Janese Carstens

Global soul

With an eye for details and a lifelong learner, Janese Carstens is dedicated to serving the Billings community as our Executive Producer and Operations Manager for TEDxBillings. Janese combines her love of creativity, theater, and education with organizing spreadsheets and schedules. We’re not sure how they exist within the same person but we’re grateful they do as she keeps the processes on task, on budget, and on time. Even though her extended family has lived in Billings for most of her life and she grew up as a farmer’s daughter in North Dakota, she has had the opportunity to live in multiple US coastal cities, Asia and Australia. And just like a boomerang, she keeps being drawn back to Billings. She has worked in adult education within multiple local industries – healthcare, higher education, nonprofits, and international communications. The opportunities in Billings are as vast as the big sky that surrounds it and bringing the world to Billings through a TEDx event interweaves her life experience thus far together.

I am passionate about intercultural and cross-cultural communication. I believe that we are all foreign to one another which means that we can all learn from each other as well as be curious, not judgmental, about one another. Every person is my teacher and my student. I am passionate about being as self-aware as possible while recognizing that it's the pursuit of understanding that is the journey and not a destination. I am passionate about sharing ideas and having discussions around those ideas. I'm not always in search of agreement but I am always in search of understanding. There's a reason a person believes something to be true, whether they can articulate it or not. I'm passionate about learning languages and having authentic cultural experiences abroad. I believe that there is too much reliance on movies to explain different places and people in the world; and not enough desire for people to go out and experience the world for themselves.

Adult Education and Training, Business Operations, Intercultural communication, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Travel planning