• Tilley’s traveling life began before she was even born. While she was still in her mother’s womb, Tilley journeyed to her first remote, tropical island.

• Throughout her childhood, Tilley sailed with her parents throughout the Caribbean and Central America.

• At 14, with money earned from modeling, Tilley joined a small group of teenagers who chose to be shipwrecked on a small island in the Bahamas.

• At 16, Tilley explored Europe alone for two months.

• At 18, Tilley headed off on a one-year around-the-world sojourn.

• At 19, Tilley ripped up her return plane ticket and moved to Bali, Indonesia where she started her own import/export homeware company called “Alison Wonderland.” 


• At 20, Tilley and a small group hiked through the Himalayas with Sir Edmund Hillary. She settled in Kathmandu, Nepal and created a women’s knitting co-op with 65 employees. Her goods sold internationally.

• After 13 long years, Tilley finally had the last of her braces on her teeth removed. She has remarkably good teeth.

• At 22, Tilley wrote, self-published and sold 250,000 copies of a book on travel tips to travel agents and made numerous appearances as a travel expert on television and radio. She was offered to host two television shows and turned them both down because of the cold locations and poor pay.

• At 23, Tilley was exhausted, anxious and stressed. She purposely deserted herself on an island in the Kingdom of Tonga where she wrote lists and re-designed her life by making a “mid-course correction.”

• For the next few years, Tilley traveled the world in search of the most beautiful islands on earth.

• Tilley was raised in an entrepreneurial family that is famous around the world for making Tilley hats and some of the finest travel and adventure clothing in the world.

• At 27, Tilley introduced and set up her family’s hat and travel clothing business, Tilley Endurables, in Australia, New Zealand and San Francisco.

• At 30, Tilley spent 18 months helping to re-structure, re-brand and re-launch the family’s hat and clothing company. She went on a national media tour with her father Alex to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the business.

• At this point, Tilley made another “mid-course correction.” After contemplating the words of a wise old man she had met in Nepal years before, Tilley started examining the concept of time in relation to life. She calculated the number of days in the average life and determined she had approximately 13,870 days left. That’s when Tilley decided to return to tropical island living.

• At 30, Tilley settled on an island in the middle of the Pacific. Soon, she fell in love and was married on the beach. Tilley and her husband purchased a piece of land, designed and built their own island home.

• Two weeks after her 35th birthday, Tilley woke one morning at 2:37. “I stared at the clock and knew in that moment that my life had changed forever. I could feel it in my bones. A flicker of an idea sparked my life’s passion.”

• Tilley spent the next four years turning her passion into a reality.

• At 39, Tilley launched www.TropicalLiving.com.

• To date, Tilley has traveled the globe 10 times.