On the occasion of Women's Day, we wanted to celebrate female talent by inviting our community to tag women who are an inspiration. So many of you have responded to us, and with this new #DIDAYSGIRLPOWER column we want to let you know their stories through interviews, which have all the flavor of a chat between friends. We start this new adventure with Nicoletta Crisponi, an independent woman and a free spirit who, thanks to her ability to network and her creativity, has toured the world, created the successful blog "Nicky's Thread" and today works as a travel blogger.
Hello Nicoletta and thank you for accepting this interview. To begin, I would like to dispel two clichés:
- for a woman to travel alone is dangerous: to exorcise this fear, I can only say that in principle what you find around the world is what you can find every day outside your front door. Certainly when you travel you have to be careful, to love yourself, to preserve yourself. But in principle, if we exclude countries that are at war or at risk, if you have the courage to go out and walk around your city you can do it all over the world.
- At 30 a woman should be thinking about a family: at 25 I would have liked it and even today I would like to have it, but one should not be conditioned. Let's say that I had to accept my "strangeness": it is not easy to be next to someone who is always on the move like me. Sometimes in the evening I would like to be able to share my experiences with a companion but I have not yet met the right person all the way. In any case, I think I would still continue to travel alone. Traveling has taught me that love can come from many things. For example, when I volunteered in Africa, every morning when I opened the door I was literally flooded with the enthusiasm and affection of so many children, and that is a huge manifestation of love.
Let's talk about your career. From the 1Kiss4NewYork campaign to traveling around the world. How important has your resourcefulness and networking been in your professional life?
Resourcefulness is everything. When you're a student you have a lot of dreams and two options: to do things on your own or to stay and wait for opportunities to come along. When you create projects for yourself you really have to stitch them together. With enthusiasm you start a project, but it's only through motivation and resourcefulness that you make it through to the end. The 1Kiss4NewYork campaign was exhausting, but on the one hand I was lucky because it had a great media response. I was able to create a network that followed me and contacts with the press. This was very important for my career because when people know you, it is easier to break the wall of distrust.
When I started planning my world trip, I asked myself, how do I go on this tour? Initially, the idea was to go and collect the colors of the world and tell about them through nature. Then I read about Facebook and degrees of separation and found my common thread: connections. From there, I started working and going around to events to make myself known to brands.
It was not easy to approach and get noticed by brands, what I did and what allowed me to get credited was to present myself with case studies. I presented a communication strategy, a message, a project on connections. This led me to collaborate with the likes of Huawei, Oakley, La Sportiva... These collaborations gave me advantages and allowed me to save on expenses and equipment.
Your journey started from an idea that today thanks to social media we are all connected, is that really the case? What connections came out of your journey and what was the thing that surprised you the most?
During my journey I met many people, many special people who helped me in a thousand different ways. When you travel you often meet people who travel or have an openness to travel. The most surprising situation-which is also the strangest-was meeting the girl who saved me from Hurricane Irma in Miami. As I traveled, I learned that all things happen for a reason. I was on my way out of Disneyland when I learned that yet another flight had been canceled. I get into an Uber taxi and talking to the girl I find out that she is also a travel blogger and that we are part of the same Facebook community. We exchanged numbers. Meanwhile, I set out to find a hotel, but the prices had skyrocketed, so I called her. I was in Orlando, and when I sent her the location, the amazing thing was that she was across the street. She adopted me throughout the hurricane, I met her family and we cooked together, she was my guardian angel.
Where did you get the courage to say, I'll drop everything and go around the world?
For me, actually, it was natural. I come from the mountains of Trentino. When I was 17, I took a train, went to Milan, took a plane and went to Sardinia. The next year I went to Belgium as an au pair. I didn't know what to expect, I had a thousand doubts. It was a gamble and today it is normal for me to travel. One day I was in the car with the Bla Bla Car service, the person I was traveling with tells me that he brought a girl who went around the world and there is a ticket that allows you to do that. So I decided to go.
Do you have to be rich to go around the world?
No, it's all in the motivation. I started from scratch, while I was studying I always did small jobs and made sacrifices to support myself. When I decided to make the trip I said to myself, I have to save some money and I started changing habits to save money.
What was it like to return to work after a year around the world?
A vacation, I mean it. I never worked so hard as when I was on the road. I was moving every two or three days, organizing the trip itself was already work. During the day I was trying to meet people, in the evening I was doing social communication. Early in the morning I would double-check emails, get information about the destination, places to take photos. I slept an average of five hours a night. Physically it was a massacre. I put myself on a pretty tough travel plan and being alone I must say did not help. After a few months I had the support of an editorial staff to produce content, but at the same time this activity requires management.
From the journey came the idea for a children's book and a crowdfunding campaign on Production from Below. How did it go?
At the level of communication, it went very well both for us and for the Giacomo Ascoli Onlus Foundation, which has been caring for and supporting children with cancer and their families for as many as 12 years at the Ponte Hospital in Varese, to which we will donate a portion of the funds raised to charity. This time too (as always) it all came about by chance. Federica Bocchi and I started with the idea of making a book, an illustrated fairy tale for children. We wanted to do it the best we could without making an investment of our own. So I remembered a person who works in crowdfunding and we met the Production from Below team. Thanks to the campaign, we were able to be comfortable with the investment. We learned everything in the moment. A fantastic community has grown out of the project, there have been moms who have made buying groups to get the book or others who send me pictures of their babies with the book and invite me to lunch.
What are your future plans?
Now I took a job for a few months. When I decided to travel I didn't run away from my job, I missed being free, I wanted to have a personal challenge. This interlude served me to realize that I missed my job but I could not live by being locked in an agency.I would like to find my serenity in routine but I am not happy like that. When my job ends, I will leave for ten days to Germany and then to Copenhagen. I have some travel-related proposals in the works that I am considering. As for the blog, however, I am in the process of rebranding to figure out how to position myself and how to tell the travel story. I would like to bring out the difference between travel blogger and traveler who tells stories.
Follow his journey at: www.ilfilodinicky.com
Ilenia Dalmasso