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Wanderlust is in Catherine's blood — inherited from her great-grandparents from Pittsburgh who circumnavigated the world multiple times in the 19th century on Asian art- and antique- buying trips. Catherine's Asia obsession began back in 1985 when she read James Clavell's Tai Pan and was instantly smitten. She had already lived in France and had traveled widely throughout Europe, but she had never been to Asia, and was determined to go. In 1987 she boarded a plane to Hong Kong with two phone numbers in her pocket, and she ended up staying for seven years. She traveled constantly all over Asia (and the rest of the world) for both business and pleasure, and ultimately visited well over one hundred countries (but there are many more to go!)
Some of her most memorable experiences include spending the millennium in Bhutan with the King's ministers and their families, drinking yak butter tea with some of the warmest people imaginable; a magical New Years Eve in Mongolia with eight people (Catherine, her husband, and a nomad family) sleeping in a yurt/ger at -35ºF, and loving every minute; skiing down the Himalayas in Kashmir after a four-hour trek in deep snow, warming her feet over hot coal kangris; taking a helicopter (wearing oxygen) up to view the peak of Mt. Everest; taking a Russian icebreaker down the east coast of Siberia from Providenia in the Arctic Circle to Vladivostok — and there are many, many more.
Catherine is an entrepreneur who founded her first company in 1989 at age twenty six — a travel software publishing company which eventually turned into one of the world's largest video game companies with sales exceeding $1 billion. For her second company, Wanderlust Interactive, she licensed the Pink Panther character from MGM/UA to star as a world traveler to teach children about foreign cultures. She took the company public in 1996 on NASDAQ — Silicon Alley's first IPO according to Crain's New York Business — and once held the claim to fame of being the youngest female CEO of a publicly traded company in America (as Catherine Winchester). Her third company was a leading-edge natural language technology company, after which she worked in her husband's Upper East Side gallery of antique maps and rare books, specializing in 18th- and 19th-century leather-bound travel books.
After 22 years in the technology business, she decided to finally pursue her dream and turn her passion in life, Asian travel, into her business. In starting her fourth company, she knew she needed significant resources and proper funding, so when her technology venture capital contacts agreed to back her, and her former colleague from Hong Kong, Jay Tindall, agreed to join her, she knew they were on their way. Remote Lands was born.
Catherine (née Evans) has a BA in Computer Science from Columbia University (Barnard College). She lives with her husband, Donald Heald, and their white Labrador, Burma, on Manhattan's Upper East Side and in Sherman, CT.