By Mica Walsh, 4020 Vision Ambassador
Today I interviewed Pavia Rosati, Founder/CEO of the award-winning travel website, Fathom, the place for those passionate about travel to get inspired. Pavia had spent many years working as an Executive Editor at DailyCandy before launching Fathom. I was interested in learning how Pavia came up with the idea for her website, and how she began her career in online journalism. In this interview, Pavia shares some of her perspectives for 20-something women who are just starting to pursue their dreams. Hint: It’s okay if you don’t have it all figured out!
Pavia Rosati on Finding Her Dream Job
Where I Started
When I was in my early 20s thinking about the future, I knew that I wanted to have a fantastic New York City life. That meant having great friends, having a great time, and finding fulfilling work.
I started in the editorial department of a fashion magazine, and when I was 25, I began working at NewsCorp’s first website, which placed me in the first wave of online journalism. It was a happy accident: I got the job through an editor I had worked with, not because I was interested in the internet. I was young enough in my career that an interesting opportunity came up, and I was open to exploring it.
My first challenge…
As I grew in my career, one challenge I faced was learning how to manage people. It’s an ironic thing about work: The more responsibilities you are given, the less you end up doing the thing that got you promoted and the more you end up managing people. I was an editor and a writer. What made me good at that didn’t make me good at managing. They’re very different skills sets.
What I Wish I Knew Then…
Part of being in your 20s is learning what you’re good at. Don’t worry about your path. You don’t need to have everything planned. You’ll learn by doing. I didn’t know that I’d be good at editing. I didn’t go through college interested in information technology, but one interesting thing lead to another and the internet ended up as my format and the medium. If there hadn’t been the web, I might have stayed in magazines or gone into television.
Growing up, I spent my school years in the United States and my summers in Italy. Travel had always been a part of my life. The idea for Fathom first came to me when I was looking for a website to fulfill my own travel needs, and I couldn’t find one.
When it comes to traveling, it doesn’t matter where you go. Just pick up and go somewhere. And don’t worry about not having the time to do it properly. Three days in Buenos Aires is better than zero days in Buenos Aires.
What I learned along the way…
Regarding relationships, women in their 20s often spend too much time worrying about relationships. Things that seem so important – the bad dates, the unreturned phone calls – end up wasting too much good energy. People should worry less about their love life because it has a way of working itself out when you’re not working on it so much. Life is not going to turn out the way you think it is. Sometimes you have to go where life takes you.
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