Jazz Cole

President | Founder

I am a multilingual American born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky. Outside of English being my first language, I fell in love with the French language and culture at a young age. I taught myself words and phrases using Google Translate on my parents’ computer until I was old enough to start taking classes when they were first offered in middle school. It was a language easy to learn from pronunciation to accents and by the time I got to college, I was speaking at an advanced level. When I moved to LA, I saw so much more diversity than back home which encouraged me to explore other languages on my own through resources online. By the time I finished college, I could confidently say I could speak 4 languages. I ended up learning 4 more languages after that out of my own curiosity.

While in college, I wrote a senior thesis about issues in contemporary society and my topic of choice was the lack of foreign language education in the United States. I wanted to research further as to why our schools weren’t as advanced in teaching languages as other countries were.

After finishing college, I saved that paper and later ended up using it as a foundation to start writing a book about language learning and how significant it is in a globalized world, but I felt that wouldn’t make a big enough impact. My parents had a non-profit organization for arts, education, and diversity back home and I got the idea that creating an organization that would give people opportunities to not only learn another language but mobilize people to use language abilities to help other people.

I have a big heart for people as a feminist, environmentalist, humanitarian, and being of Christian faith. I’ve had experiences abroad where my language abilities have given me the advantage. Even in America, I’ve encountered people where English isn’t their first language and be able to connect with them in a different way than from an English-speaking lens. My personal mission is to share those experiences with others. There is power in communication because I believe it breaks barriers, allows you to step into new worlds, and be a part of conversations we wouldn’t be invited into otherwise.

Photos avecAro Hā