Our Story

Hi! I’m Jillian, the owner and heart behind Wander & Roam, and here's how it all began...

As a little girl, I dreamed of being an artist. I could paint for hours, lost in color and creation. But everyone told me that artists didn't make money, that I wouldn't be able to survive doing what I loved, and so, like many of us do, I... took the scenic route.

As I grew up, that art transformed into an obsession with design. I was in awe of interiors and architecture. I spent countless hours beside my dad, an incredible (though not classically trained, just wildly talented!) home builder, flipping through Architectural Digest. “The details, Jillian,” he would always say. “That is where the character lies.” We would dream together of one day designing something beautiful for homes.

Life first led me down what looked like the more practical path. I earned a degree in Kinesiology and built a career in healthcare and technology, because that is the path that pays the bills, or so the thinking goes. But my love for art and design never wavered.

I like to think I took the scenic route to my dreams. My inspiration deepened through solo travels across the globe, where I was captivated by timeless patterns, each one telling a story of culture and heritage. And when the chance came to merge my two greatest passions, health and design, I knew I had found my calling.

Today, Wander & Roam creates healthier play mats inspired by the classics: the timeless elegance of Dior, the heritage feel of Ralph Lauren, the seasonal motifs that move across the world’s runways. I design pieces meant to feel timeless rather than trend-driven, elevated and intentional and beautiful, and still within reach.

This is where health meets home. Wander & Roam is where the two loves of my life finally meet: the beauty that always inspires me, and the health I built a career around, and am incredibly passionate about. We make and curate objects for the whole family that are clean at the level of their materials and elevated at the level of their design, modern and intentional and quiet enough to live in any room you love. Beauty and safety were never meant to be a trade. Here, they are the same decision.

Health is the center of everything we make and everything we choose to carry. Our play mats are third-party tested free of more than 28 harmful chemicals, including BPA, PFAS, EN-71 certified, CPSC certified, California Prop 65 certified, and they surpass both US and European child-safety standards for children. We test because a family should never have to take a promise on faith, and that same scrutiny is the bar every new product earns its place against.

We began with one product, our signature foam play mats, and we are becoming something larger: a curated marketplace of the things a family actually reaches for, each one chosen with the same care we built the first one with. We also work in small, exclusive batches made for this community. When you see a play mat you love, it is worth bringing home while it is here, because we may not make it again. We want what you choose to feel like it belongs to a specific season of your life, to the year your baby arrived, to the season you became a family.

And we are here for the whole arc of a family: for the season of preparing your body through fertility prep and preconception, for the first tender weeks with a newborn, for the years when a home grows fuller and louder, and for the grandparents who still get down on the floor to play. Wander & Roam is designed to grow with you, at every stage and for everyone under your roof.

We are a small business, female-owned, and headquartered in Austin, Texas, a city we love and are proud to build from. We are growing, and we are grateful for it, most of all for you.

To all the little ones out there with big dreams: believe in them. They may take the scenic route to get there, but life has a way of bringing you right back to what your heart already knows to be true, to where your greatest dreams live.

Here’s to your childlike wander, and to everywhere you may roam.

With love and gratitude,

Jillian

Owner, Wander & Roam