When Daphne Freise received a globe for Christmas in the second grade, it ignited a passion to learn about the world and its many cultures. Soon after that, her great-grandfather built a custom bookcase for a new complete Encyclopedia Britannica set and her mother serendipitously chose to place it against a vacant wall in Daphne’s little blue Holly Hobbie bedroom.

What ensued were hours of camping on the blue and green shag carpeting as she got lost in her own tiny big world. While LPs of Glen Campbell and Olivia Newton-John spun on the Donny and Marie record player, so spun the globe. She closed her eyes and rested one fingertip to skim on its surface until it came to a stop on a faraway continent, found the encyclopedia volume in which that place was written about, and pulled the weighty book to the floor to devour its wonder.

She launched her career in 1994 as an international flight attendant and the wonderful world of aviation has taken her around the globe hundreds of times over the past 20+ years including temporary duty assignments in India, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia. These days she is in the corporate aviation sector and lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two cats, Sophie and Copper, and is a wannabe hippie and ABBA devotee.

She has several manuscripts in progress which include expanding “Once A Guard”, memoirs of her aviation career, and a young adult novel set in a refugee camp.