Catherine Heald

Catherine Heald (née Evans) is a technology and travel entrepreneur. Heald is the CEO of Remote Lands, Inc.
Early life
Heald was born to Nan and George Evans in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as the second of three siblings. She attended Valley School of Ligonier, Shady Side Academy graduating in 1980 and then attended Barnard College at Columbia University majoring in computer science. She graduated from Columbia University in 1984 and worked on Wall Street at L.F. Rothschild. She attended New York University Stern School of Business but she moved to Hong Kong before completing her MBA.
Career
Multimedia software
In 1987 Heald moved to Hong Kong where she met Simon Winchester and were married in 1989. Together they founded an e-book publisher InterOptica Publishing Ltd. in Hong Kong. InterOptica was bought by Take-Two Interactive in 1993.
In 1994 Heald founded Wanderlust Interactive becoming CEO and president of the company. Heald raised $2 million in financing commitments for Wanderlust Interactive in 1995. She secured the rights to make The Pink Panther computer games through Wanderlust Interactive from a deal made between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists. In March 1996, Wanderlust Interactive went public with an Initial public offering priced at $7.00 with an amount of $7.5 million raised. In June 1997 Wanderlust Interactive faced financial difficulties leading to layoffs and a substantial decline in value in its stock. Heald stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Jay Smith. She left Wanderlust Interactive in July 1997 to start a speech recognition company called Soliloquy.
She was the winner of the Conde Nast Traveler award from 2015 - 2020.
Remote Lands
She founded Remote Lands in Manhattan with Jay Tindall in 2006 as a Asia luxury tour operator, using her travel connections in Asia. Heald was listed in 's top travel experts A-list in 2012 and 2013. Remote Lands was also on Condé Nast Travelers' list of top specialists in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Aman Resorts, selected Remote Lands to operate the Aman Jet Expeditions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Remote Lands struggled due to the decline in tourism but rebounded later in the year due to postponements of trips instead of outright cancelations.

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