Meet Anne Poole
LOCAL FOREIGNER’S TEAM OF INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS
This post is part of our series celebrating our Independent Contractors and Hosting Program. The Local Foreigner's Hosting Program provides a platform of systems and support for independent travel advisors.
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Snakes on a plane
The first hint that Anne Poole is not your average traveler lies in her answer to one of Local Foreigner’s intake questions, which is, “What’s your worst travel experience?” Usually, we hear about missed flights or missing luggage, but Anne simply says, “Having a cobra loose in my room in Sri Lanka.” (Cue that gif of the guy blinking in abject disbelief.) She laughs it off, but suddenly you realize you’re dealing with a real one.
Adventure as a matter of course is a pattern throughout Anne’s history. Though she grew up in Illinois and went to boarding school in Connecticut, she wasn’t exactly sitting still. “My dad traveled for work 300 days out of the year, and we were always being dragged along, sometimes trekking across the world for what other people would consider a really short amount of time. I have two sisters and they loved the five star hotels with the fancy pools - I like those too, but I also love the nitty gritty. I remember at a young age being served a bowl of little baby snakes slithering around at a restaurant in Japan. That is NOT something I would have been exposed to at home.” At 16, she went to Africa on a school trip, and then connected from Kenya through Abu Dhabi to Sri Lanka on her own; the plane was diverted because the airport had been bombed during the ongoing Eelam War II. “In Sri Lanka, I stayed in a hut with no screens on the windows, just a mosquito net over the bed, and I was there for four weeks. When I boarded the plane to London, the pilot came out and said, ‘Anne, you’re actually going to Moscow now to meet your dad.’ So I went to Russia instead, right after the fall of the USSR. Growing up traveling like this made me so independent.”
“I like a five star hotel with a fabulous pool, but I also love the nitty gritty. I remember at a young age being served a bowl of little baby snakes slithering around at a restaurant in Japan. That is NOT something I would have been exposed to at home.”
-Anne Poole
Prescription: Travel
After graduating from Georgetown, Anne started building a career as a pediatric nurse practitioner, but she didn’t let the mundanities of grownup life interfere with her ongoing explorations. “I wanted to become fluent in Spanish, so I moved to Spain to study - but let’s be honest, I didn’t do much studying. I lived in an apartment with a bunch of other 20-somethings and got a job as a waitress. After that, I moved to Jackson to nurse and also to ski, and then decided for my ‘real life’ I wanted to live in New York, so I moved to the city.” Three kids in three years and a corresponding relocation to the suburbs came next, but far from letting that slow her down, Anne just strapped them all on and kept going. “My mom dropped out of college and moved to Hawaii in the 60s, and since then, my family has had homes on Maui. I remember flying there once, alone with the kids - a three year old who was potty training, a baby in the carrier, and a two year old glued to me. It was 18 hours door-to-door, but we made it!”
Anne had long planned to go back to nursing once her kids were established and in school. But that turned out to be 2020, when the idea of reentering the health care workforce was suddenly a very different calculus. She deferred on the idea through the first years of the pandemic, and as the world started opening up again, friends ready to get back out and traveling started coming to her for advice. “Suddenly, it was four or five times a week, friends calling me up and saying, ‘Can I take you to lunch, or can I buy you a drink and have you help me plan my trip to wherever.’ I always said yes, because I love helping people, but it also made me go, ‘Wait… I think this could be a job.’” On paper, the leap may seem significant, but to hear Anne tell it, it makes perfect sense. “Yes, travel can challenge you and be transformative, but it can also be a reset button. A quick getaway, and you come back and think, ‘Okay wow, yes that was just four days in Turks, but I’m good, my stress is gone.’ I love helping people find that feeling, solve for that problem, and I truly think that’s the nurse in me. The question for both a nurse and for a travel advisor is, ‘What can I do to make someone’s life better?’ It’s just that the toolkit is different.”
“I don’t need every trip to be gritty, but I also don’t want every trip to be complete luxury. I loved taking my young kids for six weeks across Southeast Asia a few years back. But my favorite place in the world is poolside at Splendido.”
Joining the Team
After a few years building her business, as Anne started looking for a host that would help her grow, she asked around to some of the suppliers she trusted most. “I was committed to doing my due diligence, so I spent a lot of time speaking to people in the industry about what agency might be the best fit. Local Foreigner kept coming up.” She joined Local Foreigner in the spring of 2025, and immediately became a trusted source for far-flung adventure travelers on the team, sending scouting intel from Varanasi, Agra, Jaipur, Jodhpur, the Thar Desert, Udaipur, Agra, Delhi, Munich, Maui, Oahu, and upstate New York in her first month alone. This balance of going hard and taking it easy is classic Anne. “I don’t need every trip to be gritty, but I also don’t want every trip to be complete luxury. I loved taking my young kids for six weeks across Southeast Asia a few years back. But my favorite place in the world is poolside at Splendido. Or, another way to put it - my husband is a big wine guy, and we just did a trip to Bordeaux. I love eating and drinking at the great Michelin-starred restaurants, but I was even more excited for the Cap Ferret oyster shacks.” She hopes her clients will find the same joy in contrasts. “I think of my clients as friends, because the relationship is based on mutual trust. And I love adventurous travelers, but I also love when people are honest about not wanting to be adventurous. I love helping people experiencing things that make them happy. And bonus points if they send me funny texts about all along the way.”
