Teresa Rodriguez Williamson

Teresa Rodriguez Williamson is the author of "FLY SOLO: The 50 Best Places on Earth for a Girl to Travel Alone" and the founder of [http://tangodiva.com/ TangoDiva.com] , a social network for women travelers.

Teresa was born on January 31, 1969 as Ina Cassandra Rodriguez. After a few days with that name, which her father did not like, she was renamed Bonita Louise Rodriguez. For twelve months her name was Bonita, but on her first birthday, her parents changed her name to Teresa Louise.

Teresa’s father is from Mexico and her mother is American. Teresa is the oldest of three children. Her younger sister was diagnosed with herpes encephalitis, which lead to severe brain damage at the age of four months old. During the eleven years of her sister’s life, Teresa watched her sister deteriorate. Because of her sister’s inability to live a normal life, Teresa promised to live a full life for her sister, who was bound to a wheelchair and died at the age of eleven.

In 1988, Teresa was working for Richard Simmons; there she met her first husband who was Australian. She immigrated to Australia with her new husband. In 1991, she returned to the United States for a visit with her family. It was at her parents’ house that she received a request for separation from her husband. That sent her into an emotional tailspin, which included three weeks of bi-daily therapy sessions. After losing 15 pounds in three weeks, her doctor advised her that some in-patient psychiatric care was needed. Teresa was handed a stack of papers she had to fill out and return the following Monday for her stay in a facility north of San Francisco.

Instead of returning to the hospital that Monday, Teresa booked a trip to London. That started her love affair with traveling. She spent that summer traveling through London, Paris, and New York. It was during her travels that she learned how to rely on herself and built her self-confidence. She returned to Australia in the fall (their spring) and completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology.

During her five years in Australia, Teresa modeled and worked on a game show called Blind Date. While working on the game show, her weekends were spent jet setting through Australia with winning contestants.

She returned to the United States in 1993 and moved back to San Francisco. In 2003, while returning from a pilgrimage to Machu Picchu, the 757 she was in lost an engine an hour after take-off. The cabin filled with smoke, and the passengers got very quiet. While the airplane returned to Lima, for an emergency landing, Teresa made a deal with the universe. If she landed on terra firma, she would start a company that empowered women to find strength through travel, just like she did when she first got divorced. She would quit her day job and write a book that would help women navigate the art of solo travel.

In 2004, Tango Diva was launched and in 2007 Penguin Books published her book FLY SOLO. Now, she is 38 years old, married and is a popular spokeswoman for the growing female travel segment. She has been featured in over 100 newspapers and magazines around the world, and her has appeared on LIVE with Regis and Kelly, ABC news, NBC News, Bay Area Backroads, and Weekend Today in New York.