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Meet Stacey
Stacey Leasca is an award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of newsroom experience. Her photos, videos, and words have appeared in print or online for Travel + Leisure, Food&Wine, Departures, Hotels Above Par, TIME, The Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Men's Health, GlobalPost, Business Insider, and many more. Stacey also served as an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, teaching feature writing and visual journalism. She has a BA in English and a BS in Secondary Education from the University of Rhode Island, a Masters in Digital and Print Journalism from Emerson College, and is now pursuing her Ph.D. at Católica in Portugal, specializing in building resiliency to disinformation in early-career journalists.
Meet Nina
Nina Ruggiero is the digital editorial director at Travel + Leisure, the leading source of travel inspiration in the U.S. and beyond, with a cross-platform audience of over 15 million readers. Raised in the world of New York City newspapers, she has covered topics ranging from fashion and wellness to crime and politics — but travel journalism has been her lifelong passion. Nina has appeared as a travel expert on the Today show, NBC, Fox & Friends, Yahoo! Finance, The Weather Channel, NewsNation, and more. She has led award-winning digital series and social media franchises, and serves on panels as a hospitality industry consultant, working with everyone from hotel CEOs to budding reporters.