Born and raised in Taiwan, but have had the good fortune to live and travel around various continents beginning when I was 15 years old. While in the early years, all the moving around made it more difficult to have a clearly defined identity such as "Taiwanese" "Asian American"...etc., over the years, my travel has made me feel more connected to people of the world in general and I began to have less need to be defined by any singular adjective.
I spent 6+ years in the private sector doing general management/marketing in consumer products. I loved doing that because in order to do a good job marketing, one must develop empathy to the consumer group that a particular brand is trying to serve. I loved participating in focus groups and doing other various consumer empathy exercises. In a way, being a marketer allowed me to put myself in different people's perspectives and "try out" different lives sort of speak. I got to acquire perspectives from teachers, baby boomers, Southerners, dog breeders, gourmet chef...etc. I also enjoyed using strategic thinking and planning skills to help drive efficiency and performance for projects and businesses that I am a part of.
Just before business school, I began doing more travel in the developing world. The vibrancy, entrepreneurial spirits, and sense of community in the developing world really excited me. There are just so much opportunities everywhere that we can pursue to create better living conditions, better economic opportunities, and more equality for people in the developing world. Those possibilities also excited me.
I later learned at Wharton about the social enterprise sector which leverages private sector approach in social impact work. This is a fascinating field to me, in the sense that it could potentially allow me to combine my business experience in the private sector with my passion/desire to do work that will make a difference in people's lives. I had the good fortune to take a fellowship in 2011 with d.light, a social enterprise that focuses on distributing affordable solar lantern to the bottom of the pyramid. During that time, I worked in d.light's Africa region office in Nairobi, helping them build the d.light brand and identify viable distribution and marketing communication strategy for the African market. The fellowship made me realized how much I enjoy purpose driven work, and I have since decided to stay on with d.light as a full time employee.
Being in the world of international development & social enterprise gave me the opportunity to have experience that I never imagine having in my wildest dreams. It also taught me a lot about who I am, who I want to be, and how I would like to contribute to this world. This blog is intended to be a place to capture the random day to day thoughts I have on leadership, life, purpose, relationships, and the world! I began when I started my journey in Africa and will continue to document the many amazing experience I've had since in the hope that some of you might find it entertaining or thought-provoking. Most of the writing would be a stream of consciousness type thing (and I have terrible grammar), but I hope people can enjoy reading them nonetheless :)
I am currently located in China can be reached via the following methods:
Mailing Address: Flat 5003, 5/F City Square East Block, Jiabin Road, Luohu, Shenzhen, China
Skype: hiarlin
