Unearthing Solutions. Reimagining Travel.
Rooted is an independent, solutions-oriented media platform and resource hub at the intersection of travel, social impact, and narrative sovereignty.
Why We Exist + What We Do
The Media Platform
Travel touches nearly every corner of the globe, carrying the potential to cause deep harm or act as a catalyst for genuine good. For too long, travel media has been trapped in a cycle of bad news or superficial clickbait. Rooted takes a different path.
We are an independent, solutions-oriented media platform sharing stories of how communities, innovators, and local leaders are responding to complex social and environmental challenges. Guided by the tenets of solutions-oriented storytelling, our reporting moves beyond the problem to explore creative, evidence-backed responses that offer a blueprint for others to learn from.
We explore:
- Tourism-responsive solutions: Strategies directly mitigating the negative impacts of travel.
- Tourism-as-a-solution: Models where travel actively contributes to addressing an existing environmental or social challenge.
- Community-rooted solutions: Place-based, community-led initiatives designed for local wellbeing that travelers can witness, learn from, and support.
The Resource Hub
Rooted began as a purpose-driven communications consultancy and learning lab — a space dedicated to helping the tourism ecosystem reimagine its impact. Over the years, that work generated hundreds of articles, toolkits, courses, and guides designed for tour operators, storytellers, DMOs, travel brands, and conscious creators.
Today, Rooted has come full circle. While our primary focus is publishing open-access solutions storytelling for a global audience, our B2B Resource Hub serves as an open-source engine for practical application. It is a space where travel professionals can access the tools, ethical storytelling frameworks, and strategic guidance to help shift local solutions into wider practice.
Our Guiding Values
Embrace Curiosity and Purpose: Ask from genuine interest; listen from a place of humility.
Elevate Unheard Voices: Center the storytellers, local communities, and innovators traditionally pushed to the margins.
Focus on Responses: Acknowledge the polycrisis, but elevate the creative, small-scale acts catalyzing real change.
Cultivate Hope: Believe that another way of traveling — and being in the world — is possible.
Global Challenges, Local Solutions...
Supported by Tourism
It's time we hear their stories.
COLOMBIA
In Miravalle Territorial Area for Training and Reincorporation, ex-FARC guerillas laid down rifles for rafting paddles and established a tourism business to sustain their village.
INDIA
In Ladakh, a trekking company has electrified more than 130 remote villages, providing work for women and discouraging youth from migrating to urban areas.
UNITED STATES
In Yellowstone National Park, an adventure tour operator diverted 99% of rubbish created on an experimental zero-waste trip – but discovered hurdles still exist for food waste.
Leadership + Editorial Standards
About Rooted's Founder
JoAnna Haugen is an independent journalist, speaker, and founder of Rooted. Her work has been published in dozens of print and online publications, and, in 2021, Newsweek named her a winner in the storytelling category of its Future of Tourism awards. A curious storyteller and hopeful global citizen, JoAnna has led training sessions on travel-related solutions storytelling and helped judge the annual Solutions Journalism Network awards.
Beyond curating and editing Rooted, she regularly speaks at global industry events and advises organizations on ethical storytelling and sustainable travel narratives. To inquire about speaking engagements, panel moderation, or strategic advisory, visit JoAnna’s website.
Journalistic Integrity + AI Statement
Sharing stories about people requires human empathy, integrity, and lived understanding. To ensure our reporting remains rooted in the nuance of community life and narrative sovereignty, we are committed to human-centered, field-reported journalism. All articles, editorial content, and source interviews are researched, conducted, and written by human storytellers. We do not use generative AI to draft our articles, fabricate sources or quotes, replace field reporting, or generate imagery.
At Rooted, AI serves strictly as an operational and analytical tool to increase efficiency, refine strategy, and identify knowledge gaps. It is used to assist with drafting technical metadata (like headlines and SEO descriptions), developing structural outlines, conducting initial background research, transcribing interviews, stress-testing narrative logic against solutions journalism pillars, supporting web development and tech integration, and reviewing drafts for readability and grammatical consistency.
If generative AI is ever used beyond these operational and strategic frameworks, we will explicitly disclose that within the specific piece of content.
Support Our Work
We believe critical, solutions-oriented journalism should be accessible to everyone and not locked behind corporate paywalls. Rooted is independently operated and free for all readers. If our stories or resources have supported your work, consider making a pay-as-you-wish contribution to help fund future field reporting and open-access guides.
