By Rayna Reid Rayford ·Updated May 27, 2024
Veronica Woodruff went from flight attendant to founder when she started the innovative tech travel company Travelsist, which provides on-demand airport assistance to people who need extra help while traveling.
For over a decade, Woodruff worked as a entrepreneurship.”
At that time, Woodruff also participated in hackathons and recalled how one investor told her, “It’s time for you to solve a problem of your own.” Working with what she knew, Woodruff had an epiphany: “each time that I traveled with my small daughter, I realized that it was a struggle for me. There was no dedicated service to meet and assist me at the airport,” she said.
“I can remember taking a trip to California to visit family, and I started connecting the dots. I remember during my time as a flight attendant how I would always watch moms with small children struggle to get on board the plane and thinking, How much has this evolved?”
Woodruff said that seeing people go through those experiences at the airport and often having struggles of her own made her want to do something about it, and that’s how this innovative Afro-Latina business owner launched Travelsist in 2020.
Since then, Woodruff’s tech efforts have been backed by $1.1 million in venture capital funding, and she has participated in accelerators such as J.P. Morgan & Techstars and The Partnership for Southern Equity (PSE) in conjunction with The Rockefeller Foundation’s Opportunity Collective (ROC).
GoDaddy’s Venture Forward research initiative states that Black women are “the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, more than doubling since August 2019. Black women total 10% of entrepreneurs surveyed for the latest report, representing a 70% increase in the number of Black women-owned businesses started before the pandemic.”
Travelsist is an artificial intelligence (AI) powered platform travel companion that helps make the process work more smoothly for those who need a little more help at the airport, whether it’s a family traveling with young children, someone in a wheelchair, someone who has special requirements, someone who needs help finding directions, a senior traveler, or a VIP traveler. Users can download the app and reserve an assistant who can help them get from airport drop-off to boarding the plane more easily.
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