New York, NY (April 25, 2022): Nelly O. Gedeon, serial entrepreneur and founder of Wayaj is pleased to introduce her newest venture alight.travel, a dynamic new hotel booking platform that allows travelers to calculate and offset their carbon emissions all at check out. Wayaj is a global leader in providing innovative and effective solutions to the hospitality industry to reduce its impact on the environment and foster sustainable communities. Founder, Nelly O. Gedeon leads Wayaj as it delivers the resources, tools, and expertise to empower the accommodations sector and travelers to make more informed choices to support sustainability. 

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“My goal for Alight is to give travelers the power to reduce carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by offsetting the carbon footprint of their trip. The people who contribute the least to the degradation of the environment are the most affected by it and using the Alight platform when you travel gives you the ability to fight back against climate change. If each one of us plays a small part, it will make a world of a difference,” shares Nelly O. Gedeon, founder of Alight. 

As travel and tourism are among the leading contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, Nelly designed Wayaj’s IMPPACT  Program, which equips travelers with the Carbon Footprint Calculating Engine (CFC Engine TM) making it easy to assess the CO2 generated from their trip and neutralize its impact through offsetting, while supporting Sustainable Actions (SAs) all aligned with the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She believes that sustainable travel is here to stay and will define the travel industry in the future. Her contributions have been recognized by the International Hospitality Institute, naming Nelly to their Global Top 30 Champions of Environmental Sustainability in Hospitality and Tourism in 2021. 

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While the pandemic increased awareness of tourism’s negative impact on the environment and local communities, it reinforced the need for travelers and the industry to become more sustainably minded. The NYTimes 52 Places for a Changed World in 2022 is a timely example and reminder of the importance of how travelers can be a part of the solution. 

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Nelly grew up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and immigrated to the United States in 1982. She attended the City College of NY and received a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and completed an MBA with a concentration in finance from Hofstra University. As a female engineer and a black woman she immediately faced challenges in the private sector that encouraged her to pivot and create her own business. In 2019, Wayaj was created and every decision she makes is done with a focus on the health and sustainability of the planet. Recognized as a distinguished leader, Nelly joins Ernst & Young's Entrepreneurs Access Network, a community of Black and Latino entrepreneurs launching innovative minority-owned businesses in 2022. 

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Earth Day 2022, she launched Alight with the continued desire to arm travelers with a tool for positive impact travel, helping globetrotters make more conscious and sustainable choices from reducing carbon emissions to supporting environmentally-friendly accommodations. The platform’s collection of properties are rated and vetted by their proprietary Hotel Sustainability Ratings (HSR) tool which scores them across seven categories, which include community relationships, use of water, energy and waste, building materials and resources, as well as the quality of the indoor environment, and corporate management.