Kelsie Pearson (ABJ ’25) remembers her first international trip with her family at 10 years old. She was hooked. Now, as the founder of The Girls Trip Co., she’s helping other young women prioritize adventure and explore the world.
As Pearson got older and wanted to travel on her own, she was frustrated that she and her friends were never able to coordinate their time off, choice of destination or budget. They made vague plans for trips but could never make them happen.
“I was complaining about it, and my aunt showed me a Facebook group for divorced women in their 40s who organized trips together,” Pearson says. “I thought, ‘I bet I could create something like that, but for women in their 20s and 30s who want to get out there and travel.”
She started The Girls Trip Co. in fall 2023 with the guidance of the UGA Entrepreneurship Program’s Idea Accelerator and Summer Launch incubator programs. She planned her first group trip in 2023 and grew her business to 12 trips her senior year.
In December 2025, Pearson graduated from UGA with a journalism degree, an entrepreneurship certificate from Terry and a full-time job running her own company.
She has 32 group trips planned for 2026 and hired four trip leaders to be on the ground with her clients when she can’t be. The Girls Trip Co. goes to three states and 21 countries including Greece, Ireland, Switzerland, Bali, Hawaii and Italy.
Pearson says the idea started as a passion project — she wanted to pay for her travel and build a group of friends to travel with. But it grew into a mission: to empower women to challenge themselves and have an adventure.
“Girls who travel build incredible self-reliance and self-confidence,” Pearson says. “You’re showing yourself you can do harder things than you ever thought you could. And I think that translates into life outside of travel.”
There’s demand for that type of self-discovery. Pearson is on track to hit seven figures in revenue by 2028, but she’s not trying to build the next Contiki or EF Ultimate Break.
“I’m going to take it as far as I can,” she says. “But for me, it’s all about finding the growth point where I’m still able to live the life I want to live outside of the business. Right now, I am working close to 70-hour weeks. We’ll see what happens when we hit $1.5 to $2 million, but if I’m working all the time and not getting to enjoy what I built — that’s not worth it to me.
“I just want to help as many women travel as we can while keeping the experience we offer exactly what it needs to be.”
Whether you’re packing hot dogs and beer for a weekend camping trip or hauling Mahi-mahi back from an offshore fishing excursion, you’re going to need a reliable ice chest.
That’s why UGA Entrepreneurship alum Spencer Sutlive (BSFCS ’20) launched Rugged Road — a business committed to disrupting the outdoor industry with its ultralight high-performance coolers.
“The current cooler marketplace has a giant gap,” Sutlive said during a pitch contest in 2019. “If you’re looking to buy a cooler, you’re faced with two options: a cooler that costs $30 to $50, will hold ice for a day, and you’ll have to replace it every year. The other option is a cooler that weighs over 25 pounds and costs more than $300.”
Rugged Road coolers are half the weight of other premium competitors but keep ice for several days. They are also built to float upright.
“Go Further” is not just the company’s tagline — it’s “the heartbeat of everything that we do,” says Sutlive.
Since graduating in 2020, Sutlive slowly but surely increased his cooler sales from the company’s headquarters in Peachtree Corners. They’re now available on the Rugged Road website, at REI and at hundreds of independent outfitters across the country.
