Nicole Angela Pearson

I am a Bronx born, Anchorage, Alaska raised activist, writer, teacher, and entrepreneur who in 2005 moved to Spain to study flamenco dance. In 2015 I started a wine and travel business, Nicole Angela Travel and Taste, where I give workshops, tours and tastings exploring Spanish history through wine. I leads workshops on intercultural adaptation for study abroad programs such as Tufts/Skidmore and New York University. I also gives community talks and workshops in Spanish and English on women's roles in Black liberation movements and movement organizing wisdom and strategies.

In high school I started working with the solidarity group CISPES, Communities in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. At university I was heavily involved in organizing students and youth in the DC area against the first Persian Gulf War. From there I worked as a lobbyist for USSA, United States Students Association and NARAL. Post university I trained as a community organizer in Oakland with the Center for Third World Organizing and went on to work on anti-lead, police harassment, and voting campaigns in Denver and Portland. In Seattle, I went on to work with LELO a multiracial/generational community based labor group, help form a youth of color lead organizing collective as well as organize student and youth for the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999.

After years of on the ground activism, I shifted focus to work with YES! Magazine in 2001 organizing multigenerational conferences of activists from various political movements. In this position I met some of the most influential activists from the environmental and US civil rights movements such as Vandana Shiva, Joanna Macy, Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons and Vincent Harding. I continue my activism in Spain working with Afroconciencia the Spanish Black consciousness movement and MAPA the people of color anti racism movement. I am excited to be a witness to and a part of these exciting social movements.

While activism is the foundation of my work, writing is at the core of everything I do. I have written extensively on my life as a traveler and expat in my blog ¡Ay, Negrita! and Spanish history, food, and wine in my blog Nicole Angela Travel & Taste. I am a storyteller using whatever genre is most appropriate to to explore history's impact on everyday lives and how everyday lives shape history. I am currently focused on the impacts of imperialism and the ideology of white supremacy on travel and migration. I explore the stories of Black migrants and immigrants in my Instagram @mstravelandtaste. I am working on a memoir that tells my travel and migration story and that of my family.