Vote For a Winner — And You Could Be A Winner Too

That’s right, you could win 25,000 American Airlines AAdvantage^® miles just by doing a little reading and then simply clicking your computer mouse a few times.

We’ve already done the heavy lifting, sifting through thousands of Road Warrior entries and narrowing them down to just five. You, our readers, will vote for your favorite, and in the process, choose the grand-prize winner of the 5th Annual American Way Road Warrior Search. Yes, in the magazine we said you'd be able to rank the finalists in order. But that's wrong. You can only vote for one of the five. Obviously, we didn't have enough Starbucks on hand after reading almost 10,000 entries (but we did get plenty of paper cuts).

Once you’ve read the entries and voted, you’ll automatically be entered in a sweepstakes to win 25,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles (so be sure and fill out the necessary contact information in case you win)!

Our five MVPs include three men and two women. Some are single, some are married with kids, and some are married with no kids — so we’ve covered the playing field. You can look at their complete entries by clicking on their names above, but here are the CliffsNotes versions for you instant-gratification types.

Mordy Golding, 35, married (with kids), founded a company called Design Responsibly, with the goal of closing the gap between graphic designers and printers (there’s an issue that’s close to our hearts). But that’s not what sold us. Instead, it was what he considers his home away from home that earned him the stamp of a true Road Warrior. Or perhaps the stamp of someone who needs to get a life. But who are we to criticize? We’d sell our Blackberrys to gain admittance to this place. 

Ridlon Kiphart, 40, married (no kids), owns a company (along with his wife) called Global Dive Expeditions. But while that’s one of the reasons you’ll find him traveling all over the world, it’s his untiring passion and enthusiasm for discovering the undiscovered and sharing the riches of the world with others that caught the attention of our judges. Running from one faraway place to another, and all the while strategizing about “what’s next” is obviously the lifeblood of this Road Warrior. In fact, we’d like to see what would happen if he were grounded for a month. Then again, maybe not.

Leslie Monk, 33, married (no kids), is a senior staff consultant with Verizon who knows what’s important in life and where to get it. While many tried (and succeeded) to impress us with the places they’ve been and the things they’ve seen, Leslie’s entry caught the judges’ eyes with its practicality and commonality. We all know that business travel is rarely the glitz-and-glam affair that many imagine it to be, and this entry brings that point clearly into focus. If “new day, different place” is your battle cry, you may appreciate this touch of something familiar as much as we did.

Mark Satinsky, 49, married (with kids), is an entrepreneur who also started a business (we’re just beginning to see a theme here). His most recent company, of which he is a co-founder, is called AgileMesh, and the short version is that they sell “rapidly deployable video surveillance” equipment primarily for law enforcement and first-responder applications. And while he may be working hard to corner that market, he’s already worked plenty hard to corner the “complaining about the luggage situation” market. No matter how bad or heavy or broken or lost or irritating you find your luggage, this guy has got a story to top yours. And better yet, he does it with a sense of humor. In fact, we almost DQ’d him just because he makes us look bad.

Jaime Vogel, 28, single, is a senior consultant with Deloitte Consulting. Like so many of us, she was beginning to feel more like a Road Wearier than a Road Warrior (and at such a young age)! But unlike so many of us, she found a creative way to invigorate herself as well as stay in touch with and learn new things from her friends and family on the ground and those who are out there with her at 30,000 feet.