The Harbour School College and Career Counseling Podcast
By Brennan Dignan
The Harbour School College and Career Counseling PodcastSep 24, 2020
It's a Zig-Zag Path, with Greg March
Greg March is the Business Development Manager for ImpactHK, an NGO that seeks to bring an awareness to the struggles of the homeless population in Hong Kong. Our conversation focused on Greg’s long journey to Impact HK and how it wasn't anything close to a straight line. And as I think is common, at least in terms of the people I have spoken to, after working for a number of years as a professional in the events management industry, Greg's inner voice encouraged him to do something that would be more personally meaningful while also making a positive difference in the world. In addition to his work with Impact HK, Greg has also written three children's books based on different Zen parables, which is how I was first introduced to him by reading these books to my son.
TEDI London Does Engineering Differently, with Matthew Wilks
On this week's episode, I am joined by Matthew Wilkes of TEDI London, a new engineering school that formed out of a partnership with University of New South Wales, Arizona State University, and Kings College London. TEDI aims to do things differently, deploying a Project Base learning model that is principally delivered through maker space engineering labs where students are learning by doing, that is, working on real world projects alongside an academic. They also intend to admit students differently, seeking to diversify the field of engineers so that individuals who are design engineers are representative of the people for whom they are designing.
TEDI London
Music by Holly Mak
The Seemingly Innocuous Elevator Conversation - Ines Kaempfer
This episode features Ines Kaempfer, the CEO of The Centre for Child Rights and Business. Our conversation focuses on navigating a career and how sometimes a random conversation in an elevator can change your life. Growing up in Switzerland and not being particularly driven toward any one professional goal, Ines mostly let her interests inform the direction of her life and it seems to have paid for her. Her bio is below.
Ines Kaempfer brings over 15 years of experience in supply chain sustainability where she has been deeply engaged in issues related to child rights and business in the manufacturing and agriculture industries in Asia. Since 2014, Ines has been serving as the Executive Director and since 2021, the CEO of The Centre for Child Rights and Business (which was known as CCR CSR up to 2020) in Asia, a social enterprise that helps businesses improve their direct and indirect impact on children, particularly in supply chains. In her role as CEO, Ines leads strategic design and implementation of overall operations and stakeholder engagement, working closely with major multi-national clients and partners around the world.
Revisiting Harvey Mudd
In the spring of 2020, I had a conversation with the Vice President of Admission and Financial Aid at Harvey Mudd. That conversation predates the launch of this podcast on Anchor, so I wanted to make that available now. I hope you enjoy.
Revisiting Scripps College
The following episode was released internally to the THS community during the winter of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. At the time, I had yet to make our podcast public. As we are now starting the college/university search and selection process at our school, I thought it would be good to revisit, and make public, some of these internal episodes that are more specific to this time of year.
Scripps College is located about one hour east of Los Angeles and is part of the Claremont Colleges Consortium. It is such a unique institution, and perhaps singular in some sense, in that it is an all-women's college that is part of a co-educational consortium, meaning, men have access to the Scripps coursework (but not all of it). How it differs from a school like Smith or Bryn Mawr is that it essentially shares a campus with the other consortium schools. For all intents and purposes, the Claremont Colleges collectively feel like a typical university campus, but remain independent and self-determined for all intents and purposes. One might suggest it's the best of both worlds, depending on your criteria. This podcast was the result of my campus tour and interview with my student guide.
Yat Siu - Divergent Thinking and Creative Capital
For the first episode of our second season, I interviewed Hong Kong entrepreneur, Yat Siu. As someone who was groomed to be a professional musician at a conservatory in Vienna, it's quite surprising to see where Yat is currently situated in his professional life considering that it's so tech heavy. More than that, hearing how synchronistic and atypical his path has been was a real affirmation for me in my work, in particular, trying to hammer home the reality of the changing/changed landscape of the 21st century labour market and the flow of following your interests. Although quite successful, Yat's success didn't come from an ambition to "make his mark", but rather a result of pursuing his genuine interests and saying yes to opportunities as they arose. You can read his full biography below.
A veteran technology entrepreneur/investor based in Hong Kong, Yat Siu is the co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, a global leader in blockchain and gaming with the mission to deliver digital property rights to the world's gamers and Internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies, and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open metaverse.
Yat began his career at Atari Germany in 1990. In 1995 he moved to Hong Kong to establish Hong Kong Cybercity/Freenation, the first free web page and email provider in Asia. In 1998 he set up Outblaze, an award-winning pioneer of multilingual white label web services. In 2009, he sold Outblaze’s messaging unit to IBM, and pivoted Outblaze to become an incubator of projects and companies to develop digital entertainment services and products. Yat is a director for TurnOut Ventures, a partnership between Outblaze and Turner Entertainment that brought to prominence the hugely popular emoticon character Tuzki.
In 2017 Yat set up the Dalton Learning Lab, an afterschool lab environment that supplements Hong Kong students with skills not emphasized by the local education system, including divergent thinking and design thinking. He is the founder of ThinkBlaze, the research arm of Outblaze investigating socially meaningful issues in technology. Since 2018, Yat has been an early advocate for the use of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the gaming industry, which will allow gamers to enjoy true ownership of their own game assets, data, and, consequently, time. With a clear vision of the potential of decentralized apps and assets, Yat quickly steered Animoca Brands, at the time an established game developer and publisher, to focus on blockchain technology and NFTs. Since 2018, Animoca Brands has launched a series of NFT-centric products and invested in over 100 blockchain-related companies, developing one of the largest blockchain portfolios in the world.
Yat has earned numerous accolades including Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum, Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the DHL/SCMP Awards, and recognition as one of the Cointelegraph top 100 notable people in blockchain in 2021. A classically trained musician, Yat is a member of the advisory board of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and a director of the Asian Youth Orchestra.
Talking Goucher College w/alumnus Tony To
Tony To is a Hong Kong native who attended Goucher College, a small liberal arts college in Baltimore, MD. We spoke about the advantages of attending a small school and how Goucher empowered him to pursue a graduate degree in economics at Georgetown which led to his current job at the World Bank. Tony also spoke to the importance of being able to apply thinking broadly outside of one's domain of specialty, as well as perspective taking in a labor market that is increasingly becoming more and more culturally diverse.
Ivy League and Highly Selective Admissions with Ally Ip
Ally Ip is the Director of Research for Quantum Prep, a college admissions consulting firm here in Hong Kong. Having attended MIT for her undergraduate degree and Harvard Graduate School for her masters, Ally has some keen insights on the admission practices of highly selective institutions. But more than that, Ally is a kindred spirit who is student focused, pulls no punches when speaking to the sheer madness involved in our profession, and employs an irreverent approach that most likely draws on her experience as a top gunner in the US military.
The Oracle at Oracle, Emilio Reyes Le Blanc
Emilio is a Principle Solution Engineer at Oracle who currently lives and works in San Francisco. What makes Emilio's story so interesting, and his perspective so valuable, is that he studied music and philosophy at the University of Toronto yet finds himself in the center of the tech world working for one of its biggest players. His own unique recipe seems to be a willingness to reimagine who he is in the world, actively seek out feedback, look for situations where opportunities are likely to emerge, and then a willingness to say yes in the face of those opportunities even when the outcomes are ambiguous or potentially failure prone. From saxophonist, to philosopher, to admissions officer, to a solutions oriented tech powerhouse, Emilio's story is just another example of how what you study in college will not hem you in for life.
Connecting the Dots with Pariya Rojtanongchai
Episode eight features Pariya Rojtanongchai, a Hong Kong born and raised Thai National, CIS and Cambridge graduate, former corporate lawyer, and soon to be educator. I am particularly grateful for this conversation. I think it's so important to honestly reflect on, and discuss, why it is we do what we do, share the resulting successes and failures, and fearlessly ride the high wire act of constructive and destructive criticism as we reformulate our path forward. Pariya's willingness to share in her outer and inner journey was a rare opportunity to sit down with someone who has all of the culturally anointed credentials, yet is willing to leave it all behind to pursue a life of purpose.
Facade Maintenance with Tony Litster
Tony Litster and I go way back to our days in kindergarten at Valley View Elementary in Boise, ID. From the outside, Tony's path toward success seemed preordained. He was imbued with natural leadership, high cognitive capacity, and was one of the most driven in our cohort that would stay together through high school graduation. However, internally Tony was a mess and it took a while for things to unravel to a point where he could finally connect with his authentic-self and create a life of purpose. As a highly successful CEO Coach, Tony has keen insights into what makes us flourish or flounder drawing on his own experience as well as those who have reached the pinnacle of success. For more information about his personal practice, you can visit his website here. On a side note, our conversation lasted for more than 1.5 hours and covered a lot of topics. In an attempt to keep this episode manageable, I edited it down to around 30 minutes, so if you notice a moment or two of inconsistency in the conversation, this is the reason.
Knowledge Is Easy with Alethea (Thea) Bleyberg
This episode I sit down with Thea Bleyberg, a local IB educator and University Counselor, to have a wide ranging conversation about university in the UK, the emergence of the liberal arts as a course of study, parents as obstacles and allies, and future skills. Having grown up on the campuses of international schools, where her parents were educators and administrators, Thea's world was shaped to value education, and more specifically, international education. After graduation from high school, she attended Cambridge and studied Social and Political Science at the undergraduate level and then Modern Society and Global Transformation at the graduate level. From there, her path took on a life of its own, ultimately leading her to Hong Kong. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and hope you do as well.
Being Human with Dean Lily Cho, York University
Our guest this episode is Lily Cho, English Professor and Dean of Global and Community Engagement at York University in Toronto. Professor Cho is a first generation, Chinese-Canadian who brings an incredibly valuable perspective to the conversation. We spoke about stumbling your way into a profession and how arbitrary that process can seem, the dignity of international students and the valuable voice they add to the conversation, future skills and the Canadian Governments commission she was part of, and how being human is your best asset.
Future Skills with Kate Munroe, KPMG China
Have you ever come across the phrase, change is inevitable - growth is optional? That could be a catchphrase for 2020 or the 20th century for that matter. Our guest this week thrives in all of this change, it’s literally her job. Kate Munroe is the Director of Change and Advisory for KPMG China and is a consultant to organizations who are looking to evolve in order to stay relevant in an unprecedented moment in human history. I spoke to Kate about her trajectory, what our students can do to stay relevant during all of this change, what future skills are, and the role that tertiary education might play in the acquisition of those skills.
Putting YOU at the Center of the College Application w/Ed Devine
This week we feature a conversation with Ed Devine, a long time admissions professional who always brings interesting and valuable perspectives to the table. Unfortunately, our conversation was cut short by a technology fail, but not without a lot of great insights from the treasure trove of Devine anecdotes. It is telling that the “sticky” stories, the ones that stay with an admissions professional for life, are usually those students believe aren’t worth telling. Yet when the experiential details of the mundane are told through an individual’s unique prism, it somehow becomes compelling in a way that can differentiate an applicant from their peers.
A Conversation with Dr. Jadis Blurton
This episode features THS Head of School, Dr. Jadis Blurton. Dr. Blurton is not only head of school, but also a developmental psychologist with over 30 years of experience in educational psychology and child development. We took this opportunity to speak about and explore different strategies for parents and students to use when in throes of the confusing teen years, especially as the stress and pressures of this tumultuous period gets amplified by the post graduation planning process.
Project Wayfinder and THS
This episode features a conversation with Casey Petit, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Project Wayfinder, an organization the seeks to increase adolescent engagement in education through purpose and belonging. To me, purpose is the key missing ingredient for most young people in their post graduation planning process. Without purpose, students can't answer the question "why" in a way that is satisfactory to themselves, and without an adequate why, the external voices take over trying desperately to make them care. The irony is that the more the external voices exert themselves, the less engaged and more stressed out the student becomes. If you are curious as to why purpose matters, begin here.
Last June, I participated in the Project Wayfinder Summer Institute to become a facilitator of the Purpose Curriculum and will be rolling it out this year with our grade 10 students in the hopes that it will lay the necessary purpose groundwork for an engaged post graduation planning process in years 11 and 12. This conversation took place before that institute and my belief in the mission of Project Wayfinder has only deepened since.