I was born in Taiwan and moved to Canada in my early teenage years. After my undergraduate degree in 2008, I started a career at Baker McKenzie as a consultant and professional support lawyer. Over the last 13 years, I have worked with multinational corporations, entrepreneurs, changemakers in the Asia Pacific region and around the world, helping organisations and startups meet their compliance requirements and invest with impact. My most recent position has been the founder of BeneInno Benefit Solutions, LLC, a strategic management consulting firm.
In December 2022, I completed the prestigious Oxford Executive MBA programme. Attending Oxford will undoubtedly be a pinnacle event in my life and I am glad that I started a new adventure here. I can only guess how it will impact this upcoming chapter of my life.
When I mapped relevant stakeholders in the Global Opportunities and Threats module, I somehow realised that many stakeholders in our communities, including young people and visible minorities, are politically disengaged. They have poor opinions of politicians and parliamentary behaviour, partially because they conceptualise politics in a narrow way they perceive the subject as irrelevant to their lives at the current stage, contributing to low levels of political interest and resulting in a lower voter turnout. However, the health of any democracy depends on engaged and informed citizens. Having successfully completed the programme, I have a dream of promoting stakeholder participation in Canadian politics through social and digital engagement, collaborative and deliberative community projects, youth council, and diversity council.
But systems change at Oxford does not stop here. Modules like Inclusive Business in South Africa, New Approaches to Strategy Work, Systempreneurship, and Diversity, Inclusion and Finance also inspired me to transform the city where I live into Canada’s capital of social entrepreneurship and innovation. While the city’s future looks bright, it faces persistent social, economic, and branding challenges. For-profits businesses in the private sector and charities cannot solve all of these problems, nor can the governments themselves. Social entrepreneurs are the research and development engine for society who can be key allies for governments in bringing about structural changes. They help reduce, if not eliminate, systemic problems in our communities, improving access to healthcare, education, justice, business opportunity and a cleaner, greener future.
But isn’t it hard to scale a great idea? This is not necessarily so if we can legislate in Parliament or raise matters during Question Period in the hope of influencing a Minister to alter or initiate policies more in keeping with the views of constituents. Many more would be incentivised to become systems social entrepreneurs and changemakers if we leverage the power of open information and introduce supportive legislations in Parliament.
Thinking of making a difference? Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and let me tell you more.
Do you dare to dream? I do.
