Shivya Nath
Founder
Shivya is an impact entrepreneur, award-winning travel storyteller, bestselling author, and passionate advocate of tourism as a force for good.
She grew up in a valley in the Indian Himalayas, and began her career as a digital marketer at the Singapore Tourism Board. In 2011, she quit her full-time job to pursue a life of travel. Soon after, she gave up her rented apartment, sold most of her belongings and began living nomadically. She has since slow-travelled in remote parts of the world, living with local and Indigenous communities, pursuing multimedia storytelling at the intersection of travel, the environment and social impact – on her travel blog, The Shooting Star, as well as Instagram and other social media.
Her words have appeared in BBC Travel, National Geographic Traveller, The Washington Post, Travel + Leisure and other leading publications. She is the author of the national bestselling travel memoir “The Shooting Star: A girl, her backpack and the world” (Penguin, 2018).
Shivya has been featured by The Washington Post among travellers changing the way we think about the world, by National Geographic Traveller among travellers of color smashing stereotypes, and in the BBC film, The Audacious, on living your best (sustainable) life. She is a recipient of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards (Society of American Travel Writers, 2023), the Inspire Global Media Awards (London, 2025), and the Bessie Awards (New York, 2025). She holds a Master’s in Sustainability and Environmental Management from Harvard University (DCE), where her research focused on climate adaptation solutions in tourism.
Shivya founded The Shooting Star Academy in 2024, with a goal of supporting travel creators on the often messy journey of building a rewarding and impactful career in travel storytelling. She also runs Climate Conscious Travel, an impact storytelling consultancy.
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Nivetha Kannan
Course Manager
Nivetha grew up in Chennai, living the usual “study hard, get a degree, land a good job” life. She even went to law school. But a couple of solo trips changed everything – suddenly, freedom, flexibility, and travel felt way more exciting than courtrooms. By her third year, she was freelancing to fund her travels. Soon, she was writing for businesses big and small. It paid well, but something was missing – she wanted her work to actually matter.
That’s when she took a chance on the course, Get Paid to Travel the World With Purpose. It turned out to be exactly what she needed. It wasn’t just about growing as a creator, but about finding purpose and a like-minded community. When a role opened up to manage the course, she jumped in because it just made sense to work on something she truly believed in. Now, she manages the Academy – handling everything from social media, the newsletters and the course community – while also growing her own storytelling journey. Outside of work, she’s usually learning local crafts, dancing, eating her way through markets, or sharing her love for immersive travel.