In 1995, Gloria Hobbins left a 26-year career as a telecommunications systems analyst and decided to turn her hobby, dabbling in travel planning, into a career. She enrolled in New York University and completed her master's with a thesis titled, "An Ethnohistoric Analysis of African American Travel."

Read what happened next ...

We are in the midst of the worst global catastrophe of our lives.  Every day we see more and more bad news about friends and colleagues - jobs lost, business lost and sadly lives lost!!! The news on TV and in the newspaper is almost always bad news.  What we need now is good news.  Some inspiration to help us through this continuing misery.

Here’s an uplifting story about one of our members who is devoting her time to helping those most in need during this pandemic.  Skål New Jersey member, Stacey Ray, is the owner and CEO of Groupit Travel and Sisterhood Travels.  Like most of us her travel business, which is mostly groups, is suffering badly these days.  But Stacey is also a Registered Respiratory Specialist.  Unlike most of us she quickly recognized the need for professionals like herself and went to work at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in North Carolina.  That’s right!  Since March she has been a frontline healthcare worker.  She is putting the welfare of others above her own health concerns.  Stacey Ray is a true hero and certainly deserves our admiration as well as our prayers and best wishes! 

Not many of us have Stacey’s technical skills but we can all play a part in other ways to help those in our community.  Whether it’s volunteering in your local community or by contributing to a fund to help front line workers and our colleagues in the hospitality industry who are currently struggling to make ends meet we can all make a difference.. 

Use Stacey Ray as an example and an inspiration and together we can get through this!

Skålleagues in the news!  NJ Skal's own Donna Carlin, Stepping Out Travel Services and Phyllis Blythe, Blithe Travel were interviewed for this piece.

Our own Young Skålleague Jenna Intersimone who writes for Gannett gives a wonderful overview of our club and Skål International.