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We are announcing our judges one by one. As an organisation passionate about local travel, we were keen to get the input of last year's winners, and valued input from the TripBod network. Leap Local Advisory Group - The advisory group is a collection of individuals who bring unique local travel knowledge and skills which complement knowledge and skills of the competition judges in order to more effectively evaluate competition entrants. Leap Local's mission is to enable freedom to travel knowing local people matter. As part of this mission we work with locals across the globe who offer their experience and expertise to help achieve this mission. The Advisory Group provides independent guidance to the judges on known competition entrants, with a code of conduct that advocates objectivity rather than self-interest. The group includes:
 Stephen Chapman has travelled extensively and spent time living in both Australia and USA. He established Make Travel Fair in 2006 and it won a Travelmole Web Award the following year for 'Best Online Education Site'. More recently he was selected as 'One-to-Watch' in Travel & Leisure as part of The Courvoisier Future 500 and this year began working with whl.travel.
 Richard Hammond is the founder and director of greentraveller.co.uk - a website that features green places to stay and over 200 holidays in the UK and Europe that can be reached by train. He is also the travel editor of National Geographic Green magazine supplement and writes a monthly column in Geographical - the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society. Richard co-wrote (with Jeremy Smith, the former editor of the Ecologist magazine) the Rough Guide to green holidays: 'Clean Breaks - 500 new ways to see the world'.
Richard has written over 130 articles on green travel in the Guardian, and is now a leading spokesperson on the subject - he has recently given talks at the Adventure Travel Show, Destinations, TNT Travel Show and Best of Britain and Ireland Show, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4's flagship travel programme Excess Baggage. In November 2009, his greentraveller blog was awarded the British Travel Press Travel Editor's Green Award.
 Vicky Baker is a professional freelance journalist currently based in Buenos Aires. In 2008, she worked her way around South America for a travel column that was published in the paper every Saturday: guardian.co.uk/goinglocal. The idea was to escape the standard gringo trail and meet the locals using travel-networking sites, such as Couchsurfing.com. Since then, she has become a spokesperson for this new mode of travel, speaking at events (TNT Travel Show, London) and on the radio (BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio Five Live, Radio New Zealand). Her blog: goinglocaltravel.com . Vicky is still a regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper's travel section and Guardian.co.uk/travel. Other work has been published in the Observer (Escape), the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, TNT, Overseas, Time Out, Travel Mail, The Linguist, Matchbox, and International Travel and Tourism News. She has also written for travel guidebooks and websites.
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