Bio

Andrew Nelson is a writer and Editor at Large for National Geographic Traveler magazine and serves as advisor on the Society’s Travel Council. His most recent feature, a cover story on Sonoma, appeared in June 2016. In 2012 Nelson won a NATJA medal for “The Social Network,” that documents the rising share economy of San Francisco. His crowd-sourced adventure for the magazine, “Tweet Me in Miami,” a story on how to crowd source a vacation, won a 2010 Folio Award for magazine writing.

Andrew is also twice winner of the Lowell Thomas Award. His work has also appeared in Cincinnati Magazine, Salon, ReadyMade, the New York Times and San Francisco Magazine. The latter featured Nelson’s monthly history column for more than six years. A resident of New Orleans, he is also visiting professor at Loyola University teaching social media, journalism and travel writing. Nelson feels passionately about instilling young writers with an appreciation of travel, culture and place.

As a co-founder of the 1990s award-winning computer gaming company, CyberFlix, he’s an old hand at applying disruptive technology to old school media having built the first digitally navigable model of the Titanic for the game Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, named “Game of the Year” by Mac Home Journal. He has also served as a senior producer for Britannica.com in San Francisco and Chicago. Andrew’s most satisfying accomplishment, however, was restoring an old adobe by hand in the Big Bend near Marfa, Texas. A graduate of Syracuse University, he received a masters from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism.