About

Andy was a world traveler, entrepreneur, and visionary. He was an avid reader and artist from a young age. As a high school student, he loved to paint and had a natural ability and his own style using acrylics and his fingers instead of paintbrushes. He read constantly. Bill Bryson and Kurt Vonnegut were among his favorites in high school. He ventured into economics and understanding world dynamics as he got older with authors such as Jim Rogers and Chris Martenson. Never the shallow tourist, Andy would research his adventures and immerse himself in the culture, especially food and off-beat neighborhoods of every place he visited. He often said he first became interested in travel and the world outside of the United States after reading his grandfather’s collection of National Geographic magazines as a kid. Not content with just visiting, Andy explored Angkor Wat, India, Nepal. Myanmar, eastern Europe (Romania & Ukraine), Egypt, Spain, England, Scotland, Turkey, Malaysia, and Singapore among many other places. He also climbed the Grand Canyon with his mother and others.

He could see macro trends of politics and the environment years before they became a reality. One of Andy’s first large investments was when he researched and invested in gold when the spot price was $250 in 2002. After that investment, he started looking into commodities and decided that owning his own physical property instead of investing in a fund was the way to go so he bought a 200 rye (100 acre) rice farm and converted it into palm oil in Nahkon Si Tammarat, Thailand.

Andy was a complexly beautiful person. The best kind. There is truly nobody else like him and anyone that was lucky enough to call him a friend was truly blessed.

Andy is survived by his two sons, Ben and Jon whom he was able to care for and love for their first 18 months. He is also survived by his parents, John and Sharon Tambellini, sisters Leah Williams and Margo Gough, many cousins, aunts, uncles, and countless friends. Above all else, Andy was a true friend and empathic human being.

“There are people who travel because they want to push themselves to physical limits, people who walk across deserts or cycle across the Antarctic - like Ranulph Fiennes, who just does it because it's there. And then there are people like me, who are just genuinely curious about the world.”

“Acknowledge the complexity of the world and resist the impression that you easily understand it. People are too quick to accept conventional wisdom, because it sounds basically true and it tends to be reinforced by both their peers and opinion leaders, many of whom have never looked at whether the facts support the received wisdom. It's a basic fact of life that many things "everybody knows" turn out to be wrong.”

“I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.” ”

“Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.”

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.”