Hola and welcome to Venturing Boomers. First, a few basics. My name is Dan and I am a native Chicano (Mexican American), born and raised in the San Francisco East Bay city of Richmond. I’m a first wave baby boomer and came soon after my father had proven his worth as a welder at the Kaiser Oakland shipyards and married my mother who was working at the time screwing in torpedo fuses at a converted American Standard plant.

Richmond was a hard city to grow up in back then and probably still is for many who live there. I spent my college years in and around Berkeley and now live in Whittier with my wife and life partner, Alicia.

I’ve always had a hunger to see the world and have been fortunate in that I’ve traveled extensively over the years.  In terms the career journey, I spent several years as a librarian working the inner city and then pursued a doctorate in information science at UW-Madison. My doctoral research focused on the information seeking behavior of Latinos and the topic required me to travel and gather information from Latinos throughout the Midwest and East Coast. 

I leveraged my degrees to move into the corporate world where my work and travel schedule  allowed me to see and taste the bigger world. I met people and managed operations in Japan, Mexico and other parts of the world It was great to use my business travels (with corporate perks) to check out as many jazz clubs, museums, and historical sites as time allowed.

Then came about a decade working and consulting with energy firms, including a stint doing a turn-around in Kentucky. Life changed dramatically after 9/11 and I decided to leave the big business hustle and satisfy a long-held desire to teach. I found a refuge close to our home and for the last twenty years I served as a professor of business and sustainability at Whittier College, the sole HSI Title V liberal arts college in the US.

During my time at Whittier College and during three teaching stints with Semester at Sea I managed to take college students on over a  hundred and fifty field trips in twenty plus countries. A couple of those field trips stand out and there are a few tales of them in the Teaching Gigs tab.

It was hugely satisfying to teach but the low salary motivated me to start my own consulting firm in the energy efficiency and water arenas. It was good to blend theory, strategy, and practice in the classroom. The students responded well to the mix, and many of them still keep me current via their postings and wanderings.

I retired after a teaching gig in Madrid as a Fulbright Scholar and may do so again in Spring 2026. It was a great time to be in Spain as Alicia and I lived in the Colonia de Letras, a historic and beautiful neighborhood in Madrid. It was the height of the pandemic and we were happily trapped in the Madrileno bubble world with no museum lines or gawking tourists. I hope the new Fulbright gig comes to pass as  Alicia and I want to venture back to Madrid, our favorite place to live apart form our home in California.

My first solo venture away was in the mid-60s (read about it in Roads Taken) and my best guess is that I’ve been to ninety plus countries. Alicia and I will keep venturing as long as health, mind, and spirit are good and in sync. Along the way we’ve met and made friends with other wanderers, including expats, digital nomads, retirees and others who have ventured away from the ordinary.

While we’ve enjoyed many great vacations and escapes in the past our travel goals today are different. We’re both “retired” but not tired and plan to continue venturing. It’s been several years since we started planning our own adventures and going solo when we could.

Our goal when away is to get familiar with the mercados, meet the local people, and perhaps most of all share a meal and glass or two with new friends.

Alicia and I have had some glorious adventures and returned a year ago from our third tour with the Semester at Sea program. That last voyage  took us across the Mediterranean, down the coast of Africa, into the Indian Ocean, Vietnam and Southeast Asia and finally back across the Pacific to home.  You can see more about this in Teaching Gigs. 

Time to get back to planning our next escape and take a moment to think about your next venture.