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Key Takeaways Ali started planning travel on Fora’s platform in April 2025.
He surpassed his $500,000 in bookings goal and saw $1.3 million in one year.
Now, he works as an advisor full-time and continues to build his business.
This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Fora travel advisor Ryan Ali. Ali worked in healthcare advertising and marketing for about 15 years before becoming a travel advisor with Fora. He started a side hustle with Fora in April 2025 with the goal of reaching $500,000 in bookings by the end of the year. He more than doubled that goal, booking $1.3 million in sales in his first year, and has since left his former role to focus on his travel business full-time. Now he’s totaling $2.6 million in booked travel.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Ryan Ali
Travel agent work wasn’t on my trajectory. I wasn’t like, I want to do this ultimately. But I was always planning trips for a lot of my friends and family, and I was always the go-to for questions like, “What trip could we go to or what can we do?” Then I thought, Wait, I can actually do this as a little side thing. That went on for years before I joined Fora.
But it was also a little bit deeper than that. In cancer care, which is the realm of healthcare that I worked in, and clinical trials, whenever someone was going through radiation or chemo, they would always say, “God, when I’m done with this I want to see the world.” That stuck with me. They weren’t going to buy a car or splurge on an expensive purse. They wanted an experience. And I saw how travel really made people happy.
Meeting Fora’s co-founder, becoming a travel advisor
I first got introduced to Fora about a year and a half ago, way before I even thought this was a possibility. I met Fora co-founder Henley Vazquez at a random outing in New York. I was talking to her about what my passion was; I knew I wanted to start my own business. Something that would put me in the driver’s seat where I was the CEO, I was the full board, and I owned any decision I made. At the time, I worked in big hospital systems where one decision had to be made multiple layers up.
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