03: Community-First Travel with Katalina Mayorga

E03_ Katalina Mayorga.png

I’m so excited to share with you a conversation I had with my dear friend Katalina Mayorga.

Columbian-American Katalina Mayorga is the founder of El Camino Travel, a travel company dedicated to providing a culturally immersive travel experiences for travelers seeking meaningful connections with communities worldwide.

Katalina never intended to work in travel, but instead, originally planned to major in business. Her decision to change majors to International Studies came after taking a course on human rights in Latin America. This led her toward a new path and later influenced her decision to start a company that has since shaken up the travel industry and earned numerous accolades (Katalina was most recently selected as a 2019 How I Built This Fellow, 2019 Condé Nast Traveler Globetrotter Redefining Travel, 2017 Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, and been featured in Marie Claire, Creative Mornings, and Project Entrepreneur as a thought leader on the topics of travel and entrepreneurship).

Today, Katalina resides in Nicaragua where she’s building The Clubhouse, an online travel community for creatives who travel, with her El Camino team. 

In this episode, Katalina speaks on her experience growing up in a bilingual immigrant family and what led her to create her culturally-immersive travel company, on being a global citizen , and on the importance of forming a community and relying on others when we venture out to build our dream creative lives. 

“Don’t try to do it alone. Start putting together your personal board of advisors and friends. What can you learn from them? How can you create the space to learn from each other?”

Want to start taking action on your creative dreams? Download my free guide to turning your inner critic into your biggest ally to start losing some of the doubt that plagues so many of us!

What you’ll learn in this episode:

  • How Katalina’s family found a Columbian community in the Washington state

  • How experiences with difficult race dynamics at an early age drove Katalina toward her path

  • What taught Katalina to be vocal from an early age

  • The pressures of needing to be successful as an immigrant in the United States

  • How Katalina got into human rights activism in Latin America and in Washington, D.C.

  • The importance of having mentors throughout our entrepreneurial and creative journeys

  • How Katalina is building a culturally immersive travel company

  • The dangers of the “self” aspect of the American Dream, and understanding that individualism is not always the best path

  • The link between happiness and materialistic success in the United States in comparison to other countries such as Nicaragua

  • The contrast of people’s reactions to COVID-19 in the United States and Nicaragua

  • How Katalina’s travel experiences prepared her for the entrepreneur’s path

  • Anti-racism in the world of travel

Featured on the show:

Subscribe & Review The Genius Womxn Podcast

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Genius Womxn Podcast!

If our weekly conversations and interviews have helped you on your journey to create your dream creative life, please head over to Apple Podcasts and SUBSCRIBE to the show. We'd also love it if you would leave us an honest review.

Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more genius womxn just like you!

Partner with us

Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.