Sojourn Studio's Journey

By Ashlee Heiligman, GCA Director

In September 2019, Sojourn Studio celebrated it’s 2nd year together, as a self-sustaining social enterprise.

With all of the progress made over the last few years, I wanted to share how Sojourn Studio first began.

I’ll never forget October 15th, 2015. I was hosting a table at a women’s conference in Austin, TX. After setting up, my dad called to tell me that my grandfather had just passed away. I was pregnant and it was my birthday. Needless to say, I could tell this day would be quite the challenge to endure.

By the end of the day I had shared GCA’s vision and met a lot of wonderfully, ambitious women. Yet by the response I received, or the lack thereof, I was not convinced that this event was my best decision. Once I could finally begin shutting things down, a bright-eyed, beautiful young lady walked straight up to my booth. She introduced herself as Jessica Price and said she had wanted to come by my table all week. Our short conversation made me realize that I was actually exactly where I was supposed to be.

Jessica worked for a prominent women’s magazine and her heart was so moved by GCA’s anti-trafficking work. After 15 minutes she gave me the number for her friend Quinn Smith, an Austin artist who creates and sells gorgeous ceramic jewelry. All of the profits of her business, Remnant Studios, are donated to fight human trafficking. Jessica said, “You have to meet her.”

Soon Quinn and I met up in Austin and the vision sparked for Sojourn Studio.

For years I had known that GCA needed to launch some sort of social enterprise. I knew that the young women and moms we were working with needed dignified work. Reliable income was necessary in order to make safe choices for themselves and their children. Many times during the previous ten years I had sought out established fair trade businesses asking them to bring sustainable employment opportunities to Mae Sot. Most said that social enterprise would not work with an impoverished migrant population and that was that. As a social worker, launching a business was not my forte but we couldn’t give up.

At the same time I met Quinn, a woman named Sara Harvel had just applied to join GCA in Thailand. She was living as a teacher in China at the time but had a strong desire to serve more vulnerable populations. As a bonus, Sara was highly skilled in pottery. Finally all of the pieces were lining up. It soon became clear that making porcelain jewelry was the business opportunity we were searching for.

Quinn soon flew to Thailand and trained our first few artisans in everything she knew. She freely shared all of her technical expertise and artistic style. It was not too long before our artisans had mastered the art of jewelry making and we almost had everything we needed to launch Sojourn Studio. The one main gap we had was a market of people who were interested in fine porcelain jewelry. Enter Noonday Collection and the rest is history. Their phenomenal leadership and team of brand ambassadors have taken Sojourn Studio to the next level in production capacity and sales.

Today Sojourn Studio is led by Gold Rain and we employ 26 teens and moms with dignified work. Follow Sojourn Studio on Facebook and Instagram to stay up to date with our studio and designs.