Available for engagements worldwide

Hi, I'm Jessie.
I connect worlds
across three continents.

Polyglot. Liaison. Networker. Born in Africa (Ghana), sharpened in Asia (China), blossomed in Europe (France). Seven languages on the tip of my tongue, three continents in my bones, and an endless drive to introduce the right people to each other. Someone you can hire to bridge a deal, broker a partnership, or steer a project across cultures. Driven by curiosity, joie de vivre, and the certainty that life is far too rich to be lived in just one lane.

7
Languages spoken
3
Continents lived
35+
Countries worked across
8+
Years in international roles
J
Jessie Asinah · Polyglot · Liaison · Networker
Available for engagements worldwide
Paris 🇫🇷 · via Ghana 🇬🇭 & China 🇨🇳
Who I am

A polyglot, a liaison, and an incurable connector.

I'm Jessie Asinah — an Aries born in Accra on a sunny April day in 1989, full of fire and curiosity from the very first hour. Before I had a job title I had a language obsession, an instinct for people, and a hunger to live in as many worlds as I could. Those three things have shaped every chapter since, and they're still the engine underneath everything I do.

Languages are how I see the world. I speak English, Twi and Kasem (mother tongues), French (professional), Mandarin (conversational), Korean (intermediate) and Spanish (beginner). Japanese, Arabic and Russian are next. Each language I've learned handed me a culture, and each culture taught me a new way of listening to people. That's not a CV bullet — it's a worldview. Twi and Kasem made me a daughter of Ghana. Mandarin made me patient. French made me precise. Korean is teaching me humility. Spanish is just for joy.

What I do, no matter the contract on the table, is connect people who should know each other. I broker conversations. I read rooms. I make complicated cross-border things feel simple. Whether that's been bridging Chinese suppliers and African buyers in a Linyi factory, or aligning a 25-person banking deployment team strung between Europe and India, the core skill is always the same: I am the bridge.

I'm also driven. Embarrassingly so. I cook anything I'm curious about — jollof one night, hand-pulled noodles the next, a slow French stew the day after. I host dinners that go on too long because nobody wants to leave. I learn languages for fun. I throw myself at new cities, new cuisines, new people, new ideas — because the world keeps offering, and it would feel rude not to say yes.

I've spent the last eight years inside the highest levels of French investment banking — BNP Paribas, BCEF, Société Générale CIB — leading project implementations, business analysis and treasury programmes. Real depth in cash management, liquidity risk, SWIFT and ISO 20022. I'm proud of the work and I'll do more of it. But that's something I can do exceptionally well, not who I am.

Who I am is someone you can hire to bridge worlds — for a deal, a partnership, a cross-cultural project, a hard conversation that needs to land in three languages. I'm available for full-time international roles, consulting and advisory engagements, and the right kind of partnerships. Bring me a bridge that needs building. Driven by joie de vivre, and the conviction that life is meant to be tasted, not endured.

The road so far

A life lived across three continents.

Growing up in Ghana, learning Mandarin in China, building a career in France — each place taught me something different about people, business, and how to listen.

Ghana
Accra · Where it all began
1989 — 2014

Roots in Accra

Born in Accra. Earned a diploma in Accounting, then a master's with a major in Economics and a minor in Marketing. Numbers, markets, and the people behind them — the foundation for everything that followed.

China
Linyi · Two formative years
2014 — 2016

Linyi University & trade

Studied Mandarin at Linyi University, taught English to children, and facilitated trade between Chinese suppliers and African buyers. Learned to negotiate across cultures — and that I love being the bridge.

France
Montpellier → Paris
2016 — Now

Masters, career & a life I love

Second master's at Montpellier Business School. Eight years inside the top French CIBs — finance, technology and people, all in one role. But France has become more than work: it's where I built a life full of cuisines, languages, long dinners and friendships across half the world.

Engage me for

Hire me to bridge worlds, languages and people.

Four flavours of the same superpower. Pick the one that fits — or describe something new, and we'll shape an engagement together. Full-time roles, contract, advisory, or one-off introductions: I'm open.

01

Connecting the right people

My natural superpower. If you need an introduction across Africa, Asia or Europe — a supplier, a partner, a hiring contact, a culturally-fluent adviser — chances are I either know them, or I know the person who does.

  • Introductions across my network in Ghana, China, France & beyond
  • Targeted partner & supplier sourcing
  • Hiring referrals for international roles
  • Warm intros that open doors a cold email never will
02

Brokering cross-border deals

From the moment I helped Chinese factories reach African buyers, this has been my favourite work. I sit between two parties who don't quite speak each other's language — literal or cultural — and I get them to a deal.

  • Africa ↔ China ↔ Europe trade facilitation & sourcing
  • Cross-cultural negotiation & supplier vetting
  • Liaison & account management for international clients
  • Translating intent — between cultures, not just words
03

Delivering complex projects

Eight years of project and programme delivery inside top-tier French investment banks have given me the operating muscle to take something tangled and ship it. Banking, treasury, anything regulated and global.

  • Project & programme management — Agile / Scrum / Waterfall
  • Business analysis: requirements, specs, UAT, change management
  • Banking depth: cash management, ALM, SWIFT & ISO 20022
  • Cross-border coordination (Europe, Africa, Asia)
04

Building & coaching teams

I've trained teams in Lisbon to take over critical processes, run workshops in three languages on the same afternoon, and aligned 25-person deployment squads strung across Europe and India. Multicultural teams are where I'm most alive.

  • Stakeholder management across regions, levels & languages
  • Workshop facilitation — Miro, Whimsical, Loom
  • Training design, onboarding & cultural mediation
  • Communication in English, French, Mandarin, Twi, Kasem (+ Korean & Spanish)

Need a connector, a liaison, or someone to make the introduction?

Let's talk
Bridges I've built

Three moments that show what I actually do.

I could list job titles. I'd rather tell you about three afternoons that explain who I am, what I love, and why people keep asking me to do this kind of work.

A Chinese factory met a Lagos importer in my living room.

I was 25, learning Mandarin, teaching English by day. A small Linyi manufacturer made beautiful LED lighting and needed African buyers. An importer in Lagos wanted quality LEDs at a fair price. I introduced them, sat through the negotiation, and translated the terms — literal and cultural.

→ Three years later, they were still doing business.

25 people, two continents, one heartbeat.

BNP Paribas' Core Banking platform was rolling out worldwide. The deployment team was split between Europe and India — different KPIs, different time zones, different ways of saying "we're behind". As PMO I built one shared planning rhythm, a weekly cadence everyone trusted, and a quiet rule: every decision gets translated, not just typed.

→ The rollout shipped on time, with users who liked it.

BP, Nestlé and DHL — all onto modern treasury rails.

Three of the most demanding corporate clients in Europe needed their cash management modernised on SWIFTNet, EBICS and Connexis. I led the implementations and ran UAT end-to-end. The work was technical. The art was patience — explaining why we test the same XML four times to a CFO who wants it shipped yesterday.

→ Smooth migrations. Happy clients. No 2 a.m. phone calls.

Career

Eight years in the engine room of French CIBs.

From application support, to business analysis, to programme management on multi-country core-banking rollouts — each step deeper into how global banks actually run.

Feb 2023 — Mar 2025
Project Implementation Manager
BNP Paribas — BCEF · Paris

Strategic advisory and expert delivery on cutting-edge treasury management solutions — SWIFTNet, EBICS and Connexis — tailored to the needs of VIP corporate clients.

Portfolio: British Petroleum · Nestlé · DHL
  • Led API integration and MT-to-MX migration programmes
  • Owned UAT and penny-testing campaigns end-to-end
  • Supervised inbound / outbound SWIFT flows and ISO 20022 / MX compliance
  • Tested XML files on MyStandard for client onboarding
  • Co-developed new applications with pilot entities, plus training and technical documentation
SWIFT / ISO 20022 Treasury API integration UAT
Jul 2022 — Feb 2023
Project Manager (PMO) — ATLAS 2 Deployment
BNP Paribas CIB · Montreuil

PMO inside a 25-person deployment team rolling out the ATLAS 2 Core Banking platform to BNP's international entities. Coordinated deployment teams across Europe and technical teams in India.

  • Defined KPIs, ran risk analysis, built country-by-country planning
  • Owned committees and workshops, project comms (weekly / monthly status)
  • Drove workflow revisions, Atlas jurisdiction harmonisation, Sailpoint
  • Rebuilt the Global Deployment SharePoint and ran the SWORD project-tracking tool worldwide
Core Banking PMO Multi-country rollout SWORD
Feb 2021 — Jun 2022
Technical & Functional Support — Liquidity Risk
Société Générale CIB — LIQOR · La Défense

Support and run lead for LIQOR, the group's liquidity-calculation application, inside the RESG / CFT / TSR team managing systems for group control and steering functions.

  • Daily and monthly production supervision; incident investigation and correction
  • Organised monthly release cycles and go / no-go calls
  • Wrote specifications, SQL queries for data investigations, and training materials
  • Managed the SSM crisis exercise — regulatory reporting to the ECB
Liquidity risk / ALM SQL ITIL · Agile Cyberark
Jun 2018 — Sep 2020
Cash Management Consultant — Connexis Cash
BNP Paribas CIB · Paris

Functional support and configuration for Connexis Cash across EMEA and Africa — 35 countries. Front-line ownership of client incidents, blocked payments and reporting.

  • Contract setup & safeguarding via SARA, AMI, WELCOME and CRT
  • Resolved blocked SWIFT, SEPA, payroll and standard payments
  • Managed MT940 / 942 reporting and MT101 payment flows
  • Investigated FIRCOSOFT-flagged payments
  • Designed & delivered training to relocate registration activities to the Lisbon team
  • Migrated and supported clients onto the new user interface
Cash management EMEA · Africa (35 countries) SWIFT / SEPA Client support
Jul 2017 — Dec 2017
Commercial Assistant — China Market Development
CABBIE · Issy-les-Moulineaux

Identified products, services and new commercial opportunities on Chinese markets; built client relationships through cold outreach, negotiation and on-site meetings.

Cross-border trade Mandarin in practice Negotiation
2014 — 2016
English Educator & Trade Facilitator
Linyi, China

Taught English to children while connecting Chinese manufacturers with African importers — the original "translator of intentions" role, before I knew project management was the formal name for it.

Cross-border trade Education Mandarin
Skills & tools

The kit I bring to every project.

Eight years of banking projects, plus the marketing and digital tooling I use when helping new businesses get off the ground.

Project & delivery

  • Methodologies: Agile, Scrum, ITIL
  • Practice: MOA, business analysis, UAT
  • Discipline: KPIs, risk, planning, reporting
  • Change: training & user onboarding

Tools & platforms

  • Collab: Jira, Confluence, Notion, Trello, Slack, Teams, Google Workspace
  • Facilitation: Miro, Whimsical, Loom
  • CRM / marketing: HubSpot, System.io, Kajabi, newsletters
  • Enterprise / ERP: SAP, ITSM, ALM, SharePoint
  • Project tracking: Clarity, SWORD

Banking & technical

  • Banking apps: Connexis Cash, LIQOR, SARA, AMI, WELCOME, CRT, FIRCOSOFT, Cyberark
  • Standards: SWIFT, ISO 20022 / MX, SEPA, EBICS
  • Domains: Cash management, liquidity risk (ALM), treasury, payments
  • Scripting & data: SQL, Bash, JSON, HTML, basics of IDL · Matlab · C
  • Systems: Linux, Windows, macOS
Hello · English

Languages aren't just words. They're keys.

Each language I speak unlocks a different way of thinking — and a different community I can serve. The world is too interesting to experience in only one tongue.

English Native
C2 · Fluent
Twi Mother tongue
Native
French Français
C1 · Professional
Kasem Heritage
Native
Mandarin 普通话
B2 · Conversational
Korean 한국어
B1 · Intermediate
Spanish Español
A2 · Beginner
Cross-cultural fluency
Lifetime · Native
Next on the shelf — adding three more by 2028:
🇯🇵 Japanese 🇸🇦 Arabic 🇷🇺 Russian
Beyond work

The person behind the project plan.

Great collaborators are whole people. Here's a quick window into what fuels me outside the office.

Cooking as a love language

I cook the way I work — with curiosity. Jollof one night, hand-pulled noodles the next, a French stew the day after. Feeding people is the fastest way to make them feel seen.

Forever a student

New language, new framework, new cuisine, new city — I'm in. Learning isn't a phase I'm trying to finish. It's the texture of a life worth living.

Built for connection

I light up around people. Hosting, listening, introducing strangers who should know each other. If a room has interesting humans in it, I want to be in that room.

I see the world through orange sunglasses — confident, warm, certain that the next interesting chapter is already on its way. — Jessie Asinah
Let's connect

Need a bridge, a partner, or simply the right introduction?

Drop me a line, WhatsApp me, or find me on LinkedIn. Whether it's a full-time international role, an advisory engagement, a deal you need help brokering, or a person you've been trying to find for months — let's talk.

Let's talk