that synergy and that passion because you know the value, because it's the thing you needed, like to be able to communicate that and bring people in.
It's so great because I know for me, when I started my travel company that I also have the thing that I just, I would just look at people and kind of from a space of intuition, but also seeing myself in them. I just would look like at a travel event or something, I'd see this woman and be like, just say yes.
Like, I can't even tell you why. I just know it's a yes, because it's this. Moment. And the, the thing that you said, which I love because I have used this to convey who my like ideal traveler is so often is women in the moment when they pick their head up and not everyone knows what I mean, but that's exactly, I'm unlike your headlong in all of these things and you're kind of buried underneath and all of a sudden, like you look up and you're like.
Where am I? Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I want? As some of these things fall off that I've been caring for, you know, all these time in my career, or my marriage or my family. And like, that's the moment that the experiences I created our for, because I knew we needed someone standing there when we lifted our head up and because I needed them, you know?
And so that just really, really resonates with me. So I wanted to tap into that. And for all the people who I've ever said, when you pick your head up, this is what I'm talking about.
Christine Sperber: You know, and, and language is so important, Christine, right? And, and we, adolescence as a word, didn't exist until about the turn of the century. And so we used to expect children to just become little adults. And then when we named it and recognized it that it was this time filled with hormonal and situational change, all this different growth, then we created support systems for adolescents.
And I mean, how many times you're like, oh, they're just a teenager, right? If you fast forward, the analog, of course, in middle age is so similar, the amount of change that we are going through, and yet there isn't a really a name for that stage. We don't recognize it as a, uh, generally as a kind of a human development place.
You're just an adult, right? We work with the gerontologist, amazing thought leader, Dr. Barbara Waxman, who coined the term middle essence to talk about this time. And again, with the power of naming, once you recognize like I'm in middle essence, of course things are shifting, of course I need different support, different conversations, um, community.
It just makes so much sense. So good, good on you for recognizing that it was a, a time that needed support in designing those experiences for people. It is very powerful to ritualize
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. I, I agree. And I think also this reframe that, you know, we kind of started talking about here and you had said, you know, instead of midlife crisis, I love on, on your website and on the conversations of midlife chrysalis, which is the thing that I think, you know, when my friends and I speak about it, like that's the thing we're, we're excited about, right?
Is this. Really embracing this as an opportunity for transformation. And the other language I love is the idea of like relevance and how important that is. And I, I guess probably almost 10 years ago when I moved to Colorado, I was a part of a chai group and there were women of all different ages in the group.
And there were two women in particular that I think were probably in their early sixties in that at that time and kind of, you know, in many of these transitions as well. And um, I just remember at one point after having gone for several months, going up to one of those women and just saying, you know, I'm so grateful that you're in this circle because every week I learn so.
Much from you. And she also worked in tourism and was just a mover and shaker. And she just was so bright and brilliant and passionate and she just started crying and hugged me. She's like, I just thought I had nothing left to give anyone. And this is the moment she was in was, she's like, I just didn't, I wasn't seeing my value.
And um, I was so heartbroken for her. I was also heartbroken for me 20 years down the road thinking about what that would feel like. And, um, I just, this idea of wis wisdom keeping and, and sharing and like what that looks like when you're at that point where that's when you actually have the most to give.
And yet, like our western culture especially loves to tell women that that's when you have the least to offer. So I I this idea of just really allowing this to be an incredible part of our journey instead of. The beginning of the end I think is so, so, so important. So I'd love to talk to you a little bit about like that energy of this space in life.
Christine Sperber: Yeah, I mean, again, great question, right? Money and power continues to kind of cascade to the ever younger. We tend to lionize youth in, in our culture so much, and so we've really lost the importance of even emotional intelligence being of value. But I think it's kind of a a two-headed snake, right?
There's like the cultural implications of dismissing. Experience. And that's one thing I think we can, we need to deal with on a, a culture level. And that comes from, you know, the idea of reframing even the word elder, which again, credit to chip, he really tried, um, to create a rebrand on, on Elder and Eldering.
And then there's the personal reaction to it as well, and that, which of course we can control. Um, and I love the way that Liz Gilbert talked about this. Someone in one of our chats asked her about, um, the idea of purpose, right? Because we do see, I would say that's the most common question that people have asked me when they come to MEA is like, okay, well what's my purpose now?
And we talk about kind of, you know, the big P purpose, little p purpose. And what Liz said was, um. She doesn't think about it. She doesn't think about purpose as like a giant service project, but like almost micro, and I'm paraphrasing here and probably poorly because she's such an incredible intellect, but, you know, series of little acts of service and how we show up in these little acts of service.
And she told the story about being at a wedding and there was a elderly woman there who needed a ride to the train. And, and Elizabeth was like, I'll take you to the train. It's easy enough. And that moment gave her life for that day so much purpose. So I think sometimes there is a trap. I've seen people falling into this trap.
As you know, we age out of traditional caretaking and perhaps even like traditional, uh, roles of power in the workplace into feeling irrelevant. And I don't know that it's necessary. I think that this trap of like, what I have to say and contribute has to be this gigantic lifetime of experience, which of course is valuable.
But, you know, a ride to the train station sometimes is, is life changing for that single day? And maybe that's the platform. Maybe those are like the micro steps that get us to reimagine the way that we show up for each other. You know, on a, on a culture level, it's obviously a much, much bigger conversation and I do feel like social media for all its ills has.
Has some really great opportunities to change the conversation about, about midlife and beyond, particularly for women, right? Like there's such, I just appreciate the dark humor that, you know, definitely the algorithm is serving me on Instagram, for example, you know, following all of the menopause, all of the doctors who aged into their own perimenopause and menopause and realized that they were doing that without a lot of training.
Um, Dr. Suzanne Gilbert is my, um, my thought partner for MEA. She's a voice in that group. Um, Dr. Mary Claire Haber, um, incredible. Dr. Stacy Sims really thinking about what it means to be aging in a female body. Um, and then I think from following them, I kind of end up on some of the, the dark humor sites.
Have you seen the, um. It's like the, we don't give a F club or something. It's hilarious. Things we do not care about anymore. Oh, I have to send you the link. It has given me so much joy. Um, but yeah, the conversation needs to shift absolutely on about a personal and cultural level because we're, we're missing, we're missing, uh, inclusion and community and belonging and also really great hard, hard thought lessons that we could, we could all benefit from.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I, I do feel like it's, it is shifting. And I think what you were saying too, the visibil visibility of these voices that would have been silenced systematically. Like they're there and we're hearing from them and, um, I think that gives us a lot of permission to just reimagine who.
Who we can be and what we can say and, and what can be important. And I, I do think, I agree that, you know, that and social media, especially when you, when it serves you up, what you're asking for does become quite powerful. So I think yes, I agree that, that, that can be really helpful in this time. Um, we, you were just kind of talking about this, but one of the things I was really excited to see was this, uh, retreat you have in October coming up on women's health and reclaiming your agency and power and freedom and, um, I think like this is one of the most relevant conversations I'm having over and over and over again, and I'm having it everywhere and it's, you know, all of these kind of what we were saying, like health transitions, struggle, confusion, information is not there, community isn't there.
And. And it's not like it's only happening in spaces where you think it would be happening. It's like happening at my school reunion and at a conference and in a coffee shop, and it's like, everyone's like, did you say menopause? No, I didn't, but let's talk about it anyway.
And I don't know if it's because before it wasn't relevant to me and so I wasn't hearing it.
Or again, if this is maybe a new time that this is, we're actually getting comfortable talking about this. Um, I feel like women really don't wanna walk blindly into this period of aging. Like they are looking to acquire information and like, I feel it similarly to the knowledge I acquired, like when I was pregnant and breastfeeding.
And this is like this next phase for me where I kind of get a step out of the seclusion and the shadows and this head down space that I was in
and. Feel this power and this wisdom in my own self. And like in looking at your, um, program that you're putting together, like I also loved that it's this blend of Eastern and western 'cause I've studied reiki and Ayurveda and yoga and all these other wisdoms.
And in those, again, like I got to fall in love a little bit with my own body and what it could do and the way that these wisdoms like hold reverence for this human vessel of myself. And so, um, anyway, this is me just being so excited for this container that you've created, but I wanna hear why, why you guys created it and why you think it's important and kind of what you're hearing in this area of conversation as well.
Christine Sperber: Oh my gosh. Do we have hours? Are you
Christine Winebrenner Irick: I
Christine Sperber: go.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: is what I was saying, we, we need like five hours.
Christine Sperber: Um, I would say the, the workshop kind of evolved out of my own experience, right? So, um, I have two male co-founders. They're fabulous and, um, evolved and open-minded and all those things. But none of us knew what I was going into as, as perimenopausal suddenly had headaches. And it's, you know, it's all happening at the same time as the pandemic.
So that's wonderful. We shut down the business for seven and a half months. We're in these deep ideation sessions. What is the future of MEA in a changing world? And um, we'd be in these meetings for hours. Christine and I would have to go to the bathroom like four or five times, sitting in a few hour meeting, and Chip and Jeff never had to go.
I was like, what is going on? Why do I have to go to the bathroom so much? You know? And that's just like one example. And then I started with hot flashes and night sweats and brain frog. I'd look back at things that I had written, you know, not that long ago, like, who wrote that? Whose brain created that? Um.
And again, I, I just didn't know, I didn't have language or reference to understand that this was all estrogen deprivation for the most part. Um, and so in the search, and this was also before. At least for me, that there felt like there were all these voices in the perimenopausal and menopausal space. So these doctors, from what I understand, so many of them have empowered each other because they came to their own place, their own changes, and realized that they didn't have sufficient training.
That, you know, I think Dr. Suzanne says she's had, she had like 10 hours of training in med school to talk about this transition. And this is, you know, most, most, depending on how long we live, a huge chunk of our adult life will be spent in menopause. How do we, how did I fall into that as someone like I work in the aging space and I fell into it with no idea of what was going to be happening to me physically, mentally.
Um, and so I got really curious and we started searching around for the right thought partner, the right voices. Um, and this is going back like maybe five or six years. And I said I, I wanna have like a, um, pro changing female, you know, awareness friendly, like almost a perimenopause friendly retreat center.
We wanna be able to advertise that we have cooling pillows and that the windows open and that we have the right food to support, you know? Um, and it was a radical idea at that time. And, and trying to find the right thought, thought partners was really difficult. They just hadn't emerged at that point the way they have now.
The things that I could find, um, were almost always about weight gain, right? Address your, your middle age weight, weight gain. And I was like, God, we are so much more than that. There's so much more going on. And I, I'm grateful every day that, um, I was introduced to Dr. Suzanne Gilbert because. She is, you know, as you said, she's both eastern and western.
She's an incredibly well-trained clinician. Um, she's an ob, GYN, who operates her own practice. She's the, um, chief clinical officer right now for a newly formed group, I think, I believe, called Monarch Health. But she's also an Ayurvedic doctor. She's also in her fifties. She's a breast cancer survivor. So her holistic lens on all of this encompasses so much.
It's not all just. One or the other. And, you know, I grew up under the shadow of the Women's Health Initiative study where, you know, HRT, any kind of hormone replacement therapy equaled increased breast cancer risk, which we now know was a terribly flawed study with terrible poll quotes and didn't reflect at all the reality.
Um, so I could really go on for a long time. Feel free to stop me at any point if you wanna redirect or ask other questions. Um, what I learned that was the most powerful, I think, and why we've talked about this website, is reclaiming, reclaiming your agency and understanding how to advocate for yourself is, um, there's estrogen receptors all over the body.
Your entire body, your brain health, your bone health, your gut health, all of it is impacted by estrogen And. It is the only hormone deprivation in the body that we do not regularly treat. And so I think, you know, the combination of our, of just ageism in general and then our own internalized ageism, and then anything anti ageist is at its core anti woman.
So we're combating all of these forces plus a bad study that we grew up under the shadow of. Um, and so few of us thought to, to treat that. And, and like you, I come out of a yoga background and was very much like, oh my gosh, menopause is a natural thing and I'm going to exercise through it and I'm going to support myself nutritionally through it, and I'm going to like, you know, be a graceful, aging person.
Um, and the idea of turning to, to a medical response, so that felt like not true to me. Before I knew what I know now before I spent time, um, with Dr. Suzanne talking about the actual crests and, and valleys of menopause. Um, and the fact that a hormone, a hormone replacement, um, or a menopausal treatment is actually preventative, right?
It can be preventative. We don't have to be responding to anything. You don't have to be responding to. Again, I am not a doctor and I am not trying to purport that I am a doctor. I'm giving any kind of medical advice. This is what I've learned and has been true for me, is that there are a lot of, of, um, symptoms, I, I don't know that that's the right word, uh, effects of aging that can be effectively treated with replacing a declining estrogen.
And it's, you know, everyone's own choice. But I just didn't realize that.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's, it is hard and, and maybe some of us don't even realize. That that was kind of a conditioning that, that we were experiencing through probably our mothers and you know, what they were being told and what medicine had been been telling us in that moment. 'cause I know that same fear was there and I was like, oh my gosh, no.
We know that's a hard no. Don't try to trick me into that. And then that kind of feeds into this feeling you're having in the moment of not knowing if you can trust your body and trust your choices. And then you are like, I don't know if I can trust my doctor. And it just, it spirals when you're feeling really vulnerable and you don't really know.
Where to turn. And, and again, like we were saying that this community doesn't exist or we don't know where they're having these conversations. And like I said again, now I'm, I feel like I see it everywhere and um, I'm really grateful for that. Or I'm grateful when one of my friends asks me a question or tells me something because I feel like that means the walls are coming down a little.
And that gives me hope for like what we can co-create. If people are actually sharing their experiences, then we can begin to address it on a larger scale. Because if nobody ever thought anything was happening except for weight, grain, and night sweats, and that's like the only thing we were working to combat.
And then like you said, my friends will be like, what about headaches? What about brain fog? What about this? What about that? And we're like, oh, you too, you too u too. Then it just shifts. Um, how we can like react to it collectively.
Christine Sperber: Right, right. I mean, there's just so much stigma around aging, and then there wasn't language around perimenopause or menopause or the fact that perimenopause can last 10 years long. I mean, I just had, I had no idea. And you know what, what I'm hearing again, back to Dr. Suzanne is she has young patients now who are coming into her practice and they are demanding information they wanna know, right?
So that conversation is not just happening in our fifties and our forties, but even younger now, and they are arming themselves with information. So kudos to younger generation. This is exactly your conversation earlier, your point earlier about how much there is to give, right? So I, I I think it's an incredibly important conversation.
And then, you know, put Dr. Stacey Sims in the mix, changing what we know from an exercise and nutrition point of view. She is, are you familiar with Dr. Stacy SIM's work? Oh my gosh. I can't rec recommend her enough. Um, exercise physiologist, talking about jump training, talking about. Lifting heavy weights. Um, really there's things that we can do to change our outcomes right now, and we can start doing that years and years before we start to go through any kind of hormonal change.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah.
Christine Sperber: But let's just de-stigmatize, let's just talk about it. It's no shame. It's totally normal, it's totally natural. Um, so let's just do.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: yeah, I agree. So I'm really glad that we were able to do this. So I actually just wrote in my notes about trying to, um, offer a space for this conversation for, for some of my peers in the industry and just peers in general, because I, I do think it's so important and it's something that is. Prevalent. Um, I wanted to go next.
I know you said when you were, you know, walking into MEA and you kind of had this idea of a sustainable travel lens and kind of looking at it from that perspective. And you talked about, um, being in Pescadero and, um, I would love to talk a little bit about, you know, beyond what MEA has done for the community of travelers, um, and the community at large coming there.
What, what kind of impact have you seen this having? You were sharing a little bit with me before we got on the call, so I would love, I would love to hear about it. Um, I have, I used to travel to Baja frequently. I haven't been there. I don't even wanna add the numbers for how long it's been because that in itself says something.
But, um, yeah, I, I would just love to hear from you, like, what do you, what do you see is on the other side of that as well? 'cause there has been an, an impact that, that ha you have been able to create as well.
Christine Sperber: Yeah, I, I hope, um, so Pescadero, I, I moved to Pescadero in 2008 and, um, if we go kind of like on a a, a meta. Mexico often moves, especially in the places where there are more immigrant populations like, like Pescadero, like Baja in, in response to what's happening in the US because there's not a lot of financing that is available.
So people who are moving to places like that from the US often leveraging out of investments in the US in order to afford to buy in Mexico. So 2008 we're in the Great Recession. It was incredibly quiet in Pescadero. There were maybe six houses on the market, and I was told that was two or three years worth of inventory.
At that point. Things just weren't moving. It was quiet. I explored all over Baja, my like tiny little motorcycle, um, tumbleweeds, like deer in the street. I mean, just quiet, quiet, quiet. Um, and it was lovely rustic rural, you know, kind of ag and uh, fishing village. What I saw in that time as I started to make friends and I started to teach English in the community is any kid with any ambition was leaving.
Right? And of course, parents wanna see their children be able to thrive in their hometown, but the opportunity just wasn't there outside of like kind of fields and fishing. Um, and so I was part of creating a, a luxury property in 2000, end of 2009, 2010. Um, and really through that experience of seeing what it meant to bring people into opportunity in their hometown, combined with meeting an educator in to Los Santo, she had spent her entire life as a teacher.
And she said to me, don't tell me that you are creating jobs, and you mean housekeepers and gardeners? 'cause those are good jobs, but that's not gonna do it. That's not enough. I need you to be creating managers. I need you to be mentoring and creating ladders for the kids that are, are, um, born and raised here to really succeed here.
And, you know, so it's so no nonsense. You look at it now and you're like, oh yeah, of course that's how it should be. Um, but you look at so many businesses in, especially in emerging places in Mexico, have a, you know, a workforce of locals and then they import management. Um, and so I really have challenged myself and my time working in, in Mexico and in Pescadero to create those opportunities.
Um, really interesting at that first project, um, you know, there were people that were working at that hotel who were putting. You know, water and power into their homes for the first time ever with the money that they were making at the hotel. So it can be a challenge to service, uh, a luxury clientele with someone who goes home to a dirt floor, right?
Both the challenges that, that can be for that worker to see how other people live. You wanna really be mindful. I want to be mindful always of that, the impact on mental health that that can have for someone, right? Um, and so treating people with, with dignity and respect and creating opportunity for anyone that you bring into that kind of life, I think is just.
Paramount. And so when we started MEA, I said to Chip, I really wanna be a part of an economic engine here in Pescadero. I wanna make sure that we're creating opportunity. Um, he was right on board. Let's, you know, let's have a north star of creating a thriving middle class here in in Pescadero. And the first budget that I brought him, I'd been working in Mexico, chip hadn't been working in Mexico before.
And so I brought him a budget and I said, I'm, I cannot justify these salaries locally, but they're fair. I promise you they're fair, but you could pay a lot less. We could pay a lot less than this. And Chip was like, right on board, let's do it. And so I've always felt really proud, particularly of that project.
You know, our first campus in Baja because I know that we treated people with, um. With fairness and, and people stay for a long time and it changes the way that they show up. It changes the way that they show up for the guests. And then, um, there is, uh, uh, Dacker, Keltner's work around awe. He's one of our guest faculties, the founder of the Greater Good Science Center and world's foremost scholar and the human experience of the contemplation of vast mystery.
Like nobody also told me that that could be my job. I think that would've changed my life if anyone had ever said, you know, you can grow up and be a scholar of all. Anyway, Dacker is one of our neighbors in Pescadero and one of our guest faculty, and he talks about the eight different ways, you know, from his kind of massive global study that we experience awe as humans.
And the number one pathway is moral beauty. And so I think. If I think about the many different arms, the MEA can be both changing and reframing aging, um, creating community for people to have those conversations in that container, but also operating in a way that is, you know, creates moral beauty. I think that that all feeds each other.
You know, I don't think that any of that exists in a vacuum. It amplifies each bit of the work, but
I'm.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah, I like it. Well, me too, so it's fine. No, I was like, moral beauty is my new, I love that. Um, yeah. I, I just think that's so interesting. And when you were saying, you know, the statement of the, you know, any ambitious kid left, like that's something I see so often traveling in rural communities and, and families are looking at that, that dilemma of what you were saying, like that they want their kids to thrive, but they don't want.
Everyone to leave. And then the culture is impacted because generations are leaving and they're not carrying out agriculture or artisan crafts and all these things that are essential to preserving cultures. And so I think it's interesting how tourism, especially when you're being cognizant of what you're building, can help that and can, can sustain that.
And I love the the woman that called out and said, we don't need housekeeping positions, that we need management positions. Like what a, what a powerful thing to be met with when you're having that conversation with community. And I, I think this is something that comes up in this podcast often is asking what communities need.
And that's such a, a incredible example of them saying very boldly what would be important to them in order to keep their children? There. And I, I just like that, that is such an impressive thing for me to hear someone have asked for, and then for you to be able to say, okay, how can we do this? Because it is important.
And one, once someone gives you that directive, like, how are you gonna, you can't say no to that, right? You have to figure it out. And so, um, I love that.
Christine Sperber: Nice. I mean, and, and, and you know, we've made mistakes along the way and we've, we've aimed high and not always hid it, but I think as an organization it has been a goal to be, uh, a force for good in the places that we drop a pin. Um, and as a North Star, I think it's, um, it's a fortunate place to be able to start from.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. Yeah. And when you're building something, you have that oppor opportunity, right? You don't, you don't have to change something that already exists, you just can put it into place. So I think that's always great. Um, the last thing that I wanted to talk to you about is joy. So, um, this, I, I'm so glad, like I just.
Picked this, or the universe asked me, well, however you wanna look at this, to speak about it. But the quote I have, all of my guests, when they fill out their form to come and speak with me, put one of their favorite quotes. Um, I love it 'cause it gives me a little insight into what's important, gives me something to think about.
And yours is one that has never been shared. So I was very excited. Um, so first I'm just gonna read that and then we're gonna kind of jump into this next little, uh, conversation. Um, the, the quote that you shared is, um, has joy, any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does. I su suspect that the and fearful are doomed to quick extinction where there is no joy, there can be no courage and without courage, all other virtues are useless.
Um, this is from Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire, and. Um, I loved this so much. For me, the personal delivery of this quote to me was very valuable, so I appreciate it. Um, and, you know, I felt like kind of in preparing for this conversation that one of the things that it seems like MEA is doing is cultivating joy and helping us to understand that this is, can be a part of what some people might call our second act.
We were talking about the, the idea of a second 50. Um, for me, like joy has been something that I've really grappled with and I rem I have had moments where I'm like, what am I feeling? I'm starting to panic. What is this thing? And I was like, oh my God, it's joy. Get it out of here. And I'm like, what is that response?
That is insane. And then I like, as I was just preparing to talk to you, I had this little, again, this little drop from the universe that was like, think about this story. And again, like the things were brought up with that maybe we don't notice, we absorbed, but like I grew up in this idea of, you know, kids are starving in Africa.
Um, these conversations about the trajectory of growth of human population and climate crisis, which was like thrown off offhand. But I remember sitting in my classroom, I don't know at what age, like doing some quick math and being like, by 2020 we are in a hot mess. I was like, well, I wish I wouldn't have had that awareness at that point, but like there was this. All of these impending threats. That felt huge. And because I'm an empath and because I'm all the things that I am, like Joy felt like it was a disservice to like the dire nature of the world and that I wasn't being respectful to the place that we were if I embodied joy. And that it was like a luxury for people who could like look away from these problems.
Like they, they were distanced and so they could have joy. And so like that has kind of been where I've been. And then all of a sudden, this idea that joy might be resistance, especially in the time that we are in right now, like I don't know what that means yet. I still like get a gross feeling when I think about joy, which is a weird thing to say.
Um, but it feels significant right now. And so I wanna just kind of. Ask you a little bit why this quote is important to you and have a con, a conversation around the significant Oh, significance of joy in our lives.
Christine Sperber: Gosh, I, I resonate with so much of what you just said, which is if the world is a serious place and there's a lot of suffering, and the longer that we live, the more of it we're exposed to and as serious people who. You know, give a shit about our feather fellow humans. It almost feels shameful to be joyous sometimes.
How? How dare I show up in joy? There's like a joy shame. Um, and at the same time, I have always felt this kind of natural buoyance of wake up in a good mood, you know, and I'm grateful for it. Um, but it's felt almost embarrassing or, um, inappropriate to be joyous in, in a world that's, yes, beautiful and incredible, but also, you know, it is filled with suffering.
So for me, this quote, when I found it, when I stumbled upon it, because early, early COVID, I took a, a kind of a two week. Time out and went to bed with books and Desert Solitaire was one of the books that I went to bed with. Um, you know, after, it'd been a while since I'd read Abby, and I'd always loved Edward Abby for all his flaws.
A lot of, I've found a lot of the authors of my early youth have, have not held up well in cultural, current cultural conversations. But, um, I think it's important not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Um, the idea that that joy actually gives us the foundation from which we're willing to fight, we're willing to fight the good fight because it makes all of the, makes it all worthwhile.
Right. Um, so it, for me turned the idea of joy from something that was a bit of an embarrassment or a bit inappropriate to actually the foundation from which we can, we can rise and, and create change.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. I, I just think it's so great. And the other thing that I have really been thinking about, and again, this isn't a new concept, it's just new to me and how it's landing in me is, you know, people always say how, if you just take the moment to be the light, right, that's what changes. And it's that inner, that inner work that really does create external change.
And, you know, and until you're ready or until you feel it, until you embody it, it just sounds like. Crazy words. And then at some point it clicked. And, um, for a long time, um, in my phone, I had a, an alarm that said, um, oh, now can I even remember what it says? Good job. This is our brain fog moment. Thank you.
Christine Sperber: May I suggest HRT.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: gosh, this is so good. Um, my inner healing leads to global healing. And so it's like just this reminder that my small choices are doing something and that if we are here as light bringers, which so many of my community are like, we naturally I think find each other. 'cause we need each other. Like if I'm, if I'm buried in the darkness of all these other things, I can't.
Do what I'm here for. Even if it's just as simple as, like you said, waking up joyful, like that I guarantee shifts other people's energy and light and it's really important. And so I think just like acknowledging kind of what you were saying, um, what Elizabeth Gilbert was saying, like, these micro actions and these micro moments, they are really the most important things that we can do.
And if everybody is doing them, if a majority of us are doing them, it's creating such an important impact. And so this, this idea of creating a space for joy and creating a space for light, I think is really powerful. And like I said, so many of us do this in our work in our own ways, no matter what that looks like with awareness or not, that that's what we're doing.
Um, I just, I love this idea of just trying to think about how we can push this out into the world.
Christine Sperber: Yeah, I mean it's a, it's a culture shift, right? And if you wanna indulge me in like the most basic of stories, we had someone, MEA who was, um, early days, we asked people like, what is the one change you could make two today, tiny change you could commit to today? And this is like a hard bit New Yorker attorney litigator.
And he wrote us after like, I think he'd been gone for like 48 hours. And Ted traveled home from Baja to New York and he said, I can't believe this. My one thing that I committed to, to myself was I was gonna smile at people. He's like, I'm a New Yorker. We don't smile at people. People think you're fucking crazy, right?
And he smiled at people the whole way home. And he is like, my entire experience was different. People smiled back. My whole travel day was different than any travel day I've ever had before. Um, you know, and so I kind of jumping back to our conversation earlier about big levers and little levers. It seems like such a little lever, right?
Just a smile at people. It seems oversimplified, almost embarrassingly oversimplified, but yet it changed his entire experience, his entire lived experience. Um, so I don't know. I don't think kindness is ever overrated.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah, I love that. I am a Montana dirt road girl,
and
Christine Sperber: You wave at everybody.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: the land of everybody does at least the two finger wave and a smile. And my kids will be like, you can't do that everywhere, mom. And then I do smile at people. I don't always take my cell phone out of my pocket, standing in places where everybody else is waiting and I make eye contact and smile and they're like, you're so weird.
It's like, yeah, but do you notice what happens? People don't get, people aren't seen very often anymore, and or you tell someone like, I love your hat or your earrings, remind me of what you know, whatever. Just the aspect of not being invisible. Is hugely important. So I, I imagine, and I, in New York, I really have that problem too, so I'm like, I just wanna smile at you.
Um, but I think it, it is huge. It's, it's huge. So I love that. Um, well.
Christine Sperber: And if, and you know, and final, if we think about joy as a virtue amplifier, like it's just. It justifies, I think, justifies the idea of joy, takes it outta shame, into justification. We're amplifying other important virtues.
Courage.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. I, it, it's my work right now for sure. But I, it's, it's good work. At least I'm like, there's worse things to be challenged with than to be joyful. So I'm like, pull up snow joy. Yes.
Christine Sperber: Ah, pullups.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Um, well, to wrap up our conversation, I always have a series of rapid fire or rapid fire ish questions, so we'll jump to those. Um, what are you reading right now?
Christine Sperber: Uh um. Oh gosh. It's the guy that wrote a perfect storm. I think it's called Tribe. I just started, it was recommended by a friend and it's about belonging.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Um, what is always in your suitcase or backpack when you travel?
Christine Sperber: Oh my God. I have a new obsession that I've been traveling with that I'm quite embarrassed about, but it's a water pick,
Christine Winebrenner Irick: I love it. Um,
Christine Sperber: my style. I'm like, uh, the smallest bag I can possibly carry. And lately, and it's not even like a travel one, like I've got this, but Oh my gosh, it is like having a dentist clean mouth every day.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. You're like, I have no clean clothes, but my mouth is very
Christine Sperber: yeah, yeah. I will bring like one pair of black pants and a couple black shirts, but I've got my water picked with me.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Um, to sojourn, to me means to travel somewhere with the respect as if you live there. Um, where is some place that you would still love to sojo?
Christine Sperber: hmm. So many places on my list right now. Um, I am heading back to New Zealand in August. And I so look forward to sojourning it in New Zealand. Once again with my dear friends and loved ones.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Uh, what is something you eat that immediately connects you to a place you've been?
Christine Sperber: Mexican hot chocolate with a little bit of spice brings me back to Oaxaca every single time or mescal.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Hmm. Um, who was a person that inspired or encouraged you to set out to travel the world?
Christine Sperber: Um, my, my dear friend Deborah, um, uh, Nolan, who has tulsi shop in the southern part of Italy, she's in Poya. I met her when I was, I 18 years old, and she was already like a hell. Mission traveler. Backpacker had been everywhere, first came to the US and uh, she's from Ireland, from Dublin and the uk. But, um.
Came over with, uh, a very famous rock band, and she was a young model. And then from there launched into just backpacking missions. And I thought she was the coolest. And she said to me one day, well, you're a traveler. And I thought, yeah. Um, I mean, I wasn't really at that point, but I, like, I took it on and she, you know, just showed me the way that you could have a backpack and a couple hundred bucks and go anywhere.
And so I really was a backpacker in the late eighties, early nineties and beyond. And that was inspired by, by Deb Nolan.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Thank you. If you could take an adventure with one person, fictional or real, alive or past, who would it be?
Christine Sperber: Well, maybe Jermaine to this conversation, I wouldn't mind spending some time in the desert with Edward Abbey, but he'd have to behave better than he did when he was alive with a lot more respect for women.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Um, uh, who is, uh, one woman in the travel industry you admire and would love to recognize here in this space that is about celebrating the voices of women in travel.
Christine Sperber: Hmm. Oh, I wanna get this one right. There's so many incredible women in trouble. Um hmm. Maybe, maybe, and this is a again, um, germane to these last few moments, but, um, Lucy Kay is, um, do you know Lucy? She is based outta Breckenridge. She was the founder of Go Breck. Um, and just such an incredible thinker around, um, tourism and creating, creating demand. Um, she may have been a little too successful in Breckenridge. But, um, really, let me, can I reframe this one? Let me,
Christine Winebrenner Irick: sure.
Christine Sperber: um, gosh, I'm just not nailing this, I'm not nailing this one question, but Lucy is an incredible thinker. Um, gosh, it's hard to narrow down. There's been so many.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Um, well thank you so much for this conversation. Um, as I said, I was just so excited for it and, um, as usual, it never lets me down, but I really, really enjoyed this conversation and sharing this space with you, and I'm really, really excited to, to share it with our, with our listeners.
Christine Sperber: Thank you so much for having me and, uh, it, we are on such parallel paths right now, so it was great to meet you and please come, uh, my week with Dr. Suzanne is October 13th through 18th, I believe. Um, and I would love to have you there as my guest if you can make the time. So please let me know.
Christine Winebrenner Irick: Thank you. Thank you so much.
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