Life & Work with JaMeka Ramnath

Today we’d like to introduce you to JaMeka Ramnath.

Hi JaMeka, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I currently work full-time as a Senior Marketing Producer at a television station in North Carolina and have been for almost 14 years. So not only do I have a 9 to 5 but I am also a wife and mother who loves to talk and write about travel. However, that was not always the case.

Many years ago before I got married, I had no desire to travel anywhere. I refused to take weekend trips because it involved sleeping in a hotel room instead of my own bed. But that all changed when I met Meshach in 2007 (who is now my husband.)

We got engaged in 2012 and while planning our honeymoon, we chose Italy. We honestly had so much more fun planning our trip to Italy than our own wedding. So, we had an epiphany. We decided to scrap all of our big wedding plans, have a small wedding instead and the money we saved from that, we’d spend it on our Italy trip. It was the best decision ever!

Italy will always have my heart. I absolutely love that country. It was our first international trip together and my first visit out of the US. I didn’t own a passport until we planned this trip. That trip made me step outside of my “safe bubble” and realize there is so much more to the world. There are many different people, cultures, history in the world and the experiences you gain from traveling is priceless. By that point, we caught the travel bug and have been hooked on traveling ever since.

The really cool thing now is traveling with our son, Tristan (he just turned eight years old.) He is an excellent traveler and keeps up with our itineraries very well. We enjoy hearing Tristan’s perspective about the places we visit. A lot of times it’s very entertaining.

With the traveling we were doing early on, I wanted to write about our experiences as an online diary to look back at the memories we created. So I started our blog in 2014 (back then it was named Got The Travel Bug Too.) But I didn’t become consistent with it until maybe 2016 where I also became a contributor to Huffington Post and landed our first big media trip which was with Club Med Punta Cana. We had so much fun creating content on that trip and it added more fuel to take our blog to the next level. In 2019 we felt like we needed to rebrand and refocus our blog’s mission: to inspire and share bookmark-worthy travel tips for our readers. We changed our blog name to Ramnaths Away where not only readers will find all things travel, but we also want to share inspirational content on our website and social media platforms.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It was definitely not a smooth road and to this day, it still has its struggles. For example, when pitching media trips we’ve been told “no” over a thousand times. But that’s never stopped us from pitching until we found the right business to work with.

There is a large amount of super talented creators with audiences of every size from micro-influencers to celebrity status. The competition is out there but fortunately, we’ve had some opportunities where brands or tourism boards were still very interested in working with us even though we have a small audience compared to the big creators out there.

When we produce our content, we make it as professional as possible and deliver in a timely manner if working with a business on a project. We enjoy the work we do for our blog and we truly hope it is as enjoyable for those who are watching or reading it as it was enjoyable for us to create. At the end of the day, we just want to inspire people.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We specialize in family travel and also write about family-related content as well. We create informative and entertaining blog posts, YouTube videos of our trips, content for social media (geared to inspire, inform or entertain.) I’m really proud of how far our blog has come over the last seven years. I never would have imagined being able to travel as much as we did and the people we’ve had the opportunity to work with. To this day, we still have a relationship with many of them after all these years. I know there are a lot of family travel bloggers out there, but I feel like we stand out because we are ourselves. We are imaginative, curious travelers of the world and we won’t stop until we’ve seen and learned it all.

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Yes! Google Maps is our number one app for planning out our travels. We also use TripAdvisor, Rick Steves’ Europe podcasts and TV shows (I planned our entire Italy trip using Rick Steves’ Europe.) Lonely Planet books are another favorite of ours. Google Translate is also very helpful.

Contact Info:

• Email: hello@ramnathsaway.com
• Website: https://www.ramnathsaway.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ramnathsaway/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ramnathsaway
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/JaMekaRamnath
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ramnathsaway
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/ramnathsaway

Image Credits
Meshach Ramnath/JaMeka Ramnath