ShoutOut Colorado recently asked me about starting Her Wild Life, and a few of my answers are worth expanding on here, since they explain the actual reasoning behind this company rather than just the pitch version of it.
Why Her Wild Life Actually Exists
Her Wild Life sits on top of something older. I founded Reefs to Rockies in 2006, after years of teaching biology and taking students into the field, because I wanted a travel company built around conservation and real science, not just scenery. Over the better part of two decades running that company, one pattern became impossible to ignore: most of the people booking our group trips were women. At the same time, I kept meeting skilled, genuinely qualified women in guiding and conservation who could not get a foot in the door of an industry still mostly run and staffed by men.
Her Wild Life is what happens when you stop treating that as two separate observations. The goal was never just to hire more female guides, though we have plenty of those. It was to build something where women are elevated at every level: ownership, guiding, the local businesses we work with in each destination, and the travelers themselves. Several of the women who guide our expeditions also run their own small businesses, and part of the hope here is that Her Wild Life’s success becomes their success too, not just a paycheck. Our full guide team reflects that.
A Morning at Rocky Mountain Arsenal
If someone visiting Denver for a day asked me where to go, I would not send them downtown first. I would take them to Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, a genuinely world class wildlife destination that most people have never heard of, sitting practically inside the city with the Denver skyline visible in the distance. Bison roam there. Eagles are common. The black footed ferret, one of the most endangered mammals in North America, has been successfully reintroduced on the refuge. I would drive us around in our own custom safari van, the same one we call the Roaming Bison, looking for whatever the Great Plains decided to show us that morning, then celebrate whatever we found over lunch and a local beer afterward. It is not one of our guided expeditions. It is just the place I would actually take you, which might explain more about how we build our trips than any of our itineraries do.
Who This Is Really For
Asked who deserves recognition, my honest answer was the women themselves, the ones I have met on trips over the years who love the wild as much as I do. They are not a marketing audience. They are the reason this company exists in the first place, and every trip we design starts with them in mind.
Read the full conversation with ShoutOut Colorado for more. To meet the women who guide our expeditions, visit Our Guides, or learn more on our About Us page.
