Jia

Travel information

I am currently

Description

Hello! My name is Jia and I am Taiwanese-American, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. After studying finance and accounting at university, I started my career on Wall Street in banking, investing, and consulting. After six years, I realized this was not my passion and so I left my life in America and backpacked around the world for 15 months. After that, I moved to Berlin, Germany where I lived for 8 years, in which time I worked in the music industry and for tech companies.

During the pandemic, I lost my job and decided to take this chance to find work that was more personally meaningful and impactful. In 2021, I went to Africa (Namibia) and spent one month on a cattle ranch where I helped the farmer build a business plan for a rotational irrigation project. It was from this experience that I realized I wanted to empower more farmers and entrepreneurs with business skills to economically uplift themselves and their communities. It's also through my experiences on farms that I became passionate about food systems and the connectedness between humans and nature.

In September 2024, I began a 5-month journey through Africa to provide financial management and business skills training to a non-profit, NGO, social enterprise, and off-grid farm. These projects included:

1. Ilha Blue (Mozambique) – Led a 3-week intensive Financial Management Bootcamp for a sustainable tourism business focused on creating employment opportunities and providing educational skills training the local community of Ilha de Mozambique. Training modules included business and marketing strategy, cash flow forecasting and financial planning, ownership and management structures, capacity planning, attribution analysis, and Excel skills.

2. Africa Centre for Holistic Management (Zimbabwe) – Supported business planning, financial management, and marketing strategy for a 3,200-hectare learning site in the Dimbangombe Conservancy which provides training to communities to manage their land holistically by using livestock as a tool for regenerating degraded watersheds, croplands and wildlife habitat.

3. Ferme Agroécologique Karamba (Senegal) – Provided business plan training and supported the launch of agrotourism at an off-grid farm in the Casamance region of Senegal with a mission to demonstrate self-sufficiency and economic empowerment to the local community as a means of discouraging dangerous migration to Europe by sea.

4. Credi-ONG (Benin) – Provided marketing and agrotourism strategy support for an NGO focused on environmental protection, sustainable agriculture, and community empowerment.

Here you can see my resume:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14FnhI7lVI6Wn0O_O8P1whBKJXAxaPg0K/view?usp=sharing

If your organization, project, or farm is looking for the kind of help above, please send me a message as I am happy to strategize or go to your project in person!

Horses: In this time, I also found my true love: horses. I first began learning to ride in Namibia and continued in South Africa and Mongolia. Here in California, I work as a barn hand at a riding program with over 100 horses to take care of. I am a member of a trail/endurance riding club and volunteer as a side-walker in equine-facilitated therapy for children and adults with mental or physical disabilities.

Horses have also been a huge part of my Workaway experiences. My first Workaway in New Mexico involved acclimating BLM Mustangs to humans so that they could be adopted. The cattle ranch in Namibia bred pinto horses and the farm in Bulgaria bred Trakheners. In Mongolia, my host had several herds of horses which we rode as part of ranching tasks. Needless to say, I need horses in my life!

Interests

LGBTQ

Culture

Performing arts

Beach

Cycling

Events & social

Water sports

Dancing

Adventure sports

Charity work

Sustainability

Self development

Technology

Politics / Social justice

Vegetarian or vegan

Sailing / Boating

Plant care

Nature

Music

History

Gardening

Farming

DIY & crafts

Cooking & food

Architecture

Animals

Languages

Languages spoken
English: Fluent
Chinese (Mandarin): Fluent
Spanish: Intermediate
German: Beginner

More details about my language interests
English

Find a language buddy

Skills and knowledge I'd like to share or learn

I'm interested in:  

Eco Projects

Charity Work

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Some knowledge of:  

Helping around the house

Animal Care

Languages

Art Projects

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Able to teach about:  

Gardening

Creating/ Cooking family meals

Life at a Farmstay

Hospitality/Tourism

Helping with Computers/ Internet

More details about your skills

Horses: general horse care (feeding, meds, supplements) , groundwork, tacking up,
lunging, trail and endurance riding

Professional/Business Skills: business strategy and corporate finance, financial modeling, Excel, data analytics, PowerBI, SQL, Python

Social Media: Facebook, Instagram - I previously did this for my music & lifestyle blog.

Languages: English (native); Chinese/Mandarin (intermediate), Spanish (basic), German (basic)

Gardening: tomatoes, chili peppers, zucchini, squashes, flowers, herbs

Cooking: I love to cook! At home, I often cook Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Mexican, and Mediterranean dishes.

Age

42

What else ...

I consider myself a very open and adventurous person. I love meeting new people, trying new types of food, and exploring places I've never been. I try not to have preconceptions about anything as you never know who you will meet or what you will learn.

Some more information

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  Smoker

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  Driver's licence

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  Allergies
  No

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  Special dietary requirements
  No