Meet our team: Lindsay Juley

From the coast of Australia to the skyscrapers of NYC and back to her home state of Wisconsin, Lindsay uses her wealth of experience and passion for exploring the world to lead the charge on building and creating awesome relationships with travel agents across the country looking to sell the vacation of a lifetime.

Born and raised in Wisconsin, my idea of a vacation pre-college was either flying to Arizona to visit my grandparents or going camping at many of the local state parks. I did not need to go far to have a great time. However, after studying abroad in London in college, a whole new world opened up for me. I completely fell in love with traveling, and I knew I needed to find a job that would allow me to continue exploring the world. I ended up landing the perfect post-college job with STA Travel, a student-focused travel agency, where I became a full-service travel agent. Not only did I get to talk about travel all day, but I was able to take multiple trips per year myself.

My job with STA Travel led me to do a working holiday in Melbourne, Australia, where I lived for almost a year still working as a travel agent. Instead of planning very short spring break and winter break holidays, I began to put together elaborate round-the-world trips, and 3 month long backpacking trips for my Australian clients. It challenged me every day, and I learned quite a bit about different markets and cultures that I never was exposed to back in Wisconsin. Since new destinations around Australia and southeast Asia were now all of a sudden very accessible, I also was able to take several trips while abroad, continuing to check off more countries and continents off my bucket list.

After returning from Australia with a passport full of stamps and more vacation planning experience, I became the store manager at my Madison office. Due to a company re-structuring, I was selected to work at one of the New York offices, but the Midwest kept calling me back. After almost 6 years and hitting all 7 continents, I parted ways with STA Travel and moved back to my favorite state of Wisconsin. I knew I wanted to stay in the travel industry while remaining in Madison, so the natural option was to pursue a role at Trek Travel. I used to book the travel for the Trek Travel guides when I was at STA Travel, so I already was very familiar with the company!

My first job at Trek Travel was as the guest services coordinator, doing mostly admin work and communicating with guests after they were booked on a trip. Shortly after that, I became a trip consultant, selling our trips to our guests. I noticed there was no set travel agent program in place, so I started to develop a plan to provide more structure and training in order to grow our company’s travel agent business.

Now, after more than four years with Trek Travel, I am focused mainly on creating and cultivating relationships with travel agents, which I love! Since I previously was a travel agent myself, I have a great understanding of what it is like to be on the other side of the business and what resources agents may require to sell active vacations. I also understand the benefits a travel agent brings to our guests, being able to assist with all planning aspects of their vacation. I look forward to continuing to grow this important part of our business, and hopefully meeting more agents in person!