Contributor of the Month April 2008
Nick Yeo
Career Background:
Nick was born in Vancouver, Canada, of Singaporean parents and during his childhood moved back to the Asia Pacific area, living in Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. There he acquired a fascination with different cultures and the links between them in a globalising world. In 2000 he returned to Canada and studied history and philosophy at Montreal’s McGill University. After securing his B.A., he worked for an education consulting company that provided services to international students coming to Canada for their higher education. Then he worked as an event planner for a Toronto film festival whose aims where to promote diversity behind and in front of the camera. Finally, in 2007 he joined TakingITGlobal, where he is the development and communications manager and is helping grow this online social network for social good for young people interested in making a difference.
Motivation:
Nick has always been clear that he wanted to do a job with an international dimension. He is very much committed to the idea that we are all interconnected in some way or other. He believes in risk-taking. Here part of his inspiration is his father who persuaded his mother to visit Canada to look for work more or less on a whim – as it was, his father found a job with a bank (which then stopped hiring for several years) and demonstrated that imaginative thinking can pay off. For Nick, that frame of mind is very important. There is no need to over-analysis – rather you should take the first steps even if you do not know how things are going to turn out. Another key value he gets from his parents is openness – he is grateful that they were happy for him to pursue his interests in the humanities as a student (as opposed to the more traditional routes for Asian students of maths or finance).
Frustrations:
Nick would never want to be ageist, but entrenched people who do not want to change do frustrate him and (surprise, surprise) these people do tend to be older. He hopes his belief and enthusiasm can open people up to the possibility of change, but he recognises that ultimately people have to accept his message when they are comfortable with it. He thinks it is important that young people get a chance to put forward their views and have an impact. Organisations need to be continually open to reassessing what they are doing and they need make it easy for the voices of change to enliven that debate.
Favourite sites:
Nick is a keen user of the usual social networking sites, but he also likes Digg - a site where users rate stories and that determines where they are presented on the site. He feels Digg gives him a great insight into what is currently hot on the internet. He enjoys Stumbleupon - a site that generates random websites based on your interests and provides a fascinating way of surfing the web; and buzztracker.org – a mash-up that offers a map of the world showing which cities are most in the news on that particular day.
Pet Passions:
Nick loves reading a wide range of different thinkers and philosophers from Hegel and Heidegger to the French post-modernist Jean Baudrillard and writers such as Malcolm Gladwell, Ken Wilber and Clive Thompson. Having benefited from 14 years of classical piano training, he loves music of all kinds and still plays the piano as well as the guitar. He enjoys cinema – favourite film – The Godfather – and loves the risks that independent filmmakers take. For him, seeing someone’s first film is always an exciting experience.
Pet Hates:
As a big walker and use of public transport, Nick is driven crazy by the lack of innovation in public transport systems. He also dislikes people who are not honest with themselves and are blind to new ideas and practices; even worse than that is intolerance – judging people adversely on the basis of their race, sexual orientation or whatever.
Magic Wand:
If Nick had a magic want, he would get rid of money. Our current world is too geared towards encouraging greed – people need to be happier with what they have and not always be pushed and pushing for more.