Welcome Evan Freed, from Port Washington, N.Y., our Lead Dad of the Week!
In the second summer of Covid, Evan planned a family retreat – not a trip or a vacation – so his family could reconnect. It was him, his wife Lindsay and their two daughters on a beach in Costa Rica for six weeks. He had practiced #meditation since he was a teenager, but he wanted to do something as a family to get out of the Covid lockdown around New York City.
“I just wanted to live abroad with my family,” he said of that 2021 trip. “We connected so deeply. My wife was meditating with me. We were parenting differently. We were taking on this slow pace of life.”
When they returned to Long Island and Manhattan, where they live and work, Evan got an idea. A serial tech entrepreneur, he decided to create something more grounded in families and humans than your typical tech venture: he started Family Journey, a travel company that helps families go on 5-7 day retreats, with or without him as their guide.
His ideal family is intentional about what they’re doing. “It’s for someone who is open to learn and explore their relationship with their family in a very honest way. But there’s still a lot of fun and nature and exploring the culture.”
He credits his family’s own experience on a family retreat with helping him see the world through the eyes of his children, 5 and 7. “Now I’m seeing the struggles they go through and how difficult it is to be a child,” he said. “It gets us outside of that rigidity of being at home. It helps us test new things.”
Welcome, Evan. And please check out Your Family Journey!
