karen broussard
Karen Broussard is the founder and president of GlutenFreeTravelSite, a popular website that helps the gluten-free community find safe places to eat in their area — or wherever they travel. It includes thousands of user-submitted REVIEWS of restaurants, bakeries, markets, hotels, resorts, B&Bs, and cruises – both in the U.S. and around the world.
A graduate of Georgetown University with a degree and career in Marketing, Karen resides with her husband and two sons in the Washington, DC area. She has also lived in New York City and San Francisco – and traveled extensively. After using her marketing degree in the fields of merchandising, publishing, and health, Karen became an entrepreneur when she launched GlutenFreeTravelSite in 2008 — several years after her son Ryan was diagnosed with Celiac Disease at a very young age. She and her family found that dining out and traveling could be a real challenge for people following gluten free diets, and she wanted to provide a place where the gluten free community could go to share their experiences first-hand with others who also love to dine out and travel.
The dining and travel reviews on GlutenFreeTravelSite are organized geographically and can be searched by state/country — or more narrowly by town/zip code. Visitors to GlutenFreeTravelSite will find many other helpful resources, including a section of the site devoted to national and regional restaurant chains offering Gluten Free Menus, a page of Colleges reviewed from a gluten free perspective, a page outlining the gluten free policies of all the major Cruise Lines — with links to reviews of each cruise line submitted to GlutenFreeTravelSite, a page listing Camps for gluten free kids, and many gluten free Trip Planning Resources. Other features of the helpful site include an extensive Resources page, a monthly Featured Review (and contest!), a Blog, Articles, and Interviews with Chefs.
GlutenFreeTravelSite also has a mobile version of their site, which is free to use and requires no downloading. Simply enter the URL of the site into the browser of any smart phone (iPhone, Android, or Blackberry) and you’ll be automatically routed to the mobile version of the site where you can search for GF-friendly places to dine while on the go.
Helping the Celiac and gluten free community make their lives easier and more enjoyable remains Karen’s calling, and she also volunteers each summer at Camp Celiac in Rhode Island, where her son Ryan is a camper. She enjoys watching Ryan and the other gluten free campers just enjoy being “normal” kids at a summer camp – where they don’t have to worry about whether the food is gluten free (it all is!). Karen is also a Silver Advocacy Partner of the Celiac Sprue Association and occasionally speaks to local support groups about dining out and traveling gluten free. GlutenFreeTravelSite has been featured in numerous national, travel, dining, and Celiac-focused websites and print publications.
You can also follow GlutenFreeTravelSite on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
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