Karen LeBlanc is an award-winning travel journalist and storyteller, honored with the 2025 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Award, two Telly Awards, and multiple NATJA Awards for The Design Tourist travel show. As host, producer, and writer, she takes viewers beyond the guidebooks to uncover the culture, craft, cuisine, and creativity that shape the world’s most compelling destinations. Her travel features appear on TheDesignTourist.com, syndicated by MSN.com, and she serves as design and travel contributor for LaPalme Magazine. Karen also hosts and produces LA64, a Louisiana travel series airing on PBS with national distribution. Karen is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW), the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA), and the International Food, Wine & Travel Writers Association (IFWTWA).
What got you into travel journalism?
After earning my graduate degree in journalism and spending four years as a news anchor and reporter for network affiliates in Louisiana, I moved to Mexico to join Televisa, where I anchored an English-language newscast for tourists visiting Cancún. During my time there, the Televisa production team invited me to write, produce, and host a series of travel videos for cruise lines. The company had a major contract to create a video series showcasing the attractions and experiences of Cancún and Cozumel.
Producing those 30 travel videos opened my eyes to a new career path, one that merged my love of travel and curiosity about different cultures with my journalism training. While living in Mexico, I also wrote travel articles and contributed to several guidebooks, expanding my work as an on-camera travel host.
A few years later, I relocated to Florida, continuing as a freelance journalist with a focus on travel, art, design, and architecture. While reporting on design at a trade show, I met the founders of The Design Network, an early streaming platform looking for original programming. I pitched The Design Tourist, a travel docu-series that explores local artistry, cultural preservation, and heritage storytelling.
The first season of The Design Tourist premiered on The Design Network, with subsequent seasons streaming on Amazon Prime, Reveel, Tubi, and Vacation Escapes. The series is currently in development to air nationwide on PBS.
Today, my work with PBS continues as the writer, producer, and host of LA 64, a Louisiana travel show that explores the state’s main streets, byways, and backroads.
What’s the most challenging part of being a travel journalist?
I travel to immerse myself in the lived reality of another country and culture. My lens is anthropological, driven by a deep curiosity about customs, beliefs, traditions, art, crafts, and cuisine, all forms of cultural expression. True understanding requires stepping beyond my comfort zone, and over time, I’ve learned how to be comfortable with discomfort. Travel has tested my resilience, patience, and courage, but it has also taught me to trust the process and stay open to unexpected possibilities and unplanned outcomes.
What is the most rewarding aspect of travel journalism?
My motto is: “The world is big. Life is short. Join the journey.” My mission is to inspire others to step outside their comfort zones, to live boldly, learn continuously, and make meaningful connections along the way. Nature offers common ground, transcending culture and creed. Art, craft, and cuisine serve as powerful pathways to cultural understanding. Travel delivers all of these: immersive experiences and fresh perspectives that awaken the senses and root you fully in the present moment.
What is something you wish people knew about travel journalism?
A travel journalist is fundamentally different from a travel influencer. While both may have a strong social media presence, travel journalists prioritize purpose-driven storytelling over showcasing a destination’s most Instagrammable or click-worthy features. Our work goes deeper and is grounded in immersive reporting, active listening, and meaningful human connections in search of shared humanity.
Travel journalism has the power to preserve and promote ancestral traditions, generational knowledge, and artisanal skills that are increasingly at risk of disappearing in a globalized, homogenized world. I’ve made it my mission to amplify underrepresented voices and highlight heritage crafts, culinary traditions, and sustainable practices. When done with care and respect, tourism can be a powerful force for cultural sustainability and positive change.
How have your cross-cultural experiences shaped your point of view of the world?
My cross-cultural experiences through travel have revealed a shared humanity that transcends language barriers and geographic borders. As humans, we’re biologically wired to create beauty and make sense of the world through art, whether through storytelling, dance, or drawing. Travel has deepened my self-awareness, challenging my preconceived notions and biases, and opening my heart and mind to other ways of seeing and being in the world.
What have you enjoyed most about being a NATJA member?
What I’ve enjoyed most about being a NATJA member is the opportunity to continually grow as a travel journalist through engaging webinars that sharpen my craft and through meaningful connections with fellow writers on press trips and at industry events. The sense of community and shared passion for storytelling has been both inspiring and energizing.
