Traveling for Work

Welcome to a very special edition of Traveling for Work, I'm your host, Thais Miller. Today, March 8th is International Women’s Day and I want to take this opportunity to say how grateful I am to have the special friends and family in my life. I am a better woman for having them in my life to laugh, cry and be there for me through all the ups and downs. I consider myself so many things: a mother, wife, teacher, harpist, podcaster, voice actor, entrepreneur, friend and sister— these are the many hats that I juggle on a daily basis, and I’m sure that many other women juggle on this day. So, my hats off to this special day. Let’s all continue to move forward. And on this day, I have a confession to make: my first episode of this podcast, with my friend Heather Kaminsky of Icy Fresh Seafood, was an assignment for an introduction to a podcasting class that I attended. The original assignment (back in October of 2023) was to interview someone for 5 minutes for our podcasts and then publish it on Buzzsprout. I ended up going above and beyond as Heather and I discussed her exciting adventures juggling her own hats as a wife, mother and entrepreneur and our original interview was over 30 minutes long. I ended up attempting to cut it down to as close to 5 minutes as I could without compromising too much of her stories…So now on this day, as I think about all of these wonderful women in my life, I want to celebrate Heather Kaminsky by releasing a director’s cut of our original interview complete with bloopers at the end to honor her hard work during the shrimping season working on the boats for her company Icy Fresh Seafood as well as our friendship. So, now I present to you: the original director’s cut of Heather Kaminsky, Chief Executive officer of, as she puts it, “everything” for Icy Fresh Seafood.

In this episode we meet a couple that call themselves: digital nomads. Digital Nomads are people whose work is fully virtual and therefore they can live anywhere in the world. They both work online as life purpose coaches, helping clients while traveling the world through their online business: austinandmonica.com. Their branding message is, “helping you work online and travel the world”. As proud digital nomads they have traveled to 10 countries, and counting. I was able to catch them online through Zoom before their next trip to Peru. Please help me in welcoming Austin and Monica Mangelson.

In this episode, I had the privilege of meeting Ms. Laura Jane Layton through a Facebook group. She was kind enough to reach out and we came together on Zoom to talk, without questions, about her experiences in traveling. This episode is a first for me: an on-the-fly conversation where both you and I learn about my special guest: Laura Jane Layton. She calls herself a “recovering workaholic” and we cover everything from Seattle, her experience with International travel, being a Mom on the road, to taxi drivers! Now retired, she currently has her own podcast: The Laura Jane Layton show. Please help me welcome- Laura Jane Layton.

In this episode we meet Dr. David Marker. He is a senior statistician with over 40 years of experience in project management, quality control and improvement, survey research, sampling, survey evaluation, data analysis, imputation, modeling, and small area statistics. His Ph.D. dissertation topic was on small area estimation. In addition, he has worked on studies in the fields of health, housing, energy, social services, transportation, and the environment, as well as in the commercial sector. He has worked alongside the USDA, ED, EIA, and the EPA on quality control and improvement. Dr. Marker is an internationally recognized consultant in total quality management, and has been invited to conduct training sessions for the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and South African Governments on improving the quality of their data collection activities. He has also appeared as an expert witness before Federal, state, and local governments and Federal and State courts. He currently has his own consulting firm where he has worked with clients including Georgia Tech Research Institute and the United Nations Inter-secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys where he reviewed a wide range of reports and held discussions with leaders of statistical organizations around the world. He gathered information on how NSOs addressed these data collections during COVID. He then developed a report that made use of quality frameworks to identify the many impacts and described how best to minimize and address them. Finally, he frequently presents to high school AP Statistic students and encourages the students to travel the world as he continues to do for his work: traveling to 55 places around the world including to Sweden 13 times, 5 times to Australia and Mexico; 7 times to the United Kingdom, Finland and Norway; 2 times to South Africa among many other places.

Rebecca Fry was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. She taught Special Education for 13 years in Louisiana, Alabama and Washington. While in Washington, she started 2 Special Olympics teams as well as began contracting with the state department and Washington Education Association (WEA) to develop various teacher training sessions and started training teachers across the state of Washington. This led her to shift her focus from teaching to stepping more into a leadership role as she attained her 2nd master’s degree in Administration and Leadership. With her combined experience as both a teacher, coaching and coordinator she decided to start her own coaching and training business in October 2019. It was at this time she became a board member for the Special Hope Network in Zambia http://specialhopenetwork.org and began to travel back and forth to Zambia. After 8 times traveling for work, this past September, she has decided to move to Zambia indefinitely for her work.

Christian has worked extensively as a Brand Marketing Executive for over 20 years. He has worked for some of the best, most innovative brands in the world including Google, Nike, YouTube, Adidas, Denver International Airport, Wrangler, Habitat for Humanity and many more. In addition, for 6 years he worked at the famed video game developer: Riot Games as a Global Director of Brand and Products where he established international partnerships for Riot Games portfolio including: League of Legends, Valorant and the Emmy winning Arcane - working with international partners Louis Vuitton, Spinmaster, Ducati, Fenty, Pepsi and Nike. He is currently the Global Head of Licensing and Consumer products at the global technology platform Roblox. Roblox allows users and brands to build immersive 3d experiences and to visit millions of experiences created by other users. Christian leads his team to build memorable and innovative partnerships and products that empower people to celebrate and commemorate their experiences in the Roblox platform. Most recently he established the first global curriculum to teach fashion designers how to design digital collections - working with the Parsons school of design in New York. Showcasing the bridge between digital and the real world, and is working with Meta on innovative applications of VR and generative AI. He has traveled all over North America, Europe and Asia. Join me as Christian talks about his experiences traveling and gives great advice on marketing, branding, and traveling for work.

For the holiday season I want to take the time to celebrate and honor family who travel for work. My guest in this episodes is my brother-in-law: Erik Miller. He drives on a daily basis all over Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington D.C., and West Virginia, installing and measuring granite and marble countertops in bathrooms, fireplaces, outdoor grills and kitchens since he was 19 years old. He has worked for several granite and marble countertop companies and for the last nine years he has been a Measure Technician for Classic Granite and Marble located in Jessup, Maryland. I met him back in 2005 when I traveled to meet him and his family to celebrate the holiday season with my now husband, Jeremy. Over the years, he and his family have always been warm, friendly, loving, kind, and welcoming with open arms to me. I have watched him grow confident with who he is, marry the love of his life, and become a father to a beautiful 2 year old girl. I am proud to call him family. Join us as we talk about his travels around the Eastern coast of the U.S. as well as talk about our favorite memories of Hanukkah and Christmas.

Meet Dr. Jeffrey Ried. For over 21 years he has worked as a consultant and advisor in agricultural development, health and food security for Indonesia, Brazil, Kenya, India, Mexico, Ethiopia, and Togo. His recent work has put him in the forefront of the agricultural transformation in the African countries of Ethiopia and Togo. He is currently the Program Coordinator of the World Food Programme's Agri-Food Transformation Agency Support Center, which supports the Agricultural Transformation Agency in Togo that officially launched January of 2023 where he is working to replicate the successful business model from the Ethiopian ATA. I am your host, Thais Miller, and I am fortunate and honored to be able to talk to him about his travels as he joins me via Zoom from Togo. In addition he and his wife Stephanie also run the Ethiopian Education Fund which you can donate to this holiday season by going to: ethiopianeducationfund.org.

Traveling for work is a podcast where we hear fun, interesting and adventurous stories from everyday people who need to travel for their work. In this episode we meet John Yeager: he has been a reporter for ABC in Spokane, WA, CBS and Q13 Fox News in Seattle, a documentarian, a media relations director for World Vision and is currently the Senior Media Content Strategist for Bloodworks NW, the leading supplier of blood in the Pacific Northwest. He shares his travel stories and incredible interviews from his past as well as his present in search of the next great story. For more information on Bloodworks NW, go to www.bloodworksnw.org to donate your blood, time, or monetary donation. You can also hear stories through John's podcast: Bloodworks 101. If you like my podcast, follow, write a review or go to my webpage: www.travelingforwork.buzzsprout.com to listen to all episodes of my series. Do you travel for work? I would love to hear from you: email me directly at travelingforworkpodcast@gmail.com.

Traveling for work is a podcast hosted by Thais Miller, where we hear fun, interesting and adventurous stories from everyday people who need to travel for their work. In this episode we speak with Dr. Jeremy Miller: a Senior Scientist for the Allen Institute for Brain Science as he talks about some of his journeys to Korea, Spain, and Germany for work. For more information about the Allen Institute including job opening and educational resources visit their website at alleninstitute.org. If you are interested in accessing the Allen Institute for Brain Science's data and use their open access tools, visit brain-map.org.

Traveling for work, a podcast where we hear fun, interesting, and adventurous stories from everyday people who need to travel for their work. In this episode, we will meet Heather Kaminsky: a mother and entrepreneur. 5 years ago, she and her parents took their lifetime love of shrimping and started their own company called "Icy Fresh Seafood". For three of those years, they have frequently attended fish markets selling their shrimp directly to consumers and wholesale customers. Listen in as Heather explains her adventures and daily life when she and her father fly up from Seattle to Wrangell, Alaska in January during the heart of the shrimping season to acquire the shrimp they sell to their clients.