'I just didn't see myself represented in the travel industry': Ella Paradis of The Black Explorer

The founder of a new magazine created by and for Black travellers talks about the motivation behind the launch, her own travels and the people who inspire her

I was around seven or eight years old, sitting in my plane seat as a giddy, unaccompanied minor. My brother and I were on an eight-hour flight to Kingston, Jamaica. I didn’t cry when we waved goodbye to our mum at the departure gate and walked off with the airline staff.

All I could think about was six weeks of sea and sun with my grandma. This was the beginning of my love for travel – something I didn’t realise until speaking to Ella Paradis, founder and editor of a new magazine, the Black Explorer. Like many second- and third-generation kids in the UK who travel across the globe to see family, she had had a similar experience to mine.