Lebawit Lily Girma

Lebawit Lily Girma is an award-winning Ethiopian-American travel journalist and photographer. A former corporate attorney who traded her Washington, D.C. office for the road in 2008, Lebawit has contributed to major publications like BBC, CNN, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Afar, Sierra Magazine, Lonely Planet, The Guardian, and multiple in-flight magazines. Lebawit is currently Skift’s editor-at-large. Prior to joining Skift as a global tourism reporter in 2020, she primarily focused on writing about solo and sustainable travel in the Caribbean region. In addition to her travel articles, she has authored multiple guidebooks for Moon Travel Guides and produced content for travel brands and tourism boards, including Marriott Bonvoy, AA Vacations, TripAdvisor, the Belize Tourism Board, and the Dominican Republic Ministry of Tourism. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in Cote d’Ivoire, and educated in the U.K. and the U.S., Lebawit is passionate about how tourism can be a vehicle for cross-cultural exchange and social impact.

• 10+ years of experience exploring and living in the Caribbean region
• Won the 2022 Bessie Award for Most Impactful Piece of Writing for her Skift story “Dear Travel Industry: Here Are 3 Ways You Can Address Vaccine Equity Now”
• Featured by Forbes as one of “15 Black Travel Writers to Read Now” in 2020
• Won the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s Marcia Vickery Wallace award for excellence in travel journalism
• Launched an initiative called See the Caribbean, the first-ever traveler resource and storytelling platform showcasing sustainable travel in the Caribbean
• Author of the Moon guides to Belize and the Dominican Republic
• Senior advisor on Impact Travel Alliance’s global team
• Received a juris doctor's degree from the University of Virginia School of Law
• Received a bachelor's degree in French and Spanish from the University of Maryland