From IDEC to Super Bowls to Silicon Valley: How Jason Trimiew Built a Career Creating Economic Opportunity
IDEC alumnus Jason Trimiew ‘07 has built a career across international development, philanthropy, major events, and the corporate world. Through it all, one idea has remained constant: creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and using whatever platform he has to make a broader impact.
Invest in the relationships that you're building while you're in the IDEC program."
From Kenya to IDEC
Before Jason Trimiew arrived at the University of San Francisco, he had already spent two years living and working in Kenya during the early growth of microfinance. That experience introduced him to entrepreneurs building businesses with limited resources and sparked questions he wanted to understand more deeply.
“I could tell really good stories about the people that I met, and the microfinance programs that I evaluated,” Trimiew recalls, “but I couldn't really tell you exactly why it all worked from an empirical standpoint.” That curiosity brought him to USF’s International and Development Economics (IDEC) program. What stood out to Trimiew was that development was not simply an addition to an economics degree, it was at the center of it. He wanted to develop quantitative tools to better understand what he had already witnessed on the ground.
One of his most formative IDEC experiences took him back into the field. Working with Professor Bruce Wydick and fellow students in Guatemala, Trimiew helped collect geographic data for research examining whether proximity among microfinance participants influenced trust and loan repayment. The experience taught him to closely look at data before drawing conclusions, an approach that later shaped how he evaluated impact and supported entrepreneurs.
Taking Development Economics Beyond Development
Trimiew initially thought that IDEC would lead him back overseas. Instead his career took him from the Super Bowl to Meta where he found different ways to support entrepreneurs.
At the Super Bowl that meant creating opportunities for Bay Area non-profits and local businesses. At Meta, it meant, helping small and diverse businesses get a fair chance to compete for contracts. “The calling of my entire career has been to work alongside entrepreneurs—connecting them to the capital, contracts, and community to support their growth,” he says.
Impact Beyond Good Intentions
Today, through Trimiew Strategy Group, he provides strategy, operations, and partnerships consulting to organizations creating economic opportunity. For him, good intentions alone are not enough, one of the first questions he asks is whether an organization is looking beyond its own work to address the larger system behind a problem.
He also emphasized collaboration. Trimiew believes some of the most meaningful solutions emerge when people and organizations work together. That approach reflects a lesson that has remained with him since IDEC: understand the system, examine the evidence, and think beyond immediate intervention.
Staying Open to Where Impact Can Happen
Trimiew's career didn't follow the path he imagined when he entered IDEC, and that is exactly his advice to students: “Don't think there's only one way that you can have the impact you want.”
His path has taken him from international development to major global events, Meta, and entrepreneurship, while economics has remained a foundation for how he understands people, systems and opportunities.
But the advice he values most is not about economics or technology, it is about people. “Really invest in the relationships that you're building while you're in the IDEC program,” he says. Those relationships, he believes “will matter long after graduation.”
