Elite Traveler Spring 2022

“If you make it through a traumatic experience you certainly change — and it’s nearly always for the better”

“You can see so many opulent resorts in exotic destinations where just a mile down the road people are living in abject poverty. It’s just, there is no mechanism for success. I wanted to change that. “Togethering is what Àni is about, and it’s a huge inspiration for all of us. The business works to encourage togetherness, family and friendship — and that includes all of our sta ff . During the Covid-19 pandemic nobody was furloughed or laid o ff .” The name Àni has been drawn from a Swahili word, Andjani , which means to be on a path or journey. “It seemed like an appropriate word for people who wanted more than just a vacation, and for artists setting out on a journey,” Tim says. Tim’s own journey began when he was born in Detroit in 1966, the middle son of three children born to a traveling regional computer salesman. “We moved around constantly,” he recalls. “At the time I didn’t like it. But by the time I got to college I had developed great survival skills. You could drop me anywhere in the world and I knew I would survive.” It was in the Turks and Caicos islands, where he’d taken six months o ff from his studies to work as a bartender, that he met Caroline. (The irony has not escaped him that, after his own restless childhood, he and his family have been in the same house in New Jersey for the past 21 years).

So it’s the completion of another virtuous circle, if you like, that one of the next Àni Private Resorts will be in the Turks and Caicos where the couple fi rst met. Tim has just returned from the region, where he was scouting for land. Ask him to choose a favorite from his own resorts, however, and he freezes. “That’s like asking me to pick from my children,” he says. “These are my babies and they’re all di ff erent. But the culture is always a major part of the attraction — all the resorts are in countries with warm and welcoming people. Turks and Caicos is special, I suppose, because it’s where I met Caroline.” His own painting skills have also developed enormously over the years. “I’ve always loved art, but it’s since my car accident that I’ve learned to draw and paint. I know the psychological lift that comes with empowering abilities like painting. The fi rst subjects I painted were my children,” he says. “But my most recent one is called Sel fi e and depicts a gorilla painting me, and me painting the gorilla. The gorilla is covered in paint, as we all are when we start — before we learn the importance of precision. The fact it’s a gorilla is something of an in-joke that all artists will appreciate.”

Left, below Students at the academy

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