While most millennials are focused on building their career, paying off college debt or finding that special someone, Sal Lavallo has followed a different path—one that led him around the world.
With the help of hotel and airline rewards points, like Starwood Preferred Guestpoints, as well as friends’ couches and the kindness of strangers, the 27-year-old has visited all 193 countries on all six continents, before returning to New York earlier this month.
Lavallo studied economic development and identity at NYU and founded an NGO that disbursed micro-grants to aid economic development in countries like Tanzania, Venezuela and Israel. After college, he moved to Abu Dhabi, the capital of United Arab Emirates, and worked as a management and strategy consultant before taking a year and a half off from work, to focus on traveling the world.
“I had already visited like 150, 160 countries,” he said. “So I spent 2017 visiting the remaining 30.”