I’m Ariel, the founder of WorkAnywhereGo.

I grew up in a not-so-famous place in China, and when I was a kid, I always loved traveling and seeing more of the world.

Later, I moved to Canada for school on my own, then worked in Toronto as a product manager and project manager in the banking industry for 7 years. On the surface, I have a decent corporate job, but somehow, I couldn’t feel home in the city.

Despite being an immigrant, I do not have much of an accent, therefore many people would think I was born in the country, like one of them…In order to fit in, I tried to hide my immigrant identity for a long time, because I didn’t want to be viewed as not enough compared to my peers, also because many people have negative association when it comes to my motherland.

I feel grateful for the great career opportunities I was given, but that’s not what life is all about. I’m a pretty social person who often finds it easy to makes friends, but I felt a different dynamic in this city. I felt it’s difficult to break down people’s walls.

When the excitement of dressing up and working in downtown office buildings wears off, I had to face myself in the mundane corporate 9-5 job being stuck with 5 months of winter and 3 weeks of vacation a year.

To be fair, my pre-pandemic life in the city is actually not that bad, but 2 years of the pandemic life made me reflect hard on myself, I asked myself do I see myself living the 9-5 life in the city for the rest of my life, and the answer is no. So I told myself to start taking actions towards building a life that would fuel me with purpose, fulfillment, and community for the long run. 

I decided to connect with my passion and became a digital nomad. I quit my corporate job and started my world tour of traveling and living in the world’s largest digital nomad communities including Lisbon, Barcelona, Madeira, Las Palmas, Bansko, Split, Bali, Chiang Mai, Da Nang, Taipei, Medellin, Buenos Aires, and Playa del Carmen. It was so fulfilling to meet people who are not afraid to challenge the traditional way of living, and being open-minded and international-oriented about the differences in the world. I don’t have to pretend to be somewhere else in order to fit in a mold, people celebrate my diversity, and value the fact that I’ve worked at companies in Asia, North America, and Europe, and have lived in 11 countries, and I get to be my true self.

After I quit my job, I went through a journey of exploring different options as a recovering corporate professional, I’ve tried starting a business and faced the obstacles, tried co-starting a business but experienced a lack of funding, I’ve done the fully remote job search, and evaluated the pros and cons of being a freelancer…I’ve acquired a great skill set to run projects independently, but also made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of lessons learned.

I now work remotely at a Venture Capital firm, and continue to run this platform, while constantly exploring new projects on the side.

I’m still on a journey, I have tried a lot and happy to share what I learned via the platform of WorkAnywhereGo and inspire more people go pursue a life they truly love.