Link To Guest Website: https://globalsecureresources.com/

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Jeffrey (1s):
Well, welcome back to radio entrepreneurs. As we continue to stream stories across the web and across all of our radio entrepreneurs networks over 7,000 interviews since we started, my name is Jeffrey Davis. I am the host of radio entrepreneurs, also CEO, founder, Mage LLC management consulting firm to over 700 businesses business leaders since 1985. Our next guest let’s hope let’s hope I do this well. Carrie Pasquarello, CEO and co-founder, of Global Secure Resources, Inc. While the company names a lot easier than your name to say. That’s good. Well welcome Carrie.

Carrie (41s):
Yes. Thank you so much for having me here today, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey (44s):
Well, thank you. Can you tell us about GSR?

Carrie (48s):
Sure, absolutely. So global secure resources provides strategic planning, executive coaching and consulting for travelers, including business travel, ex-pat solo and student travel travelers. And so our simple premise is you have to know the rest of avoid the risk. And the company’s goal is really to promote personal safety through risk mitigation and strategies and developing contingency plans. We also do this through our community awareness and prevention programs with the total goal of improving safety and security. So travelers can focus on seeing the world while saving time and money.

Carrie (1m 30s):
That’s what we do,

Jeffrey (1m 32s):
I guess, during these times, that’s pretty good. I’m not going to Afghanistan that’s for sure. It’s not in my travel plans and it wasn’t anyway, but you know, I would assume that you did, you’ve done a lot of work for the government. Is that a correct or incorrect assumption?

Carrie (1m 48s):
W well, I think part of my strategic planning actually stemmed from the state department. So I took my overseas experience with the private sector and the state department, and really turned it into a platform to help others navigate travel safety. I spent over a decade traveling throughout Europe and Asia, really developing my business strategies based on risk mitigation that I refined over my, you know, over my extensive travel and, and really, so it comes into full circle because now having global secure resources, we do have clients that come in and ask us to do our individual’s threat assessment plans, our student safety assessments for their children traveling abroad or for their families traveling abroad because they understand, you know, that’s one thing that the state department really understands is the, the protocols and, and how best to keep your family and travelers safe as they travel the world.

Carrie (2m 49s):
So it all is interconnected. I would say,

Jeffrey (2m 53s):
When you come across people and you talk to them, do you think we don’t think about this, these types of things enough?

Carrie (2m 59s):
Yes, absolutely. So there’s a new book that I was just that I just got and it’s the ostrich paradox. Why we under prepare for disasters. It’s a fascinating read, but it’s true. People have a lot of different biases. One is amnesia bias. We forget about past incidences and we don’t really prepare as much as we should for our future and for our travel plans. So I find it it’s very critical to identify the risks so we can avoid the risk is once again, a simple premise, but it’s so important to our personal safety and how we travel.

Jeffrey (3m 38s):
Interesting. So how do you, how do we increase public awareness for these important services and how do you do it?

Carrie (3m 44s):
Right. So, I mean, global secure resources, we, one of the first things I did actually with my business was besides developing the individual threat assessment plan and the student safety assessment was trying to get the message out with the community awareness and prevention program. So I started writing for medium. I started reaching out to HARO, which is help out a reporter. So I was trying to get what we do out in the general public. So really having groups that come together so that we can talk about travel safety, people being able to read about travel safety and talking about travel safety, all of those things together really makes for a community, a community awareness, right?

Carrie (4m 31s):
So we can talk about the very, the, the, you know, different elements of safety. And one that always comes to mind is our gender violence prevention program. Right? So I worked in direct services with victims and survivors. And one of the most important things that we saw was the awareness. How do we get people to start talking about these instances so that we can learn from past mistakes and, and, and past episodes that so we can really keep our family safer. It’s, it’s a hard job, but getting it out in the public is, is one of the best things that we can do.

Carrie (5m 11s):
And I will have to say that I recently wrote a book on this subject. So this is really exciting. It was just released this month, it’s called study abroad safety, a parent’s guide to sending your child abroad. And within this book, I describe exactly how you can actually develop your own individual threat assessment plan, your own student safety assessment. And once again, this is just another platform to get people to understand that these resources are available.

Jeffrey (5m 45s):
Well, I think that that’s important and a lot of students do study abroad. And I don’t think it’s the way it, it’s not the same as it used to be at all to study abroad. I mean, that was something I wanted to do when I went to university. Now, I, I think I would think twice about doing it.

Carrie (6m 1s):
Yeah. And, and really that’s a shame because the world has so much to offer, right? And th the key is, and the state department understands us. They can send people into some of the most dangerous areas in the world, but they can do it safely because they do have risk mitigation strategies in place. They do have the backup plans, that plan a plan B plan C. They have ways of evacuation. There’s so many things that go into it. And one of the things that I saw personally overseas, I traveled over when I was younger. And then when I returned, I was planning on staying for just one year over in Europe. And I was involved with a group and I ended up having a job offer in Milan Italy.

Carrie (6m 49s):
So I went to Milan and started working in this is where one of the most important risk mitigation strategies came into place. And it is, you need to know somebody to call in case of an emergency. And my father and my family were all into risk mitigation as well. And so they set me up with somebody that I could connect with in Milan, just in case I had some type of emergency and sure enough, they connected me with my husband who happened to be working at the consulate and for the justice department. And that ended up turning into my many, many years overseas and having children all living overseas as well. So my number one priority with when it comes to student safety was my own children.

Carrie (7m 32s):
And so one of the interesting things that I saw was once again, how unprepared American travelers were, and this was really front and center for me, when I sent my daughter off to do a study abroad program in Africa. And one of the interesting things was how we need so much more transparency for our study abroad programs. Parents just rely on the schools that they have it all taken care of. And what, what is interesting is sometimes they don’t, we were planning on sending our daughter to, you know, the study abroad program.

Carrie (8m 12s):
And so we decided to go up and talk with the director and make sure that we understood where they were staying, what boat they would be traveling on, who was in charge of the trip, all these critical questions that parents should ask. And when we got up there, what was so shocking was the director had no idea because they planned on passing it off to a third-party provider. The third-party provider was in charge of all these, you know, these regulations and security protocols, but that was a complete disconnect. So it took us a while to really ascertain all the information we needed to make sure that we were comfortable sending, sending her. And we did, we had some really incredible backup plans for her one, which I know saved her while she was on this program, which I can, which is in the book.

Carrie (8m 59s):
So we’ll have everybody get a copy of the book, but the point is, there’s so much more that needs to go into protecting our students overseas. And I started working with some families that had some really catastrophic events happen to them. And so back here in Massachusetts, I went up to our state house and started working on trying to improve legislation, to protect students, to make sure that they were prioritizing, that schools would prioritize the health and safety and security of our students are conducted risk assessments, all the things that we do in global secure resources, I just need more students to understand and more parents to have the ability to find the information they need to keep their kids safe, because there’s nothing more important than our precious children in this world.

Carrie (9m 46s):
So

Jeffrey (9m 47s):
I assume this is not just a sort of terrorist attack. It’s also natural disasters, which could affect our children. As we’re seeing, you know, we just saw a natural disaster in our Southern hemisphere just this week, and we’ve seen stuff happening in Asia. So there’s many ways that people can be under risk. And I think that that’s important that you look at these things, so thank you.

Carrie (10m 10s):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and, and every single year we have these, we have earthquakes. We have, you know, hurricanes, we have these environmental issues in some areas we have, you know, air pollution, right. And before, you know, in 2019, we had such an enormous amount of people traveling the world, right. We were at our peak, we were growing. And then of course the pandemic hit and everything came to a screeching halt. But once again, we do have business travelers. We do have students out there traveling before we had over 300,000 students annually traveling abroad that was of course drastically decreased because of what’s happening, but they are starting up these programs again.

Carrie (10m 57s):
And they are sending students. I I’ve, I’ve consulted with families and students studying abroad now. So I mean, this is really important as this picks up. And as people are starting to regain their, their confidence in traveling and, you know, they’re getting their vaccinations, there’s just important things that, you know, they should know before they go. And that’s basically what we love to focus on, which is the three-piece proactive, prepared, and protected. So we have a great strategy.

Jeffrey (11m 28s):
Well, Carrie, thank you. I really appreciate this. You have great energy for what you’re doing and I’m sure it’s. I know it’s very important. If someone wants to contact you with global secure resources, I call it C S R a. How would they find you?

Carrie (11m 42s):
Right. So they can, they can go and visit our website@globalsecureresourcesdotcomortheycanfindusatglobalsecurestudent.com. They can call us at 1-800-939-ZERO 5 6 2. I’d be happy to jump on a call with anybody. If they have any questions or they can email us@infoatglobalsecure.com. So please reach out and we’re here to help. We just want to make sure people are traveling. They’re doing it safe. They’re coming home with extraordinary adventures to talk about, and you can also find my book on Amazon. So once again, study abroad safety.

Carrie (12m 22s):
This is the first of a series that’s coming out. Great.

Jeffrey (12m 26s):
Thank you, Carrie. We appreciate your being on radio entrepreneurs. It’s time to sign off and we appreciate, you know, you’re explaining all this to us. Oh,

Carrie (12m 35s):
Wonderful. Thank you again, mine,

Jeffrey (12m 38s):
Everybody. This is radio entrepreneurs.

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