Natural Habitat Adventures & WWF
Discovering Our Planet Together
Get the Catalog
eNews Signup
Call 800-543-8917
Call (800) 543-8917
×
Navigation
In This Section
Home Guides & Staff Staff Bios Wendy Klausner

Wendy Klausner

After graduating from Wharton Business School with an undergraduate degree and NYU with an MBA, Wendy worked for nine years in traditional marketing roles at big companies in New York such as Citibank and IBM. She finally realized it wasn't for her when, on the side, she found herself helping her friends and co-workers plan trips around the world. One day a friend said to her, "You should really do this for a living, you know so much about the world," so she dropped the corporate world like a hot bowl of udon noodles and made the move to adventure travel! Showing up in Boulder in 1996 with a car load of clothes, she marched into Natural Habitat's offices and announced in her Long Island accent her intention of working for the company. "What's the capital of Botswana?" Ben asked her. "Gabarone," she replied, and she was on board! She started developing new itineraries and working with clients to plan the trips of their dreams. She has now been to 90 countries and all seven continents, giving her a remarkable portfolio of experiences that she will gladly share with anyone who is willing to listen (we've heard it all), so please call her so she can start on you guys! In her spare time, she stays busy with her two boys, Dirk and Kyle, whom she hopes will share her passion for travel.
hide

horizontal
×
×
Wendy's Wild Adventures
This is the BEST place to work, I have been at Natural Habitat since March of 1996. Here we are at Winter Fest, a chance to get out of the office and celebrate with a day on the slopes at Loveland ski area. Here we were saying “Bon Voyage” to Dan Crandall who worked here for 10 years. He is the guy with the beard in the front row.One of the reasons I moved to Boulder was to get out and ride my bike in the foothills. It is one of my favorite activities.For my 10th year in Boulder, I ran my first race, the classic Boulder Boulder, a 10K. The highlight was passing up my boss, Ben Bressler. Boy did that feel good!Many of you wonder what I do on my day off each week. Often I volunteer at school, but when you have a day like this, I take advantage of mid-week skiing and alone time with my husband Alek. Here we are at Copper Mountain.I have been skiing since I was 3 years old. I was thrilled when my boys, Dirk and Kyle fell in love as well. Here we are at Winter Park. It won’t be too long before they pass me up.In February each year, my in-laws rent a house in Hawaii on the beach. Here are Dirk (age 9) and Kyle (age 6) on the first early morning on the beach.I take every opportunity to teach my boys about things I learn on my Natural Habitat trips. They are already very excited about seeing the world. I hope to start taking them with me on our new Family Adventures.Here we are at Mission Wolf, a sanctuary in Southern Colorado. This wolf Maggie even greeted us by licking our faces.We like to camp and sometimes the hummingbirds at this campsite would land on our fingers.This was my first visit to Kenya in 1996. I fell in love with the country, the wildlife and the people and take every opportunity to return. In fact, I returned once again this year to Kenya and Tanzania.My 30th birthday at the Taj Mahal at sunrise. It is a day I will never forget. I am so excited we have a trip to India coming up. What a fascinating country.This was taken the morning after I got married. My husband and I married ourselves on the South Rim at Shoshoni point in the Grand Canyon. It was truly romantic!On my Alaska trip a few years ago, there was a film crew on board making a documentary on dome cars. They filmed me for a bit and wound up using my segment. It appeared for 6 months on every Frontier Airlines flight. I felt like a celebrity.Here is our final group shot at Brooks Falls, Alaska, with our fabulous guide, Eric Rock. We had such an amazing time.As many of you have heard me say, Africa is by far my favorite place to visit and I had the chance to finally take my family in June of 2010. I especially love how you can get so close to the animals. Here we had stopped for a hot chocolate break and were watching this elephant shake this massive tree like it was nothing so the seed pods would fall. He would then use his trunk to delicately pick each one up.It is not too often that you get a picture of your group in a safari vehicle, but we were lucky to have a professional photographer nearby who was able to capture our family observing two cheetah. We watched this pair for almost two hours. My son was thrilled since he had spent several weeks researching cheetah in school and got to spend so much quality time with them. We even got to watch a cheetah hunt a spring hare, but it got away!Most of the time you see pictures of me and my family, we are in the field in travel clothes. Here we are dressed up in the fall of 2010, my son Dirk is twelve and my other son Kyle is nine. Alek is my husband (I won’t tell you how old he is!).Our family was able to go on the Natural Habitat Family departure to the Galapagos Islands in July of 2011. Here we are on Fernandina, the youngest island with our guide Gustavo. My boys were like sponges, just absorbing all of the information. They were so amazed at how prolific the wildlife was and how close you could get.I just loved the sea lions, they were even more fun in the water. They love to imitate you so if you roll over, so do they.We were able to see the blue-footed boobies mating. It was so interesting to observe how the males and females sounded and behaved differently. On our itinerary we got to see all three species of boobies: The blue-footed, Nacza and red-footed boobies.As many of you know, I was diagnosed with Stage 1 Breast Cancer in July of 2010. I have finished my treatment and feel like that is behind me now. I did participate in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and was really moved to walk in my pink “Survivor” shirt surrounded by loving friends. In September of 2013 I got to join seven Natural Habitat guests on the Wild Side of China trip. Brad Josephs expertly guided us to view wildlife in a rarely visited National Park. Other highlights included paying with a baby panda and walking along the Great Wall.In September of 2013 I got to join seven Natural Habitat guests on the Wild Side of China trip. Brad Josephs expertly guided us to view wildlife in a rarely visited National Park. Other highlights included paying with a baby panda and walking along the Great Wall.Africa is still my favorite destination, and I was fortunate enough to go this year for my first return visit to Zambia since 1995. I was so glad to see that not much has changed. Where I traveled is still undeveloped and beautiful. Even though I had been to Churchill twice to see the polar bears, I had never gotten to see the northern lights before. Pure magic!

2017 Wildlife Webinars

Join us on a virtual nature journey every 1st & 3rd Tuesday of the month. See the full schedule.

Voted Best of Travel

Our Greenland Nature Adventure was named Best Splurge in Travel by Outside magazine.

NHA & WWF

Learn more about the innovative partnership between Nat Hab & World Wildlife Fund.

From the Nat Hab Travel Blogs

Regions
Interests
×
Lightbox
×
eNewsletter Signup
Our weekly eNewsletter highlights new adventures, exclusive offers, webinars, nature news, travel ideas, photography tips and more.
No Thanks
Get the Catalog Sign up for Emails
Natural Habitat & WWF – Discovering Our Planet Together