Episode 257 - Beth Santos & Nikki Padilla Rivera, She Shapes History NYC

Jun 16

Beth Santos & Nikki Padilla Rivera, Co-Owners of She Shapes History NYC, join Christine for this week’s soulful conversation as guests in our Trailblazer Series, produced in collaboration with Strictly Jane Austen Tours.

Words of Wisdom

The more digital society becomes, the more I want to see a place through somebody else's eyes. That is where tour guiding gives you two things: immediate access to a *person* who can tell you a story through their eyes, and access to the *many stories* that that person can now tell you, which just opens up a whole other level of travel.
– BETH SANTOS

Beth Santos is an entrepreneur, author, and community builder out to disrupt travel for women worldwide. She is founder and CEO of Wanderful, an international collective of travelers and travel content creators on a mission to make travel better for all women. She is the creator of the WITS Travel Creator Summit, a leading event for women and gender diverse travel creators, the annual Bessie Awards to honor women of impact in travel, and the first major outdoor travel festival by and for women, Wanderfest.

In 2026, she launched the first U.S. arm of She Shapes History, a walking tour company sharing the overlooked stories of women who shaped the places we know today, beginning with tours in Manhattan.

Beth has been named one of 17 changemakers shaping the future of the travel industry by Business Insider, one of 12 women to follow by Conde Nast Traveller, and one of 20 influential women in the travel industry by Travel Pulse. In 2022, she was named Godmother of the Azamara Onward cruise ship. She is the author of solo travel guide and manifesto Wander Woman and works to amplify underrepresented voices in travel while challenging each of us to do better in her work as a keynote speaker, an industry consultant, and a startup and small business coach. At home she is a co-owner of Ula Cafe, an inspired cafe and community hub in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, where she lives with her husband and children.

Starting as a tour guide, Nikki has worked across the tourism industry worldwide; from operations and tour design to marketing and business development. She is co-owner and guide of She Shapes History NYC, celebrating the hidden history of women who built the city. By day, she leads brand and content strategy at WalksDevour while mentoring independent guides and creators through workshops and female-focused communities like Wanderful and wmnsWORK. She believes all tours can be better, and actively works to ensure she's less frequently the only woman at the table for larger industry conversations.

She Shapes History: At She Shapes History, we make women’s stories impossible to forget through walking tours, & special events. We’re building the recognition and respect women have always deserved, driving the long-overdue cultural change needed to achieve gender equality.

Challenging Traditional Tourism Storytelling with She Shapes History NYC

As Sita was launching Australian-based She Shapes History, she reached out to Nikki requesting to be a guest on her podcast mentoring and speaking to tour operators. Seeds were planted that would eventually become a US movement in bringing women’s stories to the forefront of tourism and storytelling. “When you think of female focused tours, you think of Beth,” Nikki shares, referring Beth and Sita to follow up with one another, but Nikki began to realize that this was the right moment to bring Sita’s vision to NYC and knew she wanted to be a part of creating it. She was delighted to learn that Beth and Sita were already percolating the idea. Beth and Nikki immediately booked tickets to Australia to visit Sita (the day after Thanksgiving, with emergency breast pump in hand) and went all-in to launch the NYC arm of She Shapes History.

Beth shares that while she has been in the women’s travel space for such a long time, she was far removed from the type of mentoring Nikki had been working through. But it wasn’t long before the pieces clicked into place for She Shapes History and a clear partnership and purpose for bringing women’s history tours to as many places as possible in the US.

“Travel has always, for me, been about relationships and about who you meet and about their stories. But I think there was a period of time in my life when I kind of felt like, oh, you know, I can just, whatever, find whatever hotel, stay at whatever place, have my own experience.

“And I think the more digital that society becomes, the more I want to see a place through somebody else's eyes, and that is where tour guiding can do two things. One, it gives you immediate access to a person who can tell you a story through their eyes, but two, it gives you access to the many stories that that person can now tell you, which just opens up a whole other level of travel.”

What appealed to both Nikki and Beth was that so many of the people who were attending Sita’s tours were Australian – those who lived in Melbourne or Sydney their whole lives, but were interested in digging deeper to discover how women’s stories truly shaped the place they thought they knew. The same became true for She Shapes History NYC, where travelers and New Yorkers engage in learning about the stories of world-changing women that have been suppressed by surface-level and often male-dominated history lessons. Even people who know those blocks intimately have no idea what happened there, to whom, and why it mattered – until they hear it.

Uncovering the Stories of Women and Redefining “Credible Source”

One thing that Nikki and Beth ask tour guests to do is reflect on their own knowledge of women’s history, finding that even Beth’s father feels like his self-assessed score of 7/10 was accurate, as he knew what he felt there is to know. It’s not uncommon, Beth shares.

What surprised Nikki most, once she started digging into New York's history, was that these stories are not impossible to find. "These women are written about. There's New York Times articles, there's blog posts, there's books written." But when all of that material is filtered through a specific lens, without the voice of the people who actually experienced each moment, and a layer of ‘credibility’ that swept hundreds of stories under the rug.

Nikki describes the formerly-unspoken hierarchy that governs most tour guide training: a story only counts if it comes from an established, "qualified" book, and those books, just by existing in the common record long enough, are disproportionately about men. Meanwhile, well-researched, well-documented accounts of women — like the book The Black Angels, which chronicles the Black nurses who helped develop the cure for tuberculosis on Staten Island — sit just outside the canon tour guides are trained to draw from. "Who says it's good enough?" Nikki asks. Her tours treat newspaper mentions, blog posts, and recent scholarship as legitimate historical evidence, because waiting for the old gatekeeping criteria to catch up means waiting forever for something that isn’t likely to happen on its own.

Beth digs deeper, exploring how history was never a neutral record. It was built by whoever had the money, the connections, and the institutional power; in the case of actual statues, for example, only 6% of statues in the US depict real women. "Who gets to decide what is history and what's not history?" Beth asks. Women's absence from the historical record should never have been accepted as evidence of their absence from history.

She Shapes History NYC sets out to change that narrative completely, and the response has been inspiring.

Sparking a Movement in Women Storytelling Tours

“The industry interaction has been super interesting,” Nikki shares. “People go bananas when I wear the T-shirt or when we have a booth somewhere. As I said, I work for a company that does more mainstream themed tours, so in New York City, we're doing the Statue of Liberty, and Grand Central Terminal. It is my job in my role there to differentiate and show that we're different and better. There's lots of competition of people doing that kind of tour.

“But when I walk into a room and I say, ‘We do female history tours,’ I mean, people are like, ‘How can we get involved? What can we do together? Tell me more information.’ People are so excited about it.

“Just the branding alone, I think that's what's so striking about this, is it is so clear when you look at our T-shirt or when you look at our photos. It’s obvious at a glance what we're doing. That, you know, it's a badass women of New York City tour. You know exactly the tone, you know exactly what we're gonna be talking about.”

She Shapes History Tours open with guests sharing the name of a woman who has personally inspired them, and within the first few minutes, the emotions flow, and the real stories flow alongside them.

But Nikki and Beth are explicit that the women featured did not always make admirable choices, and the tours don't gloss over the details. “So some of the women that are in our stories didn't always make the best choices. You know? But that doesn't take away who they are, and these really impossible contexts that they were given. And so I think that's really important for us to acknowledge that this is part tour, this is part history. But this is also part really dissecting feminism and dissecting history, and really understanding why certain things make it and other things don't, how we can have these holistic conversations. We can still recognize someone's accomplishments, and we can also talk about the not-so-great parts of their history, and that can be part of one human story.”

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Soul of Travel Episode 257 At a Glance

In this conversation, Christine, Beth, and Nikki discuss:

· Uncovering the stories of women left out of documented history and challenging perceptions of credible sources

· The ways in which women were made invisible in the guiding, travel and tourism industries

· The impact of women telling the stories of people and places to both travelers and locals who want a broader understanding of their home

Join Christine, Beth Santos, and Nikki Padilla Rivera now for this soulful conversation.

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Related UN Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable Development Goal #4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Sustainable Development Goal #5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Sustainable Development Goal #11 Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Resources & Links Mentioned in the Episode

Visit She Shapes History NYC to learn more and book your tour of New York’s hidden history of women – stories you never knew you were missing.

Connect with Beth & Nikki on your favorite social media network! Instagram / LinkedIn

Special thanks to Strictly Jane Austen Tours for your partnership in the production of our Trailblazer Series!

About the Soul Of Travel Podcast

Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of people making a positive impact in the tourism industry. In each episode, you’ll hear the stories of women who are industry professionals, seasoned travelers, and community leaders. Our expert guests represent social impact organizations, adventure-based community organizations, travel photography and videography, and entrepreneurs who know that travel is an opportunity for personal awareness and a vehicle for global change.

Join us to become a more educated and intentional traveler as you learn about new destinations, sustainable and regenerative travel, and community-based tourism. Industry professionals and those curious about a career in travel will also find value and purpose in our conversations.

We are thought leaders, action-takers, and heart-centered change-makers who inspire and create community. Join host Christine Winebrenner Irick for these soulful conversations with our global community of travelers exploring the heart, the mind, and the globe.

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Credits. Christine Winebrenner Irick (Host, creator, editor). GUEST NAME (Guest). Original music by Clark Adams. Editing, production, and content writing by Carly Oduardo.