Deborah Calmeyer

Entrepreneur

Deborah Calmeyer is the CEO & Co-founder of ROAR AFRICA, a boutique travel planning company. Ms. Calmeyer founded the company in September 2005. New York- and South Africa-based ROAR AFRICA offers a one-of-a-kind travel service for personally designed tours of Southern Africa. Ms. Calmeyer works with her clients every step of the way, from detailed, customized planning stages in the United States to greeting clients as they touch down and every leg of the vacation there after. ROAR AFRICA has a reputation for providing some of the highest quality travel experiences available. Ms. Calmeyer is defining a new concept of what she believes purposeful, responsible, luxury travel is all about. She has set new industry standards of excellence through her dedication to hiring and collaborating with quality professionals who share her vision and assist her in implementing it. Her determination to create better options for all travelers came from her personal experience and search during which she witnessed a disturbing mediocrity and lack of authenticity as well as responsibility in travel in Africa. She believes that the travel business is an efficient and powerful vehicle for social change, that people today want to give back while they are on exotic luxury trips and in so doing stand to gain a great deal from their experience of reconnecting in Africa and giving back to these communities where the need is greatest. Be it enjoying a specialized "yoga in the bush" trip and then going into the community to teach children and give them that individual attention, the experience is life changing for both the child and traveler. Many of these children sleep five to a bed and get no individual attention at all. What they can benefit from the attention of a worldly visitor is insurmountable as is the soulful connection that the traveler will experience. Prior to founding ROAR AFRICA Ms. Calmeyer, was at Bright Horizons Family Solutions over seeing national business development & national client management as well playing an active role in developing and implementing marketing strategies and communications functions to drive business growth. She held a number of senior management positions with an active role in new business development for other leading companies in both New York and South Africa.

Travel, particularly in Africa, Wildlife conservation, horse riding, speaking french,

Luxury, Sales & Biz Dev, Sales & Marketing, TRAVEL INDUSTRY

French, Show jumping