Jamie Wong is a human-centric entrepreneur and communications leader using technology and the arts to help unlock our full potential.
Appeared on major TV networks including CBS, BBC, CNN & Bloomberg and others
Authored essays published by Simon & Schuster, Chronicle Books, Entrepreneur Magazine, USA Today, Fast Company, and more
Named Forbes Up and Comer and Business Insider’s top founders to watch and Huffington Posts top 50 non-technical founders
Entrepreneur
As the founder and CEO of the venture-backed startup Vayable, Jamie created a global marketplace in more than 1000 cities in 100 countries, transforming how people experience travel, which she sold in 2017. She founded Benefit Studios, a social impact studio to fund and build technology and content to address the world’s most urgent crisis. Together with CNN's Van Jones and Google, Jamie created Project Empathy, a series of virtual reality narratives that allow the public to experience what it's like to be a victim of the U.S. prison system.
With the Director and Resident Teacher of The International Center for Buddhist Studies, Jamie built Paramita, an online social education platform to connect Spanish speakers with meditation courses, exponentially growing the community of active participants and providing a sustainable stream of income for the Spanish nonprofit. Jamie is also the co-founder of Cafe Femmes, a community of creatives and entrepreneurs living in Paris.
Investor
Jamie was a Venture Partner at Entrepreneur First in Paris, France, where she advised founders throughout the early-stage lifecycle, from ideation, customer and product development, traction through raising their first rounds of funding. She was also an advisor for the Incubateur HEC Paris and later Jamie joined Antler, a global venture capital fund dedicated to helping rising global talent become world-class entrepreneurs, as a partner in France, where she invests in and mentors early-stage founders on team building, ideation, customer development, building an MVP, user experience, marketing, fundraising and go-to-market. Jamie serves as a bridge between Europe and Silicon Valley, bringing her network and expertise in storytelling and user experience to the European market.
Jamie has spent more than a decade mentoring, and the past six years investing, in early-stage founders in the United States and Europe. After more than a decade in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and investor, Jamie relocated to Paris, France.
Jamie was was the co-founding and Managing Partner Narrative Fund , a venture capital fund in San Francisco, California where she invested in high impact, early-stage technology startups with a primary focus on climate, education and health. Jamie’s investments include land-sharing marketplace to help more people get outside Hipcamp, global identity and visa platform, Sherpa; clean energy platform dcbel, circular economy rentals as a service platform Arrive; cellular agriculture for lab-based meats platform Future Fields; micro-mobility subscription service and hardware platform, Beyond; digital marketing talent platform, Acadium; and wellbeing and health apparel Lambs.
Communications and Media
Jamie was a producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (helping the show win two Emmys and a Peabody Award during her tenure), Michael Moore (helping win the Palm d'Or at Cannes for Fahrenheit 9/11) and Ark Media.
Jamie also authored essays published in the Chronicle Books anthology, The End of the Golden Gate, entitled “Pattern Matching” and in the Simon & Schuster anthology, Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo by Rebecca Walker, entitled “Calculating my Net Worth” and has written columns on business, entrepreneurship and politics for Fast Company, Entrepreneur and Sundance Channel. As a writer at the international award-winning Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, Jamie wrote product and marketing copy for top global brands and products, including Adobe, Boku, Comcast, Nike Women, JobVite and Juniper Networks.
Jamie has a Master’s Degree in journalism from Columbia University where she wrote and reported a long-form investigative master’s project entitled “Suffering in Silence,” on post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans in the Iraq and Vietnam wars and the impact social and political conditions have on recovery. As an undergraduate Jamie received honors for her thesis on the impact of political exile on the consciousness of twentieth-century Spanish intellectuals and artists (“creators”) who lost their platforms, homes and identities in the Spanish Civil War.
Jamie has also appeared as an expert and thought leader on major news networks such as CBS, BBC, CNN and Bloomberg.
Jamie is currently writing a narrative nonfiction book about the fiction of belonging and gives university lectures and professional workshops on high-impact storytelling.
Social Impact
Jamie’s nonprofit work spans decades. She actively contributes her time and expertise to nonprofits dedicated to education and human rights. She collaborates with the Fundación Sakya and to help bring meditation and the Buddhist art of living into the lives of Spanish speakers throughout the globe. She partnered with Van Jones’s nonprofit, Dream.org, on criminal justice and climate equity initiatives. She served as a paralegal at the civil rights nonprofit NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund where she provided daily guidance to incarcerated individuals seeking legal assistance and worked on cases in criminal justice, economic justice, desegregating education and political participation.
Prior to joining LDF she trained at Action Contre Le Faim in Paris where she served a strategic advisor to the president and she also interned in the United States Congress in Washington DC. for Representative George Miller. She has volunteered in Honduras, Israel and the West Bank for with American Jewish World Service, as a tutor for underprivileged children in Connecticut, as an ESL teacher in New York City Chinatown. She has visited more than 45 counties as a volunteer, entrepreneur and slow traveler and she studied history, politics, art and psychology in Madrid and Barcelona.
Distinctions
Jamie has been named a Forbes "Up and Comer," Business Insider’s "Top Founders to Watch" and Huffington Post's Top 50 Nontechnical Founders and is an alumni of the world-renowned startup accelerator, Y Combinator and her work as an entrepreneur and business leader has been recognized and covered by top global media outlets. She received the “Excellence Award” at Digital Hollywood for Project Empathy, two Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and was a part of the small production team with Michael Moore that won the Palme D’Or for Fahrenheit 9/11.
Jamie completed her graduate studies at Columbia University where the Dean of the Journalism School awarded her the Chancellor Scholarship for academic achievement and leadership in broadcast journalism. Jamie also received the Butterfield Prize from the president of Wesleyan University for her quality of character, leadership, intellectual commitment and concern for the community. Wesleyan also awarded her with the Dana Grant to conduct an internship that bridges public and private enterprises. At Wesleyan Jamie was also awarded an honors in history and the Department Chair appointed her to the Faculty Hiring Committee and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Undergraduate History Journal.
[Off the Record]
Jamie was born and raised in Berkeley, California. She is a member of several writing groups, including Paris Writers Group and Writers Workshop Los Angeles where she began writing narrative nonfiction. Jamie sang in Ebony Singers, Wesleyan University’s gospel choir, played recreational soccer in the Bay Area, New York and Los Angeles, is an avid runner, adventurer and loves the outdoors. She is a proud auntie to her two amazing young nieces and currently resides in Paris, France.