Meet The Team

Jo provides leadership and direction to a great Visit Team, which most often doesn’t need direction. Jo’s main responsibilities are: explaining the economic importance of visitor spending to Lafayette – West Lafayette; working with the attractions, facilities and organizations locally and statewide to help market, promote and develop tourism spending; and staying within the budget. Much of her time is spent on community relations and being involved with committees and organizations to help spread the word about Tippecanoe Tourism. Jo has been with VLWL since December of 1980. Jo grew up in West Lafayette and is a graduate of Purdue University, she lived in several other Indiana towns and Madison, WI, but she has mainly lived and loved this community. Jo is married to Dan Wade, retired, together they have two adult children. Courtney (daughter) who lives in West Lafayette. Tyler (son) who lives in Ypsilanti, MI. She and her husband have a large German Shephard dog named Bubba whose job it is to make sure they both get out to exercise several times a day.

Lisa serves as Vice President and COO for VLWL. Serving as our financial controller she handles all business operations for VLWL. She implements and manages our sponsorship program, coordinates and oversees our marketing efforts and manages multiple projects for VLWL. Her years of experience are an asset in providing guidance while keeping a keen eye on the bottom line. Lisa enjoys flower gardening, traveling, vacations at the beach with family and friends, Pickleball and time on the golf course with her husband Jim.

Ashley Gregory is the “Director of Partnerships”. In this role Ashley works to develop relationships with our tourism partners to create partnerships and opportunities that ultimately generates additional visitor spending in the community. This includes things such as developing videos that showcase the area and our partners, managing our partner’s business listings, coupons, and job listings on homeofpurdue.com, organizing our monthly Visitor Industry Partner tours and yearly community familiarization tours, administering our customer relationship management (CRM) database program and extranet portal and more. Ashley is a graduate of Purdue University with a degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management and a minor in Art History. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, reading, cooking, crafting, and traveling.

Energetic, talkative and funny characterize our Director of Communications, Sara Erickson. Sara uses her wit and savvy to create interesting stories on our blog and social media sites, while working in PR to personally promote Lafayette-West Lafayette. Her goal is to use social media tools and one-on-one interaction to promote Lafayette-West Lafayette as a destination to writers, travelers and locals. Sara is a graduate of Ball State University with a degree in Travel & Tourism and History. She enjoys traveling, reading, cooking, and hanging out with her family and friends.

Gabbi serves as the Director of Sales and DEI for Visit Lafayette – West Lafayette. Gabbi’s focus is building relationships among the meeting, group tour and sports networks and providing assistance in finding how your group can host their next event in the Greater Lafayette Area. Gabbi is a proud Purdue University graduate, with a degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management. In her free time, she loves spending time with family and friends, walks with her dog, Luna, and playing soccer.

Justinna Brown-Walter serves as Data Strategist, providing strategic insights for the overall marketing efforts at Visit Lafayette-West Lafayette. Her goal is to develop, source, analyze, and interpret research data to inform data-driven decision-making. She loves community building, visual storytelling, entrepreneurship, and curating Spotify playlists. In addition to these, Justinna, a proud native of Pennsylvania, enjoys exploring her community of the Greater Lafayette Region, traveling domestically and internationally, and attending concerts – small and large – with her best friend and husband, Reid.

Paul, a resident of Greater Lafayette for over 25 years, originally hails from Northwest Indiana. He graduated from Purdue University in 2001 with a degree in Computer Graphics. Following his education, Paul served as a Production Director at SDI Innovations until 2017, when he founded Pooch Palace Resort, a successful dog resort that he operated until its sale in 2023. Paul’s looks forward to providing exceptional service to leisure travelers, meeting planners, group tour coordinator and convention organizers while implementing effective solutions to enhance visitor experiences. Paul enjoys spending his free time with his puppy Macy along with traveling as much as possible.