ITA wins grant at WI Tech Month event

Mitchelle Lyle has a passion for travel.

When Lyle was a college student, she spent a holiday break in South Africa. The experience was a transformative one. The trip expanded her worldview and caused her to grow both personally and intellectually. Eager to experience more of what the travel provided, she spent a semester studying in France, and then did extended stays in Brazil and Martinique. She found each trip to be a new opportunity to learn by immersing herself in different cultures.

She wanted to share that experience with the rest of the world, so she founded International Travel Advisor (ITA), a business that shows people how to live like a local while studying abroad or on sabbatical.

“People can sign up for weekly, monthly or annual memberships and have access to a lot of the information,” Lyle said. This information ranges from general facts about a country, to job boards and information on how to obtain a work visa in the chosen country.

“The concierge service, or the ‘White Glove’ service is for people ready to make the move.” This personalized support offers help revamping resumes to match requirements in a chosen country and help with tasks that include booking flights and finding a place to stay while living abroad.

Today ITA has information on 45 countries and the team is working on adding an additional ten counties to the database soon.

Lyle is using AI to ensure ITA’s data is current.

“I am leaning into technology to make sure it’s fresh, because policies change all the time,” she said. Lyle is working with a team of Computer Science students from Marquette University to incorporate tools like web readers into her website to quickly expand and refresh the company’s databases.

The emerging company has had a great deal of success in early stage pitch competitions. ITA was one of the companies awarded a $10,000 grant from the FOR-M program in February 2023. In April, the company won first prize at the WiSys Big Idea Tournament, an entrepreneurship contest for University of Wisconsin Students. Most recently, ITA was awarded $1,000 during a pitch event that was part of the WI Tech Month celebrations.

“Meet the Meetups is a tech organization and they focus on tons of different things, like user experience and AI integration,” Lyle explained. “I really wanted to use that platform when it was shared from We Pivot to say ‘here’s what I’m doing and here’s where my technical gaps are. Does anyone want to work with me? Does anyone want to learn more?’ So, it was really surprising for there to be an announcement that we’d all be granted $1000 at the end of the event.”

International Travel Advisor (ITA) was founded in 2022 and Lyle anticipates the company will be fully launched in May 2024. To learn more about this business, connect with ITA here.