Santiago Jaramillo

About Santiago

• Born in Cali, Colombia—his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was 10 years old in order to flee the violence from militia groups and drug cartels.
• Admits he often struggles with his identity: “I’m not Colombian enough to be Colombian and not American enough to be American. I’m a third culture kid, a mix of both, which gives me an advantage.”
• When he was 18, he had a choice to either stay at home, go to community college, and be around other Colombians, or he could go explore and see the “real America” away from his community.
• Left home and attended Indiana Wesleyan University where he started as a philosophy and music major, but quickly switched over to business when he realized his passion was not in academia.
• On a scuba diving trip to Australia, his skipper told him a story about his love of the ocean—this inspired him to start a journey of “finding his ocean”, that one thing he can’t live without.
• Has been business-minded from a very young age—he sold avocados and toy spinners as a child, started teaching after-school music classes in high school, and ran a storage company in college.
• He realized the driving force of his life was being creative and that an extension of that was starting businesses—“I began to see business as art, creating something bigger than myself."
• Inspired by the statistic that we spend half of our waking lives at work, he set out to create a company that would help employers and employees find more satisfaction and fulfillment at work.