What I Learned Traveling With Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan

Over the last 10 years of my career, particularly the last five at Harper’s Bazaar, I’ve found myself in all sorts of high-pressure celebrity scenarios. Profiling Bad Bunny?

Yep. Covering Beyoncé’s top-secret concert in Dubai? You got it. Interviewing Oscar winners like Penélope Cruz? Check. Something I often tell myself once drafts are filed and stories go live is “Well, it can’t get much bigger than that”—but somehow, it still always does. Being on the ground with Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan in Colombia for their tour with the Archewell Foundation, however, was easily one of the most eye-opening moments of my career

The trip felt especially kismet to me because my earliest introduction to Harper’s Bazaar was my mother’s cherished Princess Diana commemorative issue, which she kept displayed in our home. Now, decades later, I found myself charting through Colombia with Diana’s son and his wife. Watching the warmth and compassion with which they approached meeting hundreds of strangers, and then witnessing the way these IRL events were discussed online, made me understand the vertigo that comes with simply existing at Harry and Meghan’s level of fame. Those four days in Colombia weren’t about the pomp and circumstance of celebrity, however; for the Sussexes, everything they do and everywhere they go always circles back to their mission of “showing up and doing good.”