Our Team
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Alejandro Berroa
Travel Cuba With Us
CO-FOUNDER & TOUR GUIDE
Translator & Interpreter -
Vanessa K. Harper
Travel Cuba With Us
CO-FOUNDER & TOUR OPERATOR
Yoga Teacher • RYT 200
Cuba Yoga Retreats, a signature program of Travel Cuba With Us is dedicated to the betterment of humanity and committed to evoking positive change in Cuba from the ground up. We work with private entrepreneurs across the island because it’s important to us that our retreats directly support the Cuban people.
Travel Cuba With Us
CO-FOUNDER & TOUR OPERATOR
RYT 200
Vanessa K. Harper has lived and worked in Cuba as a researcher, tour guide, documentarian, and facilitator of collaborative agreements between the U.S. and Cuba since 2005. She is founder of Support the Cuban People, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization whose activities directly support individuals residing in Cuba through programming that spans humanitarian need, art and culture, and grant funds for established and emerging entrepreneurs.
She currently owns and operates Travel Cuba With Us in partnership with her husband Alejandro Berroa. Their company provides personalized cultural immersion experiences that directly support the Cuban people. They design custom itineraries for solo travelers and guide group trips that specialize in history & culture, artist’s studio visits, photography workshops, rural farm adventures, and their signature
Cuba Yoga Retreats program – an immersion experience that physically, spiritually, and culturally engages guests both on and off the mat.
Vanessa has been a practitioner of yoga for more than 20 years, became a RYT 200-hour certified yoga teacher in 2013, and regularly practices a variety of styles of asana, including Bikram, Ashtanga, Journey into Power, and Mixed-Level Power Vinyasa. She is currently working toward her 500-hour certification through Asheville Yoga Center – where she took her first yoga class ever in 1998. Vanessa is former inaugural Board Chair and current Advisory Board Member for Florida-based Yoga 4 Change, a nonprofit organization that achieves lasting, demonstrative change for veterans, individuals experiencing incarceration, youth, and those living with mental health conditions through an evidence-based, purpose-driven yoga curriculum.
She is the co-owner of La Shambhala de la Habana – a yoga studio and community collective based in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Cuba.
Travel Cuba With Us
CO-FOUNDER & TOUR GUIDE
Translator & Interpreter
Alejandro is a certified translator/interpreter and oral historian. He was born in Cuba and lived there for 36 years before immigrating to the United States in 2020 (right before Covid). He speaks Spanish, French, English, and German and has an uncanny way of picking up any language once he’s immersed in a culture. Today he splits his time between Cuba and the U.S for family and work. He has more than 15 years’ experience working as a Havana-based tour leader and has guided visitors from all over the world across the island. His specialties include tours on Cuban culture and heritage, architecture, history, religion, and ecotourism – with extensive experience guiding birdwatchers.
He holds a BA in Linguistics from the University of Havana with specializations in French and English language, and a minor in German. He spent many years studying and then working as a professor at the French Alliance based in Havana. He sits on the Board of Support the Cuban People, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization whose activities directly support individuals residing in Cuba through programming that spans humanitarian need, art and culture, and grant funds for established and emerging entrepreneurs.
A lover of photography, languages, history, and peoples’ stories, he prioritizes the facilitation of collaborative agreements, as well as the apolitical exchange of information and culture, between the United States and Cuba, and is committed to being a part of creating economic opportunity in Cuba from the ground up.
He is the co-owner of La Shambhala de la Habana – a yoga studio and community collective based in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Cuba.