What makes Paloma Zapata a Global Shaker?
Paloma Zapata is CEO of Sustainable Travel International. Her role is to lead the organisation as it attempts to “maximise tourism’s contribution to conservation and development in order to protect destinations, preserve natural environments, and improve community well being.”
She has designed and introduced initiatives in projects in 25 countries around the globe, including addressing the shortcomings of current tourism supply and deriving sustainable development strategies and making policy.
She has helped develop tourism plans for Belize, Bermuda, Colombia and Panama. She also developed a plan to link disenfranchised communities to Cambodia’s Siam Reap region.
She joined Sustainable Travel International in 2015, initially as Vice President. Before that she was a Senior Consultant for Tourism & Leisure Europraxis Consulting, where she spent six years specialised in pro-poor tourism, value chain linkage studies and sustainable development policies.
In a previous life she was an industrial engineer at IBM’s microelectronics division.
Zapagta holds an MA in business administration and a postgrad degree in tourism management from ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain.
Alongside being one of the founding members of the Future of Tourism coalition, Zapata’s STI also set up the Pacific Sustainable Tourism Alliance, aiming to improve the lives of 150,000 people living in the region.
Tags: Responsible Tourism, Sustainable Travel, tourism
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