Welcome. You’re listening to A Glimpse Inside. I’m Wendy Perrotti. What do you do when your body is tired? I mean, really tired. The literally can’t-get-out-of-bed kind of tired. If you’re like my guest today, you’ll see it as a wake-up call. Maybe even an opportunity for reinvention. After a long stint working with fortune 500 companies, Cyndie Burkhardt’s personal commitment to a healthy lifestyle took a front seat. Blending corporate experience with a professional health and nutrition training, she established a wellness consulting business to help organizations bring their health focus campaigns and public programs to life. Cindy is also a trusted advisor to individuals wanting to achieve optimal health and wellbeing. Simultaneously, she is continuously nurturing her life’s passion for photography. She’s been the Chief Photographer on an expedition ship through the Baltics. She’s documented a food trek in Sicily and historical excursions in Israel. She’s captured both portraits in Cuba and New York City. Cindy will climb over, under, or out on a limb to get the shot. I love that description of you, Cindy. Welcome.

Thank you, Wendy.

And it’s so true about your personality. Everything about you says that and folks are going to get to hear that story in a minute, but before we get there, tell us what you’re up to now.

Well, thank you again for having me. I appreciate it. And I did laugh when you read that because I was just working on a project over the weekend and I was just looking out somewhere that I wanted to take a photograph and I had to do a bit of climbing and I was along the extremely rocky shoreline and I was literally tiptoeing along some rocks and thinking, I just hope I don’t fall. So I actually kind of literally did do that and it just made me laugh out loud.

And you’re in Croatia right now?

Yes, I’m in Croatia right now, because I arrived in Croatia in March and then there was a pandemic and I decided to stay for a whole bunch of reasons, which we can get into more later if you’d like, but I basically stayed for safety reasons and Croatia was really safe at the time in terms of keeping things under control and low numbers of COVID cases. And as time went on, my travel visa ran out. You have three months and I was still here and it seemed like traveling home was still kind of tricky, so I decided to sign up for residency here and my application was just approved about a month ago. So I live here now.

Wow, congratulations!

I love staying here in Croatia.

That’s so cool.

Croatians laugh at my corny joke, but it is pretty cool. So I have a one-year residency here. So based on the introduction you said in my different backgrounds, I’ve decided that I’m relaunching my reinvention, so to speak, here in Croatia. So all of my different worlds are coming together now as I’m literally in the middle of figuring out how I’m going to go forward and while I originally thought when I was traveling, I’d have a year abroad and then I’d be figuring these things out back at home, the pandemic has me in Croatia. So I figured the universe just has something different in mind for me and whatever I thought I might have done when I left home over a year ago to travel, I’m doing it now and I’m doing it here. So there’s a combination of the health and wellness business and coaching that I love and that I’m going to be doing, and there’s a combination of photography and all of the–I’ll call it content that I’ve been creating with storytelling and with photographing stories and places and travel opportunities and people.