It started during my first week studying abroad in Australia, when someone called me the N-word.

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Until then, I’d never really thought about how much my race might affect my experience in a new country. Suddenly, I wasn’t just asking “Where should I go?” I was asking “What is this place actually going to be like for someone who looks like me?”

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Over the next few years, while studying, working and travelling across Australia, the USA and China, I kept looking for honest answers to that question. I found plenty of general travel advice, but nothing that really told me what a destination might be like from the perspective of someone who shared my background.

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So I decided to build it myself.

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I started by speaking to other people of colour about their experiences travelling. After conducting over 150 interviews, I realised this wasn’t just something I had experienced. There was a much wider gap in the travel industry for people who wanted to explore the world but also wanted to know what they could expect when they got there.

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I’m building POCAdvisor to give people of colour a place to find honest experiences, discover destinations and travel with more confidence. What started as a personal frustration has grown into an award-winning business concept, an MVP and an app prototype.

Now, I’m working to turn POCAdvisor into the platform I wish I had when I first started travelling.