Hi. I'm Meghann.

I spent nearly twenty years as a VP at one of the largest health insurance companies in the country, running global operations and building things that were never quite mine. In 2021 I left, moved into the unknown, and started building something that was. That thing is Besté Travel Design, a luxury travel company I run out of Detroit, and this site is the other thing.

I built Meghann Rae because I had something to say that did not fit anywhere else. Not in a caption, not in a newsletter, not in the kind of content that gets optimized for an algorithm before it gets written for a human. What you will find here is long form, specific, and written with the assumption that you are smart and curious and done with the watered-down version of things.

My actual life involves a deeply serious relationship with food, a pantry that my husband has accepted will never stop growing, a twenty-year-old KitchenAid immersion blender I treat like a family member, a city I will defend in any room, and the ongoing project of building a life that fits after forty without apologizing for wanting it to be extraordinary. I write about travel the way a person writes about it when travel is also their job, their obsession, and their primary lens for understanding the world. I write about food the way someone writes about it after eating well across many countries and developing strong opinions as a result. I write about reinvention from the middle of it, which means the messy parts are included and the tidy resolution has not arrived yet. (I will let you know when it does.)

The goal is not a highlight reel. It is something closer to dispatches from the field, where the field is wherever I happen to be and the assumption is that you want the real version rather than the polished one. I am also a saxophone-playing, Detroit-born, Japanese-knife-obsessed former band nerd, if that helps complete the picture. It is a very specific picture. I have made my peace with it.

How to Use This Site

Head to the Journal tab in the navigation and use the dropdown categories to find what you are looking for. Travel covers Italy, Europe, culinary trips, solo travel, and destination guides. Reinvention is where the career pivots, women over 40 content, and building-a-life-from-scratch pieces live. Lifestyle covers food, cooking, Detroit, books, and shoppable content.

Some posts in the Lifestyle section contain affiliate links, which means if you buy something through one of my links I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only recommend things I actually use and believe in, and I will never recommend something because it pays well. The pantry post alone should be evidence enough of that.

For travel planning and Besté Travel Design, head to bestetravel.com. For everything else, you are already in the right place.