Ellen Perlman is an award-winning journalist with 15 years of experience as a staff writer and technology columnist for Governing magazine. Her many feature articles can be found at governing.com, using the search function. She now freelances and consults for a variety of clients, including the state of California.

Ellen also is a freelance travel writer and solo traveler who focuses on adventure travel and offbeat experiences. She is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post and dozens of her travel stories have been published in the St. Petersburg Times, the Miami Herald, the Dallas Morning News, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Denver Post and Washingtonian magazine, among others, often accompanied by her photos.

She has told readers what it's like to lounge in a two-story tall champagne-glass Jacuzzi, hear howler monkeys in the Ecuadorian Amazon, see the Northern Lights in Iceland and glide on inline skates through the Netherlands. She also was a contributor to "Journeys of a Lifetime," the National Geographic book on dream journeys, released in 2007, and her work has appeared in a French textbook.

Now, when she's not traveling or writing about it for newspapers and her blog, boldlygosolo.com, she writes, edits and consults for a growing list of clients, including the University of Maryland's Department of Economics, California's Department of Information Technology, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers and the Independent Community Bankers of America's magazine, Independent Banker.