Biography
Kiyoshi Mana was born and raised in Visalia, California. In the early 2000's he moved to San Francisco for college and graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Japanese in 2006. While in San Francisco, Kiyoshi worked at a world-class golf course, became a trained sushi chef, and did marketing for a tech company in Silicon Valley. In 2009 he moved to Japan to teach English to children. In 2011, he began working for the International Academic Forum (IAFOR) running conferences, meeting people from around the world, and creating numerous relationships.
In 2018, Kiyoshi moved back to California with his wife and in 2019 he started working for GPI US, a company that develops and runs short-term study abroad programs for Japanese high school students. In April of 2020, Kiyoshi lost his job due to the effects of COVID-19 and decided it was a good time to pursue a graduate degree. He was accepted into the Instructional Design program at Virginia Tech. He is in his last semester and will graduate in May 2022. He plans to return to California with his family upon graduating from the program.
