Meghan Waters
Every major milestone of my adult life has happened abroad, and most of them happened before I became a diplomat—which means I learned to navigate international life without institutional support, building everything from scratch.
I've started over completely in Colombia, The Gambia, and Senegal, each time arriving as an outsider and building a life, career, and community from nothing. I became a lawyer in Colombia, practicing corporate law while learning to navigate a legal system in a language I was still mastering. I founded the West African Law Institute in The Gambia, where I visited every corner of the country, speaking to thousands of people, despite initially knowing no one there. I got married, had children, experienced relationship challenges, and navigated the full complexity of adult life across Peru, Uganda, Colombia, Tanzania, and now Senegal, where I live permanently with my Senegalese husband, embedded in his family's community.
I've faced difficulties in every single country I've lived in—bureaucratic nightmares that seemed unsolvable, cultural misunderstandings that left me feeling completely lost, moments of profound loneliness when I questioned whether I could actually do this, health scares far from familiar medical systems, professional setbacks that made me doubt my competence, and the ongoing challenge of building identity and belonging in places where I'm always, to some degree, the foreigner.
Every challenge taught me something crucial: that you're more adaptable than you think, that community can be built anywhere if you show up with humility and genuine interest, that starting over isn't failure—it's often the path to becoming who you're actually meant to be, and that the skills you develop navigating one impossible situation transfer directly to the next. When clients wonder whether they can actually build a meaningful life in an unfamiliar place without institutional support, without knowing anyone, without speaking the language fluently, without any guarantee it will work out—I can say with absolute authority: yes, you can, because I've done it repeatedly, and I can show you exactly how.
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Our Founders
Heather Wirick
I didn't stumble into international life—I built a career around it. As a U.S. Foreign Service Officer and USAID professional for over a decade, I lived and worked across Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Working in development meant I wasn't just passing through—I was embedded in communities, understanding how people actually live, what they value, and what makes a place feel like home rather than a destination.
Through travels to more than 60 countries, I learned to distinguish between tourist-friendly and genuinely authentic, between places that perform culture for visitors and places that simply live it. I discovered which hiking trails locals actually use, which dive sites remain pristine because communities protect them, which families welcome strangers not for income but for genuine cultural exchange. More importantly, I learned that the most meaningful travel experiences happen when you step outside the usual circuits and experience how differently people approach life when you're immersed in their communities.
The families who host travelers in their homes, the local guides who share places they genuinely love rather than places they're paid to promote, the communities that welcome outsiders with warmth rather than transaction—these relationships took me years to build across continents.
Now, through Beneath the Map, I offer what most travelers can't access on their own: trusted entry into authentic experiences I've spent a career discovering, connections to communities I know personally, and itineraries designed by someone who understands that transformative travel isn't about where you go, but how deeply you're willing to show up once you get there.
Mariah Cisse
I grew up in a small town in Alaska knowing the world was bigger than what I could see, and I've spent my adult life chasing that knowing—through Peace Corps service, living and working across multiple countries, and immersing myself in languages and cultures that stretched me in ways I didn't know I needed.
I've raised three kids while relocating internationally, learned to build home in unfamiliar places, and discovered that geographic change isn't just about new scenery—it's about new perspectives on who you actually are beneath all the roles you've been playing. I spent years deliberately choosing discomfort because that's when I felt most like myself, and then life forced me into the hard stuff I didn't ask for: a marriage ending, rebuilding in unfamiliar places, figuring out how to keep going when everything felt uncertain.
Here's what all that taught me: when you immerse yourself in communities that approach life differently than what you've known, something shifts. You see possibilities you couldn't see from home. You remember parts of yourself you'd forgotten.
Through Beneath the Map, I create experiences for people who've been holding it all together for so long they've lost touch with who they are beneath the expectations—the structured-enough-to-feel-safe but unfamiliar-enough-to-force-growth kind of travel that helps you find your way back to yourself. If you're ready to remember what it feels like to just be you again, I know exactly how to hold space for that discovery.
