Where Are They Now: Catherine de Medici Jaffee ’08

JaffeePlease give a brief background on yourself and your career.
At some point in everyone’s life, we get this idea: what if I combined all of the things that I love most and turn them into a career? But there is no job in the world like that, right? No matter. I will make one!

This idea crossed my mind, over and over while I was working 100-hour weeks at a very cool but challenging social entrepreneurship organization called Ashoka. At that time in 2011, I was “experienced” enough to know what it is that I love to do. And I was also young enough to believe that this knowledge was all I needed to know. Following graduation from Wellesley in 2008, I had lived in Turkey for two years as a Fulbright Scholar before moving to work in D.C., Amman, and Cairo with Ashoka. I knew that I loved the mountains (I was born in the Colorado Rockies), I knew that I wanted to work with the poorest of the poor, building employment opportunities for women (this is why I attended Wellesley), and I knew that I loved agriculture and food (I grew up on farms in the semi-rural American west). While researching during my various grants, I had fallen in love with Northeastern Turkey, a region rich with food traditions, in need of more village-based inclusive economic opportunities, and with mountain landscapes that sung to my soul.

So I did the whole get-rid-of-all-my-belongings-and-quit-my-job thing and moved to Eastern Turkey to begin researching how I would build a business there. To get by, I volunteered at the Kuzeydoga bird banding station, which took great care of me, and I documented the traditions of local and nomadic beekeepers for over a year. Throughout the process, I surveyed hundreds of people, especially village women, on what kind of company could have true impact on the region. The end product was Balyolu: The Honey Road, a honey tasting trekking company led and inspired by local women who had never before received a formal education. The company would provide all necessary supplies and equipment and training on loan to local women, and the women would supply all of the labor and time, and the resulting profits/products would be split 50/50. We would also bring in international guests to sample the honey, trek old Silk Road trade routes, and connect with local villagers and small-scale entrepreneurs throughout the region. I ran the company for four full trekking seasons, while also receiving a National Geographic Young Explorer’s award for documenting ancient beekeeping traditions in Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. To get my company up and running, I ran a Kickstarter campaign that was one of the highest grossing food campaigns in 2012. We raised over $41,000 in 30 days.

A few months ago, I closed down operations because of some security, stability, and liability questions in the region. We love to celebrate success, and there was a lot of success in what we did. But how to treat failure is much more tricky. The hardest part about starting and running the company – car accidents, theft, and assault included – has been returning back to the US and starting over. I am still figuring out how do that, and finding ways to tell the full story on my website: http://www.catherinejaffee.com.

How has your career changed since you originally envisioned it at Wellesley? What other careers did you consider as a student?
There was one goal in my mind upon graduating from Wellesley, and it had little to do with what particular job I wanted. The thing that was most important to me then was to have a cause. I wanted to know what I was fighting for. What my career would be – journalist, politician, activist, environmentalist, flight attendant – the specifics didn’t matter so much. That would just be my means of getting to my cause. And I am happy to say, while there are many jobs that I didn’t list above that I have had – dog walker, vet assistant, director of communications for a finance firm, associate at a think tank, camp counselor, rice picker, trail builder, etc. – my cause has always been the same. It is my life’s mission to make society more inclusive. Whether it’s including more women in the workforce in a way that isn’t a compromise, or making the wild more accessible to people who never thought they would venture outside of their town, I think the biggest opportunity of our lives is finding ways to change our social systems to include one another. I am planning on my career taking many shapes, but the one constant will be that I will work to build a world that is more considerate of living things. That might be vague, idealistic, and a little self-righteous, but it’s my North Star. And I have a theory that if you work for a cause rather than a particular career, you will have a lot more flexibility to stay true to yourself.

How has Wellesley contributed to your career?
Funny enough, people ask me this question all the time. Actually, they don’t. But I am constantly preaching about how Wellesley changed my life, so I like to think that something in my conversations prompts this and I am not just spewing Wellesley love to anyone who will listen. I transferred from NYU my second year, rowed crew for most of my time at Wellesley, and was abroad as a Luce scholar, and living in a Burmese monastery in Bihar India for the rest of my time. So in total, I wasn’t at Wellesley long, and when I was there, my most charming self was lecturing about feminist political theory on a bus to the Charles River at 5 am and then sleeping in inopportune bursts for the rest of the day. But still Wellesley left its mark, and here’s how:

1. It taught me about my cause. It taught me that feminism is not about one way that women should live in this world, but about building systems that include a vast diversity of voices.

2. It ingrained in me that doing something that matters to you is far more important than just doing something for the sake of doing it. Sounds completely obvious, but just wait until you are unemployed, and staying true to this becomes a real challenge.

3. I learned how to find and feel comfortable with groups of women all around the world: women in mountain towns playing hockey, women in Eastern Turkey wearing spandex and reading coffee grinds in dark smokey underground rooms, women in Northeastern India pinching together dumplings, women in Japan scrubbing salt on their legs in an onsen. Women, particularly in the western world, are intimidated by other women and as a result, we are constantly holding each other back. While I didn’t know that many women while at Wellesley, I learned how to become friends with all kinds. And I have sought them out since graduating, and found my favorite people through our alumnae network. Wellesley women get it, we help a sister out. That seems small, but it is a big deal.

What is a typical work day or work week like for you?
A typical work day used to involve 200+ bee stings, negotiations with cheese bosses, long commutes on potholed roads, turning down my 20th glass of tea, cleaning and labeling honey, arguing with the police, etc. Now I am hiding in winter, trying to write a book, organizing 250,000+ photos, and climbing as many mountains as the weather will let me.

What piece of advice would you offer students looking to get into your area of interest and expertise?
Just show up. Everything I learned that has any worth I learned in the field. You will take big risks, and you will fail. To some degree, I did both. But every time I reflect on it all (which is basically every single day), I can’t imagine very many other ways I would have gone about high adrenaline honey hunting in the South Caucasus.

What do you wish you had known as a student?
I wish I had known how important concrete tangible skills are. You can learn skills at any time. In fact, I am fairly certain that school is about learning how to learn. Still knowing how things work and knowing what you are capable of widens the dimension of possibilities when it comes to doing what you want to do. For example, I wish I had worked for the Wellesley Radio station and learned how to operate radio equipment sooner; that would have been great for my fieldwork with Nat Geo. I would have used my excuse as a student to build more things and get Wellesley to fund my “educational process.”

If you could come back and take one class at Wellesley what would it be?
I wish I had taken a design and computer science course, because everything that I have done since college has involved design and computers, and I still don’t know nearly as much I would like. With my head start I would have gone and done something very useful like invent the bitcoin.

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