Clayton

Travel information

I am currently

Description

Overall: I enjoy exploring new places and - while not very descriptive - feeling useful. I am currently between jobs and trying to decide what I want to do next in my professional career.

Personal and non-career highlights: I am very close to my family and have maintained consistent and frequent contact with them over the years, including multiple stints as the primary care giver to my nephew then niece for a night or week here or there to allow my sister and her husband some free time. I also coached a cousin's son's under 7 boys soccer team in Northern California one season and loved seeing the kids evolve from a jumbled mess running around to being able to pass the ball and advance down the field. I have helped family and friends with a variety of odd jobs through my life and while I am by no means an all around handyman, electrician, or plumber, I am fairly well versed in a number of basic power tools, deck/shed/similarly-small-structure construction, and landscaping/gardening (with, of course, sufficient instruction of what is desired -- people have highly varied opinions!).

My adult life and [professional] background: I lived in Costa Rica for four years while working for an international business consulting firm, then I moved to New York City for my second Master's and helped start-up a non-profit company focused on training government employees in data analytics, and most recently I lived in Finland for 2.5 years working as a Product Manager at a satellite company where the product I managed was near-real-time information about floods. I left Finland at the beginning of Sept 2024 and discovered (unsurprisingly in retrospect) it is very difficult to truly connect with local communities and cultures when hopping from place to place. My first Workaway was on a small family farm/tourist destination near Porto Cesareo, Italy, where I stayed for just over 3 weeks helping with odd jobs (cleaning up after the horse, planting trees, clearing land, gardening, etc) -- I absolutely loved it. I also learned about the disaster recovery NGO All Hands And Hearts while traveling through the Philippines, where I had my first multi-week disaster response volunteer experience helping AHAH on their school construction project in Southern Leyte.

I am happy to answer any questions about my path and/or interests.

Interests

Team sports

Books

Adventure sports

Sailing / Boating

Outdoor activities

Nature

Culture

Farming

Mountain

Hiking

Beach

Sustainability

History

Languages

Languages spoken
English: Fluent
Spanish: Intermediate

More details about my language interests
I have never been trained as a teacher, however I have tutored English before. Additionally, while I'm only fluent in English, I speak Spanish reasonably well (with what I am told is a somewhat odd accent due to originally learning in Ecuador, being influenced by Argentinians, and then living in Costa Rica). I enjoy languages but have not put much effort into learning more than I know now -- I would like to change that and begin exploring additional languages (and at least learn some basic phrases!).

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Skills and knowledge I'd like to share or learn

I'm interested in:  

Languages

Eco Projects

Gardening

DIY and building projects

Life at a Farmstay

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Some knowledge of:  

Helping with Computers/ Internet

More details about your skills

My professional experience is mostly related to data and analytics -- using some data to try and answer questions or figure out how to do 'something' better. Outside of that general umbrella, I also managed other people, figured out a payment system and all the operations for training programs I then helped run, set-up and maintained a database for my analytics team to use, and worked across engineering, sales, and operations to prioritize what needed to happen next for a data product about floods.

On a personal side, I grew up playing - and still enjoy but play much less frequently - many sports, including: basketball, football (both American and international, so "real" football :) ), and tennis. I coached - and very much enjoyed - one season of 7 year old boys football (soccer). I sorted and then delivered apples on a friend's farm one season, prior to which I grafted different apple and pear varieties at a farm in New York state.

All in all, I believe I can pick up new skills fairly quickly and contribute to a wide array of projects.

Age

36

What else ...

When there is nothing happening around me and I have downtime I usually read; mostly I read sci-fi/fantasy but I also have a list of history/philosophy books that I recommend whenever the topic comes up. I enjoy most games but have a slight preference for cards over table-top games.

Some more information

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  Smoker

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  Driver's licence

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  Allergies

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  Special dietary requirements