Born the second child of Anne and Sandy Burke, I bounced around for quite awhile, living in Philadelphia, Sacramento, and Southern California.  When I was ten years old, my sister (age 12), my brother (age 7), and I welcomed to our family triplet brothers.  These foundational 18 years of my life are what I consider to be Chapter 1.

My college years and twenties are what I call Chapter 2.  During this time, I earned my BA, Economics, from Brandeis University and my MBA from the University of Southern California. This is also the time I fell in love with traveling!  During my junior year of college, I studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  That year, in addition to exploring Israel, I traveled to Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Egypt, Austria, Switzerland, France, and England.

For the next 24 years, I focused on my marriage and my two children.  Upon moving to the Central Coast, I immersed myself in the “SLO Life,” volunteered at my children’s schools, and began my career as a part-time college educator.  Travels during Chapter 3 involved many trips to various states, a couple of trips to Canada, and excursions to England and Chile.

We think life will move in a straight line, and it seldom does.  Divorced at the time both of my children moved onto their own Chapter 2 adventures, I redirected my energy to nurturing a love of fitness and hiking, traveling to multiple countries, and teaching full time.  Ultimately, I taught nearly 9,000 Cal Poly students in Marketing & Sales and founded Cal Poly’s Technology Sales Program and Sales Minor. In addition to summer teaching in Bilbao, Spain, and Torino, Italy, Chapter 4 took me to Slovenia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, Iceland, Scotland, Morocco, Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Costa Rica, and Mexico.

Now that my children are launched and my teaching career has ended, I have the luxury of time and the privilege of resources, along with good health and fitness, to do what I would like to do, when I would like to do it.  What a gift!  My initial retirement plan was to live for months at a time in foreign countries.  Well, we know that when humans plan, God laughs, right?!  With the COVID-19 pandemic, I had to pivot.  Although I have always wanted to travel cross country, I thought I would do that “later.”  With COVID, the time was now.  Voila!  I bought a 2010 Chevy Roadtrek 190 Versatile (“Addie” – short for Adventure) and traveled cross country in 2021, covering nearly 19,000 miles and seeing 42 states in five months.  The year 2022 brought me to Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Mexico!  In 2023, I saw Pastorella dances in Pátzcuaro, Northern Lights in Alaska, Machu Picchu in Peru – plus many other amazing places. During 2024, I explored Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Seychelles.  Phew!  What will 2025 bring? Chapter 5 ROCKS!