Our Team

  • Alejandro Berroa

    Travel Cuba With Us
    CO-FOUNDER & TOUR GUIDE
    Translator & Interpreter

  • Vanessa K. Harper

    Travel Cuba With Us
    CO-FOUNDER & TOUR OPERATOR
    RYT 200

  • Michel Uranga

    Agata Yoga
    FOUNDER & YOGA TEACHER
    RYT 250/Kundalini 3HO/Thai Masseuse

Cuba Yoga Retreats, a signature program of Travel Cuba With Us, partners with Havana-based Agata Yoga, a health and wellness movement whose mission is to provide tools for physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness.

Together we are 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.

Agata Yoga
FOUNDER & YOGA TEACHER
RYT 250/Kundalini 3HO/Thai Masseuse

Michel Uranga Briñas is a licensed physical therapist and long-time practitioner and instructor of Hatha and Kundalini yoga. He founded Agata Yoga, a health and wellness movement based in Havana, Cuba which offers a variety of products and services, such as Kundalini yoga classes and workshops, teacher trainings, holistic massages by trained therapists, and yoga retreats. Their mission is to provide tools for physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness, Thai massage and other holistic therapies, and Ayurvedic and nutritional counseling.

Over the past decade, he has built the Agata Yoga team, comprised of a dozen core instructors, holistic therapists, and Ayurvedic nutritionists. Together, they dedicate themselves to their work in a concerted effort to contribute to the betterment of humanity – ways of being that promote health, joy, spirituality, and stress-free living ­– and are committed to evoking positive change in Cuba from the ground up.

Michel’s studies in East Asian therapies were the precipice for a life-long dedication to the practice of Thai massage and holistic practices of oriental medicine. He served as an instructor and therapist at IRECA – the Research Institute for the Application of Cosmic Energy – for more than a decade. He is a licensed yoga instructor (Yoga Alliance RYT-250 and Kundalini 3HO) and masseuse (certified in both Thai and Shiatsu massage).

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 since 1997, became a RYT 200-hour certified yoga teacher in 2013, and regularly practices a variety of styles of yoga, including Bikram, Ashtanga, Baptiste, Kundalini, and Mixed-Level Power Vinyasa. She 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.

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). 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.