Since 2000, Roger Toll’s primary pursuits have been photography and travel writing, two activities he first practiced in his late teens. At university, he majored in international relations and history, and worked summers as a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles and Baltimore. Interested in foreign countries and cultures, he soon leveraged his journalism experience to live abroad and rely on editorial work to fund his international life and travels.
For more than two decades, he lived in London, Paris, India and Mexico City, from where he wrote articles for US magazines, worked in an international project and launched and ran publications. From 1980 to 1986, he was the editor-in-chief of The Mexico City News, a daily newspaper, and freelanced for Travel + Leisure, House + Garden, Holiday, the Los Angeles Times and Conde Nast Traveler, where he was contributing editor for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Roger Toll moved to New York City in 1988, where he created a Spanish-language publications division at Univision Inc., the TV network, and launched and ran Más magazine. In 1994, he became editor-in-chief of Snow Country, a New York Times Sports and Leisure Group magazine. In 2000, he launched and ran the Spanish-language division of American Media, Inc. and created Mira! magazine.
In 2002, he left corporate life and, with his wife, moved to Park City, Utah. From there, he consulted for a number of publications, including several in Latin America, and served as contributing editor to Delta’s Sky magazine and as editor at large to Snow magazine for many years. He also contributed articles to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Caribbean Travel + Life, Forbes Life and Western Interiors + Design, among others. In 2009, they moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he now lives, works and occasionally teaches and consults for publications.
He continues writing travel articles, most recently for The Wall Street Journal, He took up photography again in 2002 with the advent of digital cameras. His passion for traveling remains focused on people, cultures, their historical roots and all they have created. “It’s the conversations and random encounters, the unexpected surprises of places and people, that interest me,” he says. “The experience is not all that different today than it was during my teenage years hitchhiking through Europe, though today a comfortable bed and clean room mean a lot more to me than back then.”