Consultant Robin DeGracia Is Great at Finding Dead Bodies… and the Best Places in the World to Travel with Family

“You’re great at finding the dead bodies.”

Clients have said this—more than once—to Robin DeGracia. And they’ve meant it as a high compliment. So, what, exactly, does that mean?

“It means I’m really good at turning over the rocks and finding the ants that come crawling out,” Robin explains.

Say what?

Robin is talking about her work as a consultant for Blu Pagoda; her expertise is in developing, managing, and marketing products for financial services companies. She says her role is to come up with a rubric on how to look at complex problems, devise criteria, figure out how to get everyone on board, and dig in.

During this process, she’ll inventively find some “dead bodies.”

“People will often follow a process without questioning it. My job is to ask the question that really needs to be asked,” she says. “For example, a client may think a certain change they want to make is quite simple, but I’ll dig in and find, say, that a piece of it is being driven to a system with outdated code.”

Robin’s love for extensive planning and analysis is handy in her passion as a travel blogger. She and her husband have traveled to destinations that span the globe—from North, South, and Central America to Europe and Southeast Asia. And they’ve been traveling with their kids in tow since they were infants (now 10 and 13). These days, their entourage sometimes even includes their fifth family member, a Bichon-Poodle mix.

She’s written her Around the World with Kids blog for a little over 10 years; originally, it started as a way to record memories of her travels to India with her husband, newborn, and 2-year-old. While she continues to share stories of the journeys themselves, more recently, the blog has expanded to include travel tips, advice, and opinions—informational pieces that help readers set up trips for their own families.

Readership has grown, and other media outlets have taken notice, including NerdWallet and the Go Far Grow Close blog. This coming March, Robin will speak at the Latino Travel Fest, discussing her vast experiences in traveling with kids.

Robin’s blog also offers insights into traveling as a multiracial family. “I’m Latino, and my husband is Indian, so I talk a lot about our mixing of different cultures and how that drives our decisions.” Other topics she explores include the importance of taking non-family trips. “It’s great to travel with your kids, but I also talk about other kinds of traveling, such as couples’ trips, traveling with grandparents, and sending kids on their first solo trip.”

Unlike some travel influencers who seem to gush about everything, Robin’s coverage is refreshingly genuine. Certainly, she finds plenty to love, but when an experience is good but not great, she’ll say so. Though she’ll never trash-talk a place, she’s frank when, say, a hotel breakfast is merely average. “When I’m reviewing a place, it’s always for things I paid for myself,” she said. “This helps keep me honest about how I really feel about the experience.” (She does monetize her blog through affiliate links, but she’s always clear about when she’s doing so.)

Not being a full-time traveler also helps Robin remain relevant to her readers. “I’m not a nomad,” she says. “I talk about how to get around school schedules, how to fit it all in when you have a really full life.”

In the end, her main goal is to encourage people to travel with their kids no matter their ages. “If I’ve helped a few families get out and explore more, I’ve done my job, and I’m happy about that.”

Read Robin’s blog at Around the World with Kids.