Jaynna Sims grew up in the small lumber town of Diboll in East Texas. She lived there until she moved away to attend the university. In 2001, she graduated from the University of Texas in Austin where she received degrees in Psychology and Computer Science.

She spent 9 years in the corporate world working with software at IBM during which she lived and worked for two and a half years in London and Milan, getting to travel to many European countries. In 2009, she started a one year sabbatical where she travelled around the world, visiting mostly developing and third-world countries and studying Permaculture in Ghana. These travels led Jaynna to know that she must work with those disadvantaged to have more triumphs in life in order to build a stronger community.

In 2009 and 2010, she helped to manage the gardening class program Citizen Gardener that taught individuals the basics of gardening to encourage the growth of home gardening. She currently volunteers with Third Coast Workers for Cooperation to design a program to connect those starting worker cooperatives with service providers who can assist them in their business-starting journey. She also volunteers with Multicultural Refugee Coalition where she is designing and starting a youth program to empower the refugee youths to create a happy, healthy, successful life in the US.

For her, "MRC offers to refugees, who are unfamiliar with our culture and systems, support to create a life here that they find fulfilling for them and their family."