Kristin Hamaker

Kristin folded into the Beyond the States team in the spring of 2021. While researching college options for her own teenage daughter, and considering a relocation to Europe with her family, she naturally fell under the spell of Jenn’s Beyond the States philosophy. As an admittedly counter-culture parent to a college-bound kid, and armed with a creative writing degree and an entrepreneurial past herself, she naturally joined the BTS team as a writer and advocate and general right-hand. Currently, Kristin lives in wintry St. Paul, MN with her partner and daughter in a cozy condo on one of the state’s 10,000+ lakes. Beyond Kristin’s creative writing degree, she earned a culinary degree in Europe in 2005, which was a genuinely life-altering experience. She has owned two flourishing food-based businesses. Within the food industry she was a dishwasher, server, organic farmer, sous chef, head chef, manager, restaurant consultant, recipe and menu developer, chef-in-residence, general and project manager, personal chef, culinary instructor, food writer, and employer. She feels her long and dynamic experience in the food profession, especially as a business owner, has allowed her to take the skills she earned to a myriad of other work environments, such as BTS. Happily, she is now still cooking weeknight suppers for her family, but spends her days guiding and educating families like hers on the journey to an education abroad.