How Henley Vazquez raised $60M by rebuilding travel for everyone the industry wouldn’t let in — TFN

• Fora closes $60 million Collection D at a $1 billion post-money valuation, led by Forerunner and Tactile Ventures, with Thrive Capital, Perception Companions, and Heartcore Capital returning.
• The platform has crossed $3 billion in lifetime bookings — reaching the third billion in simply 5 months, versus 3 years for the primary.
• 97% of Fora’s 15,000 lively advisors had by no means labored in journey earlier than becoming a member of, together with former physicians, legal professionals, and full-time dad and mom.

Henley Vazquez grew up on a 550-acre farm within the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her household didn’t journey. She had no connection to the journey trade, no inherited community of lodge relationships, and no apparent path into one of the crucial gatekept professions in hospitality. What she had was a Princeton diploma, a job at City & Nation journal, and a mind for precisely who the trade was preserving out — and why.

Twenty years later, she is the co-founder of Fora, a New York-based platform for impartial journey advisors that has simply raised $60 million in a Collection D at a $1 billion post-money valuation, making it one of many few female-co-founded unicorns in journey tech. The spherical was led by Forerunner Ventures and Tactile Ventures, with returning backers Thrive Capital, Perception Companions, and Heartcore Capital, alongside new buyers together with PLUS Capital, BlackPines Capital Companions, and Tribeca Enterprise Companions. Amy Schumer and different members of PLUS Capital’s artist and athlete collective additionally joined.

The trade she determined to interrupt open

After City & Nation, Vazquez joined the founding workforce of Indagare, a members-only boutique journey firm, the place she realized the reserving platform, the lodge relationships, and the enterprise aspect of journey advising from the bottom up. In 2014, as a mom of two younger youngsters, she launched her personal Virtuoso journey company, Passported, targeted on younger households travelling with children. At each step she noticed the identical structural drawback: the occupation had been designed to exclude individuals who didn’t already belong. Excessive limitations to entry, outdated instruments, fee constructions that required advisors to work primarily without cost throughout ramp-up, and no flexibility for anybody with a profession, youngsters, or a life outdoors journey.

“What I saved coming again to was a mismatch. There have been so many individuals who would have been extraordinary journey advisors, however the trade simply wasn’t constructed to welcome them in,” mentioned Henley Vazquez, co-founder, Fora.

Fora is the reply to that mismatch. Co-founded in 2021 alongside Evan Frank — who beforehand was one of many co-founders of onefinestay, the posh home-sharing platform acquired by AccorHotels for roughly $169 million in 2016 and Jake Peters, Fora’s co-founder and Chief Product & Know-how Officer, the platform offers folks with no journey background the coaching, provider relationships, AI instruments, and back-office infrastructure to launch their very own journey companies inside weeks. A former nurse, company lawyer, or retiree can be part of, get onboarded onto Fora’s lodge partnership phrases, and begin reserving commissionable journeys utilizing Fora’s AI assistant, Through, to draft itineraries moderately than doing that work by hand.

Who Fora’s advisors really are

The numbers replicate that founding intent exactly. Of Fora’s 15,000+ lively advisors, 97% had by no means labored in journey earlier than becoming a member of the platform. The bottom is majority ladies. Former physicians, legal professionals, dad and mom, and retirees make up a good portion. The platform is headquartered in New York Metropolis, and has collectively booked greater than $3 billion in journey since 2021 — the third billion taking simply 5 months, in comparison with 3 years for the primary.

The $60 million Collection D brings complete funding to $138.5 million. Forerunner has backed Fora since its $5 million seed spherical in 2021 — Kirsten Inexperienced’s agency has a monitor file of selecting category-defining client manufacturers early, with earlier bets together with Chime, Faire, and Warby Parker. Tactile Ventures’ Brian O’Malley first backed Fora whereas at Forerunner, then introduced it into his new agency’s portfolio when he based Tactile in 2024 — backing the identical firm twice throughout 2 totally different corporations.

The AI query Fora has to reply

The brand new capital will fund the enlargement of Through past its present beta group, new market entry, and deeper funding in cruises, flights, and enterprise journey. It additionally funds Fora’s reply to probably the most pointed query in journey tech proper now: does AI change the human advisor, or simply make them quicker?

A lot of the capital in journey tech goes the opposite manner. Navan went public at a $6.2 billion valuation, constructing AI-driven software program for company journey administration — not a market for human advisors. O’Malley has framed Fora’s reply instantly: 

“Fora has extra income than all AI journey corporations, mixed,” mentioned Brian O’Malley, founder and managing companion, Tactile Ventures.

The web journey market was valued at $713 billion in 2025 and is forecast to develop at a 7.4% CAGR by means of 2035, in accordance with Grand View Research. LinkedIn ranked journey advisor because the fifth-fastest-growing job within the US in 2025 — a knowledge level that sits behind Fora’s core thesis. The class will get gained by whoever makes 15,000 impartial advisors more durable to switch — not by whoever removes them. For the lady who grew up on a Virginia farm and spent twenty years watching an trade exclude folks precisely like her, that’s the solely guess value making.