Meet Danny Navarro | Latino Travel-Hacker & Advocate

We had the good fortune of connecting with Danny Navarro and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Danny, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
The support of nuestra gente, the minority community, has been vital to the success of LatinosWithPassports, our Instagram account that has grown to over 5,000 followers in just one year! We started LatinosWithPassports in January 2021, highlighting the travels that we had done using our travel points & miles. We “travel-hacked” our honeymoon in 2019, flying business class around the world on Emirates and JAL airlines and visiting Dubai, Singapore, Bali, Bangkok, and Tokyo. Our 3-week trip was valued at over $20,000, but we only ended up paying $5,000 out-of-pocket! Since then, we have been sharing with la comunidad how we maximize the points/miles we earn from our everyday spending and careful financial planning, so they too can travel.

Considering the skewed demographics of the “travel-hacking world” (white-male businessmen), we were unsure that our presence in this community would be supported, but to our surprise, there were multiple communities on Instagram that were very happy to support our work and welcomed us. The Latina finance community were appreciative of how we highlighted the importance of personal finance to achieve travel goals responsibly. BIPOC content creators focused on travel inspiration were appreciative of the points/miles information we provided to aid in their future travels. BIPOC travel-hackers were glad to see a Spanish-speaking couple joining the community, providing our perspectives as D.C. professionals working 9-to-5s and as first-generation Americans. We even have friends from the countries we have traveled to that continue to support our efforts to educate the American BIPOC community about travel-hacking and finance, one comment, share, and like at a time.

We look forward to growing our comunidad in 2022 and beyond, as we continue to represent the Latino community in our travels, both at home and abroad. As we love to say – vamos viajando, the world needs to see us! Join us at @LatinosWithPassports for travel tips!

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’ve been working for the past 10 years in the civic engagement field in the United States. This work has included working for political campaigns, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies running elections. The work is not easy – apart from assisting individuals about how the voting process works, I was left dealing with constant unemployment and job turnover. Even now as the Director of Partnerships, my role is not guaranteed considering all the anti-democracy legislation that is appearing throughout the country. My work improving democracy has allowed me to travel across the United States, and there is where my curiosity for traveling across the United States and around the world came from. Thus, we started @LatinosWithPassports as a way to highlight our travels and to advocate for minority travel content creators. Yep, we managed to find another space to advocate for. 🙂

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We can’t possible share everything to see and to do in Dubai. That city of the future has become our new favorite city, and as we continue to encourage our friends, family, and followers to visit, we ourselves are flying back to Dubai every year to discover something new (and old) about the city. Dubai has captured our imagination and our hearts that we are even considering becoming expats and live over there. Time will tell if our lives take us in that direction.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I would have to thank my beautiful wife, Laurie, who is the true inspiration behind @LatinosWithPassports. She’s the one that has the creative eye for Instagram, and her vision to share our world travels and the ways to do it make this work worthwhile.

Website: www.latinoswithpassports.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latinoswithpassports/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LatinsWPassport