Some people inspire through what they accomplish. Others inspire through the way they move through the world, the way they serve, the way they connect people, and the way they turn their experiences into something meaningful for others.
Vanessa Hornedo does both.
Vanessa is an entrepreneur and community servant at heart. A journalist by training, she has built a life shaped by curiosity, service, travel, education, and a genuine desire to bring people together. Her passion for learning through experience began while studying abroad in Italy. That experience became part of a much larger journey that would take her to Washington, D.C., through two years of AmeriCorps service, and into international community development experiences that allowed her to learn from people, places, and cultures beyond her own. For more than a decade, Vanessa worked in the nonprofit sector supporting women’s economic empowerment. She later spent nearly five years creating immersive educational experiences throughout the United States and Mexico.Different places. Different roles. Different chapters. But throughout them all, there has been a common thread: people.
More Than Travel
Today, Vanessa is the founder of Rise & Roam Travel Co., a travel and experiential education company centered on the belief that travel can be so much more than simply visiting somewhere new. Travel can reconnect us with ourselves. It can introduce us to people we may never have encountered otherwise. It can challenge what we think we know, encourage us to slow down, teach us about cultures beyond our own, and remind us just how connected we really are. Through Rise & Roam Travel Co., Vanessa brings together travel, wellness, cultural immersion, education, community, and giving back. The destination matters, but so does what happens within you while you’re there. It’s not simply about where you go. It’s about what you carry home with you.
Bringing It Home
After years of creating experiences in different places, Vanessa recently turned some of that same energy toward her own community as cofounder of Rise Central Florida.
The initiative is rooted in a beautifully simple idea: We need one another. Rise Central Florida is intended to create a welcoming space for women seeking genuine connection, conversation, friendship, and shared experiences. And I think there is something especially meaningful about that today. So much of the world tells women that we constantly need to become something else. Become more successful. Become more productive. Become more confident. Become a better version of ourselves.
But sometimes we don’t need another space asking us to become. Sometimes we need a space where we are allowed to be simply. To show up as we are.
To laugh. To talk. To listen. To make new friends. To try something different. To make room for ourselves in lives that can become incredibly busy. That is part of what Vanessa hopes to create: opportunities for women to build meaningful relationships and experience community without feeling as though they first need to become someone different.
What I Have Seen Beyond the Bio
I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside Vanessa a few times, and one thing I can say with certainty is that her talents extend far beyond what can be written here.
A biography can tell you someone’s positions, accomplishments, education, businesses, and years of experience.
But it can’t always tell you what it feels like to watch someone operate in their element.
There are qualities you recognize only when you’ve had the opportunity to work beside someone: the way they communicate, the way they connect with people, the ideas they bring into a room, the way they serve, and the intention behind what they create.
I’ve been fortunate enough to see some of that in Vanessa. And even this story is only a glimpse.
That is one of the reasons I wanted to include her in The Inspired Who Inspire.
Because inspiration isn’t always measured by a résumé.
Sometimes it’s found in the impact someone leaves on the people around them.
The Inspired Who Inspire
One of the things I love about photography is that it gives me an opportunity to see people beyond a single moment.
A portrait may show you what someone looked like on a particular day, but when I know something about the person standing in front of my camera, the photograph begins to mean something different. There is a story behind that face.There are places they’ve traveled, people they’ve helped, risks they’ve taken, lessons they’ve learned, dreams they’re still pursuing, and chapters that haven’t even been written yet. That’s what I want The Inspired Who Inspire to hold space for. Not simply beautiful photographs.
People. Stories. Purpose.
Vanessa’s journey has taken her across communities, industries, and borders, but so much of what she is building today comes back to something wonderfully human: creating opportunities for people to experience the world and one another more intentionally. And perhaps that is the beautiful thing about traveling far.
Sometimes everything you learn along the way teaches you how to create something meaningful right where you are.