Rina Baraz Nehdar

Based in Los Angeles, Rina Baraz Nehdar didn’t start there. Rina’s life began behind the Iron Curtain,  in the former Soviet Republic of Estonia. With state-sponsored news portraying the Western world in shambles, Rina’s father learned this was propaganda while working aboard a whaling vessel that sailed the world. Despite the danger posed by undercover KGB agents, Rina’s father launched an escape plan that took them out of the USSR to Israel. There, Rina walked through Naharia to pick up fallen pieces of an Egyptian fighter plane, shot down by Israelis after the assault against Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

Deciding the US was a better place to raise a family, Rina’s parents moved them to Rome, Italy, to await their visa. Rina started pre-school during their four-month sojourn, during which her Italian teacher, in a fit of Italian displeasure, chastised her in a language Rina didn’t understand, but from that tirade, Rina heard the teacher call her “Rina” instead of “Arina,” her given name. Rina decided she liked it and went home to tell her parents her new name.

Fast forward to her new home in West Hollywood, then Santa Monica, San Diego, and Hollywood, where she won APTRA, Golden Mike, and Los Angeles Press Club awards for her work at KCSN, while also working for KCOP news.  She moved to Alaska to work for an NBC affiliate as an on-air reporter. Then back to Los Angeles to work behind the scenes in production.

Eventually, she married and had her first son, during whose naps, she pivoted to print journalism.  Rina started writing for her local paper, which led to a Los Angeles-based magazine that sent her to write about her first family trip. She has since written for the New York Times,  Travel + Leisure, and many other publications, winning awards for her freelance writing and photography from esteemed travel writing organizations, NATJA and SATW, including one for a story published in Frommer’s.

Rina has visited 37 countries and founded LAFamilyTravel.com, where she writes and edits stories designed to inspire and support family travel.