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Alumni Association Home > May-June 2009   Print View Alumni Profile 5/6/2009 3:10 PM Playing It Forward Three years ago, Jodi Nelson (B.A. ’98) was a burned-out film and television producer living in a renovated studio-garage in Los Angeles. She harbored dreams of starting her own company, but the then-31-year-old didn’t know which of the seven business ideas lurking in her head would work. So, she hired a life coach to help her sort things out. They narrowed down the list to adventure travel company, because traveling was an important part of Nelson’s life. As a child growing up in Blaine, Minnesota, her family picked vacations in far-flung destinations. And as an adult, Nelson preferred holiday getaways with an adrenaline-pumping element, like zipping 15 stories high along a 200-foot cable above a rain forest canopy. Nelson was so eager to get her company off the ground that she wanted to bail on the two back-to-back trips she had scheduled. “But my life coach told me to go,” she recalls. “She told me to have fun and observe everything around me as research for my company.” In December 2006, Nelson spent 15 days trekking the southern plains of Argentina and 21 days in Kenya helping build a medical facility with a Twin Cites–based nonprofit volunteer organzation. While in Kenya, Nelson had a revelation: Someone could actually roll my two trips into one. She became that someone. In 2007, Nelson moved to the Twin Cities and created Play It Forward, an international travel company that fuses Nelson’s two passions: active adventure and volunteering. The company name is a twist off the ‘pay it forward’ concept, which encourages people to do something positive for someone else, and the word play refers to the outdoor adventure activities. The company offered its first trip in October 2008. Tour leader Nelson took a dozen people on a 10-day journey to Guatemala, where they built a house and went hiking, biking, and kayaking. This year, Play It Forward is promoting seven trips, including one that offers the opportunity to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa. “I am 100 percent where I’m supposed to be in my life right now,” Nelson says. “I adore my travelers. They are people looking for something bigger than themselves, for inspiration.” People have different reasons for signing on with Play It Forward, Nelson says. “Some people have never left the country; some people are in transition in their lives; some people are just looking for fun and don’t have anybody to travel with; and some are looking for ways to reignite their relationship with their spouse or to bond with their children or another loved one,” she says. “It’s incredibly satisfying and rewarding for me to see the transformation that can happen after a trip.” For example, one person started a nonprofit to help people in impoverished nations and a couple of others sponsored children in Guatemala (partly inspired by Nelson and Iris, the child she sponsors). “[International travel] allows you to push outside of your comfort zone,” Nelson says. “When you do this, you’ll start to see things differently and even realize that maybe you don’t have it so bad. A lot of the communities we visit have next to nothing.” —Pauline Oo

Last modified on 5/6/2009 3:17:02 PM ©2009 by the University of Minnesota Alumni Association. The University of Minnesota Alumni Association is an equal opportunity educator and employer.

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