CO-FOUNDER | MENTOR-IN-RESIDENCE, WRITING

Lavinia Spalding is an award-winning travel writer and editor. She is six-time series editor of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, author of Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Writing Traveler, and co-author of With a Measure of Grace: the Story and Recipes of a Small Town Restaurant, This Immeasurable Place: Food and Farming from the Edge of Wilderness, and the 2022 and 2023 editions of the Frommer’s EasyGuide to New Orleans. 

Lavinia wrote the introduction to the e-book edition of Edith Wharton’s classic travelogue, A Motor-Flight Through France, and her work appears in The New York Times’ Modern Love, AFAR, Tin House, Longreads, Yoga Journal, Sunset, Ms., The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco magazine, The Guardian, Post Road, Reader’s Digest, Off Assignment, Every Day with Rachael Ray, and two editions of The Best Travel Writing. Her work has won gold Lowell Thomas and gold SOLAS travel writing awards, has been widely anthologized, and has been noted in The Best American Travel Writing. She is also the co-host of the storytelling podcast There She Goes.

Lavinia has taught all over the world, from South Korea to San Francisco and various points between, including Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica, New Orleans, Nepal, Morocco, Utah, and rural Tibet. As a practicing Buddhist for 20 years, Lavinia often draws upon her meditation practice to help writers focus and find clarity.

Visit her at laviniaspalding.com and watch her TEDx talk here.  

CO-FOUNDER | MENTOR-IN-RESIDENCE, ART

Colette Hannahan is a painter based in San Francisco who often travels around the country and abroad to paint commissions and teach workshops.

Floored by nature, she paints to toast and connect with the moments that cause her to look up, slow down, and remind herself how a place felt.

Colette has illustrated the books Letters and Postcards from Paris and The Best Women's Travel Writing , Volume 12, and has illustrated essays for Hidden Compass.

She has taught painting classes and workshops for the past 16 years to students of all ages and skill levels, often weaving in mediation and mindfulness. Colette is also a trained yoga teacher.

Colette shows her paintings regularly around the Bay Area and recently had her first international exhibition in Catania, Sicily — Paintings of a Traveling Artist — which celebrated the glory and glamor of Mount Etna and the islands of Ustica and Ortigia.

Visit her at colettehannahan.com to see travel paintings and work in progress or on Instagram @colettehannahan. Stop by her studio at 1890 Bryant Street Studios in San Francisco’s Mission District to see some of her work in person.

CO-FOUNDER | COMMUNITY UNFURLER

Karen is a curious, multidisciplinary brand leader and community designer with a proven track record of driving business results and award-winning work through innovative thinking, unique storytelling, and entrepreneurial-styled leadership.

As a recovering ad exec, she has led teams in creative marketing for brands from Goldman Sachs to LEGOLAND, resulting in various industry awards including Silver Lion – Media, Cannes Lions awards.

Additionally, Karen has provided marketing leadership and consultation for social good, non-profit organizations such as Taproot Foundation, United Way, FDNY Foundation, and more.

Karen is an avid traveler and emerging writer. In the spirit of Studio Unfurl, under Lavinia’s mentorship, Karen has honed the craft of personal storytelling resulting in two bronze Solas category awards in 2022 and 2023.

In November 2022, at the end of a 10-day workshop in Nepal with Lavinia + Colette, over some final thali and momos, she proposed the idea of a “more sustained creative journey for all”.

A year later, to the day, Studio Unfurl was born.

Visit her portfolio site at karenwertheim.com