Firstly some context. I grew up in the city of Adelaide, South Australia in the late 1980s as a first-generation Australian immigrant. My parents did not know many people when they migrated to Australia and ended up finding community and belonging at our local church with other Asian families.
While I grew up in a predominantly white ethnic city, our church community was where I could comfortably be myself alongside people who looked like me and related to my multi-ethnic upbringing.
I did not realize it at the time, but growing up with my fellow Australian-Asian brothers and sisters at our local church provided a safe environment for me to just be a normal kid, away from the world I knew where I was regularly reminded of my differences.
I struggled to find my cultural identity for much of my childhood to young adulthood, not feeling Asian or Australian enough to fit into either culture entirely. Any time I felt like I was finding belonging in one of these cultures, some side comment or reaction would quickly remind me that I did not.
In the midst of this struggle as a late teen, my youth leader at church took a group of us for a hike up the Adelaide foothills. As we reached the lookout point he handed each of us a few sheets of paper with questions to individually reflect on and answer.
I vividly remember finding a quiet spot by a picnic bench under the shade of a tree looking across the wide flat plateau of Adelaide city. As I started to answer the questionnaire, there were two questions that took me aback, causing me to think much more than others — 1) “where will you be in 7 years time?”; 2) “where will you be in 14 years time?”
It is interesting how a seemingly isolated childhood challenge — like finding one’s cultural identity — can impact other parts of one’s life. On the surface, I was a loud, extroverted, try-hard kid, but on the inside, I was struggling with insecurities and feelings of incompetence. I allowed arbitrary worldly perceptions to define my self-worth, like grades, achievements, and ethnicity.
Despite this, I always had a drive to be something more, seeded in part by wanting to be ‘half as good’ as my older brother and sister who seemed to exceed in everything they did — in academics, sports, and music. The typical pressures of growing up in an Asian immigrant household also meant that nothing less than excellence felt rewarded. However, this drive always left me unsatisfied, disappointed, and discouraged when I couldn’t get 100% in that test; beat that person; win that award.
So to be asked my dreams and aspirations that day on the Adelaide foothills created conflicts between my external and internal self. On the one hand, I had no hesitations in dreaming big on the surface, but it was almost as if my inner self allowed me to dream as a sadistic joke expecting I would fall short trying.
However despite these conflicts, I dreamed, and here were my answers to those questions.
In 2014, 7 years after I wrote this, I sat the GMAT (which I admittedly sat three times..) and a year later was admitted to my dream school, Oxford University in the UK to study my postgraduate Masters of Business Administration. When I graduated, I worked with the nonprofit (or NGO) Echoing Green in New York funding and supporting early-stage climate entrepreneurs. Shortly thereafter, I got the opportunity to speak at the UN as part of my work.
In 2021, 14 years after I wrote this, I am well into year one of my climate entrepreneurship journey in the US, and despite the COVID crisis, we ended up profitable at the end of 2020, working with half a dozen clients and partners deploying experts to work on climate technology, finance and service projects. Although “success” is subjective, in the eye of the beholder, I’m proud that OnePointFive has taken its first steps to democratize access to multidisciplinary experts to solving climate business challenges.
Although I’m not the same person I once was 14 years ago, I hope to have half the guts to dream today as I did back in my teens. Perhaps it is time to start setting aside time to dream about the next 7 and 14 years and see where life takes me.