Ever wonder what it’s like to work on work-related insights? For our very first interview of 2020, we catch up with Chua Pei Ying, a data scientist who’s also the APAC lead for LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team. She shares her career journey and gives her take on what’s required for aspiring data scientists to succeed in this exciting field.
Read on!
Becoming a data scientist actually came about by a series of unplanned but fortunate events. After six years as a neuroscience researcher with the DSO National Laboratories, I decided that it was time for a change. I interviewed at Grab for the role of a behavioural insights researcher. To my surprise, the final job offered was for a data science role. As it was still with the same team and sounded extremely interesting, I decided to take the plunge and go for it.
After several great years at Grab, I decided it was time for another adventure, this time at LinkedIn. I still handle data analysis but it’s on a more macroeconomic level. My team’s role is to harness the power of LinkedIn’s data to generate insights about the labour market and emerging trends on the Future of Work.
Looking back, I’d say that I’ve been extremely blessed so far. I am extremely thankful that I’ve encountered many supportive mentors and bosses in this exciting data science journey.
This tends to differ from week to week, but there are three core components.
The first is communication and stakeholder engagement. As a member of a horizontal team spanning several departments and geographies, I find it critical for the team to communicate regularly to maintain alignment and leverage synergies across the team.
The second part is conducting research and analysis. This includes a wide range of activities such as developing and testing new methodologies, generating insights from the data, and creating effective visuals to deliver the message effectively.
Last but not least is knowledge sharing. This takes many forms, such as getting involved in brown bag sessions, reviewing code, and maintaining proper documentation of the research methodologies.
While technical ability is definitely necessary for becoming a data scientist, it is the soft skills that provide a differentiating factor.
Today, a lot of emphasis is placed on the technical training of data scientists, but the other aspects are really important too. The results that we generate can be very complex sometimes, and it is crucial to know how to communicate these findings to different audiences. Also, being able to listen to people’s concerns and understand the root causes, not just solving for symptoms of the problem, is key.
Every change is a challenge, and the first time is always the scariest. Looking back, I think that my first career change was definitely terrifying, especially after working six years in the same company. I think the challenge was overcoming my own fears and trying something else. What helped me was, for a lack of a better word, being a bit stubborn. I took a leap of faith with my career choices, and I’m immensely thankful that it’s been a great journey so far.
I think it’s really about putting yourself out there. Join data meetups and interest groups. Participate in hackathons. These are opportunities to start presenting in front of an audience as well as meet people who share common interests. As you attend more of such events, I think the opportunities for public speaking will come.
Singapore is a very exciting place for data scientists as there’s a lot of data available on data.gov.sg. Just find something that interests you and do it! For example, one of my first presentations was at a data science meetup and it was about using URA and HDB datasets to analyse property prices. Sharing your findings on the different social media platforms is also important if you want to get more visibility and feedback on the work. If you do that often enough, the opportunities will come.
I have been working on a book called “One Minute Theorems”, which has just been published. This book covers theorems ranging across computer science, mathematics, philosophy, and psychology. The aim here is to strip away the jargon and distill the complex concepts into short, bite-size pieces that people can understand and relate to.
The inspiration for the book actually came from my wedding. My husband referenced the Gale-Shapley algorithm, which is used to solve for stable matching of couples. The basic idea is that the most stable matching occurs when all couples have no better alternatives. Many of our guests had no idea what my husband was saying!
With this book, hopefully, complicated concepts will become more accessible to a wider audience. I think sometimes the difficulty is in taking the first step to understand something, especially when that thing seems really complex. Hopefully, the book will help people realise that these theorems aren’t so scary after all!
2019 has been an AWESOME year for She Loves Data, and we’re looking forward to 2020! We hope it’s the same for you. Check out the year-end messages from some of our chapters below!
We have had an exciting quarter in the land down under! From partnerships to workshops to meetups, it has been a truly fun journey. We’d just like to loop you in our latest Aussie updates as well!
We partnered with Work180 which is a key part of our strategy in Australia. There is immense pride in collaborating with organisations which are actively making a difference in the community that matters so much to our organisation. Work180 aims at eliminating discrimination in employment and advertises vetted companies which are inclusive by all means. We also partnered with Contino recently. Contino is an Enterprise DevOps and Cloud Transformation Consultancy, and we clicked with Contino due to their sheer belief and determination in Diversity and Inclusion. We joined hands with them to deliver our very successful panel discussion ‘Diversity & Inclusion from Different Perspectives’.
We are also happy to let you know that we have partnered with Thoughtworks and General Assembly as well! These partnerships are crucial to our ever growing community in Australia and we can’t wait to do more with these brilliant organisations.
To quickly update you on the workshops we had in Sydney and Melbourne, in total we conducted 17 events and trained almost 1.000 women! We started new workshops such as Intro to Python, Tableau Storytelling and last but not least Meetups that you love so much!
We can’ t wait next year to introduce more and spend great time with you again!
Warm Wishes, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year from the Hong Kong team!
Thank you Jakarta for a wonderful 2019 with us. Your welcome and enthusiasm to learn brings motivation for us to improve and deliver better workshops and events for you. We love feedback and for you to reach out and connect with us.
Next year we are working on delivering a more diverse workshop and exciting meetups. We don’t have events in December but the volunteers are still hard at work to plan and get 2020 ready with various collaborations. See you soon! Have a wonderful holiday with your friends and family, may you greet the new year with enthusiasm.
Happy Holidays from She Loves Data California. We hope our Data Tribe has a beautiful season across the world.
We’re excited to have launched in the US in 2019!! Our first workshop in Los Angeles had over a 100 wait list attendees and our second workshop had over a 100 women from all walks of life in one room empowering themselves and each other. and we’re only just starting.. We have a huge 2020 ahead of us! We will partner with HerCode Global, Iot World Conference 2020 and Women in Big Data SoCal in Q1 to bring Introduction to Data workshops, participate in conferences and host panel talks.
We’re building our local community of power women and very excited to see what 2020 has in store for us all!
See you in 2020!
Happy Holidays to our Singapore Tribe!
What an exciting and busy year we have had! Workshops, meet-ups a Hackathon and of course 2 jam-packed days at Big Data World.
It has been an absolute pleasure seeing familiar faces return to our events to continue their learning, as well as welcoming new members into the tribe at each event.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our partners and sponsors but also our team of volunteers without which we would not be able to bring you all these events.
Now we look forward to a few weeks of rest and relaxation with our families before we launch ourselves into 2020 with an exciting programme of returning favourites and new content. Stay tuned to our website and Social channels to find out the latest and greatest we have planned for Singapore.
We look forward to seeing you all again soon!
Thinking of making a career switch, but feeling stuck? Afraid that having a history of job hopping might scare off hiring managers? I got to know Rui Qing, a lady whose petite frame belies her sass and candor. She’s a co-organiser behind one of the biggest data engineering community groups in Singapore, BigDataX. She has also been through the ups and downs of making a jump from a traditional career.
As always, hindsight is 20/20. We observe some common themes emerge on what works and what doesn’t. Here are three ways you can help yourself when switching careers:
Depending on the prevailing attitudes towards work in your community, you may face questions, disappointment, criticism, or a combination of all three and more from those around you. Realise that sometimes people may be projecting their own fears of inaction onto you.
It’s important to be clear on what matters to you – why you want this career switch. Perhaps you desire a certain lifestyle or you want to be part of solving a certain problem. Be honest with yourself. Identifying your ‘why’ comes before figuring out the ‘how’.
Rui Qing would draw up a list of two to three life priorities for the year, which she discusses with her husband. When taking up a job role, she ensure there’s alignment with those priorities, often reflecting on her ‘why’ and what has changed to affect the ‘why’. This helps her stay firm even when going against the grain. Rui Qing still listens to what others have to say, but doesn’t feel compelled to justify her actions. It’s a massive load off and people can sense her confidence.
Perhaps you realised you’re particularly drawn to telling stories or improving urban greenery, but you don’t have a clear job idea yet. That’s OK. It can be difficult to see beyond our own work history and that of our friends and family, to come up with ideas. However, many fresh, exciting possibilities exist when we expose ourselves to new ideas and environments.
One simple way is to explore how ideas and practices from one field can inform the other. Sometimes, it’s the jobs found at the intersection of culture and tech (or other seemingly disparate fields) that may be a fit for you. Think community manager for a tech firm or data analyst for an art gallery.
Rui Qing’s interest in heritage and background in information systems found her working in the IT department of Singapore’s National Heritage Board in one of her earlier jobs. She stepped up to work with curators while her colleagues steered away. She was also able to capitalise on more than a decade’s worth of experience volunteering with museums to inform the support given by her IT department to museums. This enriched her work experience and even led to a leading role in a project to digitally archive exhibitions. Later on, she found roles in industries as varied as fresh produce and advertising. By marketing for BigDataX, Rui Qing has been carving out a niche in bridging tech and non-tech functions, and she’s presently looking to apply her skills in new fields.
This is not about finding people already doing your target job and trying to replicate their success. (However, if you do have a clear job idea and you have access to people in working in such a job, that’s incredible! Learn what you can from them!)
Instead, this is about recognising that your journey as a career switcher will probably come with roadblocks, twists, and turns. You’ll need support. In the words of famed entrepreneur Seth Godin, build a “tribe”. To begin, all you need are a shared interest and a way to communicate.
Rui Qing describes her “tribe” as a group of people who quietly inspire her and make her want to be a better person. They are her role model in values and ethics. The community is diverse, open, non-judgemental, and honest:
Being clear on the ‘why’, seeing beyond the art-science dichotomy, and finding a community have helped Rui Qing in her career search. What have you found helpful in your own journey? Let us know!
Want to know what it’s like to be working on Google Assistant? Googler Hien Mai shares with us the biggest challenge she has faced and how she overcame it
I started my first full-time job at Starhub when they had a new lab called SmartHub. Now the lab has evolved to focus on cybersecurity, amongst other things. Later I went to Grab and that was when my career moved very quickly. I related very much with Grab’s social mission back then. My thought was, let’s fight for survival. Today, Grab has become very big.
Then I went to Sea (formerly Garena) to help its co-founder when the company was planning for an IPO. Everything went well and I finished what I was hired for. I was planning to go back to Grab, but a friend asked if I want to give Google a try, and I said, okay.
Google has been an interesting journey. The work-life balance is much better at Google. At start-ups like Garena or Grab in its early days, the hours were different. I got married and I’m now a working mum. When I became a working mom, my focus in life changed.
Reading and implementing code is the most exciting part of my work. Google Assistant is a complex product. Any feature change you see has been planned for and executed over a long period of time. Everything has to be done to Google’s standard.
When you become more senior, communication becomes a bigger part of your role. Communication needs to be tailored for the recipients. It’s important to get everybody on the same page and understand what’s going on.
A lot of time is also spent on mentoring teammates, self-learning, and catching up with what’s happening in the industry.
Coding in C++ at work. But it’s fun, which is probably why I chose to do it. Compared to the typical Google engineers, I am much slower at learning to code in C++. But when I gained an understanding of the architectural design, I felt like my eyes were opened. I was encouraged by what I was learning.
In the beginning, I procrastinated a lot. I thought, wow, how was I going to read this body of C++? But I started to learn little by little everyday and make consistent progress. I was impressed with the existing progress and it didn’t feel that scary to just add my “one stroke” to the code. Over time, coding becomes more natural.
What I found useful was reading, not just to understand enough to complete the task I have, but to understand the whole ecosystem around what the code changes required. If what I was reading was too difficult, I would read something that was easier. Reading gives me inspiration. It helped me understand why things were designed or implemented in a certain way. If I cannot do something, I would just keep trying to find out more information. As long as you can make a little progress, you would feel encouraged and you can keep on going.
I run BigDataX. It’s a meetup group that supports building literacy in data engineering. We are hoping to become a nonprofit and do more for the community. Google has been very supportive of me doing that, and I’m very grateful because BigDataX has nothing to do with my job.
My bosses understand that I have this thing on the side and they don’t stop me from doing it. In the past, some of my bosses in previous companies would ask: “Why are you doing this? You’re not paid for it, right?” That’s a gentle way of saying, you should do more work. Somebody might just say something discouraging like “Oh, in this amount of time, you could also do something else for me.” But I never had that message from my bosses at Google.
I can see that the company is very supportive of me doing what I believe in for the community. There’s a culture at Google of growing together.
I was working with so many senior people on data projects and they were not from Southeast Asia. I felt that there was a keen lack of ability in data engineering here.
We have a lot of senior managers who talk about their vision for product development, but if they can’t implement it, does it matter how good their vision is? A lot of people would also come to me and asked, how do I get started? Then I realised that we need to have a community that focuses on the implementation aspect.
Data engineering is often overshadowed by data science. But you cannot hire data scientists without data engineers. Your data model will just stay as a prototype and it will never scale in your product. Your model will not get shipped to users. The best data scientists we have seen are research engineers. They can do research and implement things.
We say ‘data engineering plus’ because the idea is not to be fixed on one thing. It’s more about developing an engineering skill that has to do with data and with it, you can go into data science or machine learning engineering or we’ll see what the future holds. The team behind BigDataX is great and the community has been growing.
I just had a baby and haven’t been doing a lot of passion projects. I think my last passion project was with DataKind Singapore on the Raffles’ Banded Langur (also known as the Banded Leaf Monkey).
The Raffles’ Banded Langur Working Group had some images of langurs. They wanted a better way of estimating the population with the images instead of manually counting the langurs. We mapped out the population and where the langurs were living.
Then I got pregnant and that was probably the last passion project I worked on. But even at that point, I was setting the focus more on my family. It’s kind of hard to have everything at the same time. I’m glad that before I got married or had kids, I got to spend some time with the community.
Sometimes involvement is a curve. At the beginning, where people are just getting to know you, you have a “higher overhead” and you need to communicate a lot more. But once people really know you, doing things is easier. Even though I’m not as involved now, it still feels natural to be a part of the community.
It’s a bit like rock climbing. I used to do competitive rock climbing at NUS for a short while – I wasn’t that great. At the beginning, I felt it was really difficult to climb competitively. But once your foundation is built, later when you come back to climb for leisure, it’s not difficult.
Everything is the same. The initial part is really hard. But you push through and after that, you should be able to coast along… until the next big curve!
Yvonne Gao tells us about correcting stereotypes as a woman who loves physics and a research scientist in quantum computing – think getting compared to Big Bang Theory characters.
It started when I was still in high school, and I just enjoyed studying physics. I had the chance to go to Oxford University, and there, I got to learn beyond the curriculum through my tutor who is a quantum physicist. It was fascinating. I got to know about how quantum physics was used for information processing and the experimental aspects of physics, which was very different from what I did in high school in lab courses.
Physics doesn’t require a lot of memory work. If you really understand the concepts, everything is logical. You can start deducing how things would behave and why, based on first principles. It’s about being creative with problem-solving where you look at a natural phenomenon, try to infer what mechanism led to that, and maybe come up with a hypothesis of how it works. You construct experiments to prove whether that’s false or true. You’re solving new problems that evolve and get more and more intricate. I think that’s the part that got me hooked and made it quite clear to me that I wanted to continue with the field.
My PhD was, in some sense, a honeymoon. It was six years of doing something really interesting and dynamic, where things change every day. I met really inspiring people along the way that pointed me in the right direction. The more I understood about the field, the more potential I saw in it. Towards the later stage, it became a more informed career choice to go into quantum computing. In my current job, I’m still primarily doing research. But compared to when I was a graduate student, I work a lot more independently in terms of coming up with the specific problems I want to solve.
It varies day-to-day, depending on what stage our research is at. Towards the beginning, I’m charting out the necessary components or resources I need to complete a certain scope of study.
Our set-up includes superconductive quantum circuits, which are very similar to normal electrical circuits, except they exhibit quantum mechanical behavior. This requires a really low temperature so the circuits can conduct electricity without any resistance. We need to bring our equipment down from room temperature, which is roughly 300 Kelvin, to nearly 1/1000 Kelvin (-273.15 Celsius). Once our system is up and running, it’s about designing the right experiments to probe the right effects. For example, we send in some microwave signals and compare them with the signals that we extract to find out what happened in our quantum system. There’s a lot of tracking and analyzing the data, and towards the end of the research stage, I try to make sense of the results and find the best way to present them to our peers in the community.
The end-goal is to make a universal quantum computer, basically a machine that can solve any problem by us programming it differently without changing the hardware, like our laptops these days. Another characteristic that we want to achieve is error resistance. We want to make sure that the system doesn’t fail too frequently such that we can no longer trust the outcome.
A research project could be six months or three years. It is a lot less well-defined than an undergraduate course where you have a clear end, which makes the work both exciting and difficult. If there is not a clear, tangible goal, you can become really frustrated.
What I do is set myself very small, but clear goals along the way. Every day, sometimes even before I go to the lab, I envision what I will do that day or in the next few days. I may identify one specific problem to solve. I think that helped me a lot in just making sure that every day is kind of satisfying.
Another issue is to do with being a minority in a discipline that’s very male-dominated. It wasn’t too much of a challenge for me as I’ve always been quite opinionated and outspoken. But I definitely sense that sometimes I have to speak louder than I would otherwise.
The fine balance is to be assertive without sounding bossy, or to be confident and open-minded at the same time. I think it’s a bit of trial and error. It’s quite common for women in science, even for the more established ones in the community to come across as overconfident. Sometimes it’s like a defense mechanism, because if we’re not sure enough of our own ideas, then it seems we’re basically adopting what other people tell us to.
Regardless, it’s important to not be afraid to ask for help. I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness. I think you have to be very sure of yourself to be open and say, I’m really struggling here. It helps as well, to be able to show your vulnerability in a professional way.
If I’m at a conference or in a group setting, and I meet a person whose experience I admire or find beneficial to know more about, I don’t feel shy to reach out and say, do you want to stay in touch or can I follow up?
Actually, it’s really interesting. I sense, in America, people can get overly politically correct. Very often, I had to take the initiative to ask for the contact information if the other person is a man, as they don’t want to appear as if they are going after someone in a professional setting. We (as women) just have to take a bit more initiative.
One is that we only want to talk about physics, like that’s the main defining feature of our lives. That’s really not true. Like any other profession, physics does shape the way we think a little bit, but we do love talking about everything else. Sometimes I actively tell my friends, okay, we’re going to switch up and talk about something else now.
There are times when I meet people, after they find out I study physics, they tend to intentionally switch the conversation to physics or something. Maybe they’re genuinely curious about my field, but sometimes they seem to think I would be uncomfortable about something that’s not in my domain of expertise. That was a bit shocking to me. Another thing I’ve been asked a lot is, are all your friends like the guys in the Big Bang Theory? No.
In Singapore, people will still find it surprising if you’re a woman who really wants to study physics. Generally, they have a certain image. They are thinking of the Big Bang Theory sitcom.
Most of the girls I know who did physics in the UK and the US are completely normal human beings. They are very bubbly and eloquent. Maybe we just need to have more exposure here. The ‘Women in Science’ initiatives in the UK and the US have been around a little bit longer. There’s been a bit more visibility. I think things may be slowly changing here.
One is that we only want to talk about physics, like that’s the main defining feature of our lives. That’s really not true. Like any other profession, physics does shape the way we think a little bit, but we do love talking about everything else. Sometimes I actively tell my friends, okay, we’re going to switch up and talk about something else now.
There are times when I meet people, after they find out I study physics, they tend to intentionally switch the conversation to physics or something. Maybe they’re genuinely curious about my field, but sometimes they seem to think I would be uncomfortable about something that’s not in my domain of expertise. That was a bit shocking to me. Another thing I’ve been asked a lot is, are all your friends like the guys in the Big Bang Theory? No.
In Singapore, people will still find it surprising if you’re a woman who really wants to study physics. Generally, they have a certain image. They are thinking of the Big Bang Theory sitcom.
Most of the girls I know who did physics in the UK and the US are completely normal human beings. They are very bubbly and eloquent. Maybe we just need to have more exposure here. The ‘Women in Science’ initiatives in the UK and the US have been around a little bit longer. There’s been a bit more visibility. I think things may be slowly changing here.
One is science policy, and I started the Emerging Technologies Forum with other researchers. There are a lot of important questions to discuss. We need to create an environment where scientists can do their job more easily and get their results out to the community. For example, we need to discuss how to integrate new aspects of science into the curriculum. When I was studying at the undergraduate level, my coursemates and I found that there was a gap between what we were studying from books published about six years ago and the current state of things, especially for fields that were not so mature yet, but were starting to be important. I think it’s a difficult question to think about, how do you find ways at the national level to make sure that there’s a good flow of information to students in terms of having a more flexible curriculum?
Another question is, how does geopolitics affect scientific research? Most of us just want to do good research and be open with our peers in the community. That can get hindered if the policy aspect is not handled well. With the forum, we’re trying to explore these questions to overcome barriers to the scientific process. I’m also promoting girls in science, and I work with the Singapore Committee for UN Women to do school outreach and learning journeys. The latest one we did was for Methodist Girls School girls at Secondary Four level. We had a few scientists share their experience and we showed the girls around at A*STAR to give them a glimpse of what it’s like to pursue science as a career. We are also helping the Committee design a science camp curriculum for 10 to 14-year-olds. This is a new experience for me to design hands-on activities for this age group! It’s pretty interesting and hopefully, we will roll it out soon.
What happens when you turn your personal struggles into a force for good? Kanika Agarwal is no stranger to entrepreneurship, and when she found herself facing anxiety attacks, she started the social enterprise MindPeers.
Read on!
A parallel entrepreneur is someone who’s running multiple businesses together. I run two companies, and that’s why I call myself Chief of Everything. Literally, every day I’m getting my hands dirty in undefined roles. For example, for my first company Passion Peers, which is a digital marketing agency, you would see me even working with my designers and copywriters to see which colours look good for their posts. Sometimes you will see me doing operational work.
Previously, I was with Microsoft in a full-time job in the digital marketing and technology space. But I never had the patience to sit behind the laptop and do coding. I was just too extroverted for it. The other thing was that I’ve always been a very creative person. I realised during my stint in Microsoft that the actual marketing work is usually done by the agencies, not the clients who bring in the business perspective.
So I said, look, I just want to experiment, there is nothing to lose. At that time, the tech startup scene in Singapore was still emerging. If I wanted to learn from the ground up or create things, the agency space was the place to be. Then I left Microsoft for a very short stint in an agency, about six or seven months to learn and understand the industry. I had my boss’ blessing, and she was very supportive.
At that time, I was too young or naive to think that I needed to have savings. I just had $10,000 when I quit my job, and I told myself I was going to start my agency. If all of my $10,000 got spent at the end of the year, and I didn’t make any revenue, I would look into something else. That’s how it started, in 2016 from my bedroom. I still remember trying to contact lines, hiring some freelancers, and things like that.
I think the biggest misconception is in your question itself. Actually, I don’t like to go for a lot of meetings and I keep my Mondays free from meetings. It’s a personal choice. I use Mondays to organise my mind for the rest of the week. My meetings are usually on Thursday and Friday.
I’m not a morning person, I won’t lie about it. I’m trying to be one, but I’m not. 
My day typically starts around 9:30am and I get to work by 12. My teams already know that.
I like to get hands on, which means a lot of internal team discussions and brainstorming. Our internal discussions are maximum 20 minutes long. We take the whiteboard and come up with concepts for clients’ campaigns or whatever else that needs to be done. For organising, we are big users of Basecamp and sometimes, Asana. Slack is like the biggest saviour for all of us.
When ideas kick in, I just like to write it down so I don’t forget them. I also like to keep things simple. If I’m using my laptop, everything goes on my OneNote. If I’m using my phone, everything goes on my notes.
The rest of the day is more of operational work. This means mostly working things out with my HR person or Finance person. One thing that I’m very much involved in for any of my companies is in hiring. It’s very important that we maintain a good culture mix from the beginning.
Due to some networks, Passion Peers got really good clients and everything started expanding. This success came with its own struggles, and the worst thing I did to myself was to forget totally about my own well-being. My ambition overpowered me. In mid-2017, I was under immense stress and burnout. I was working almost 18 hours a day and I started having anxiety attacks—I would just start crying. I would be breathless and trembling.
When my first anxiety attack happened, it was around 4 am. I couldn’t breathe and felt a real chest pain, and because I didn’t know what it was, I went to the emergency ward. The doctors told me it was just hyperventilation. It took me about a month or so to realise that it was a mental illness.
I realised it was difficult to figure out what was happening to me although I was educated and we have access to information at our fingertips in today’s world. I also struggled with the feeling that I would never recover, and it was just costly to get treated for mental illnesses. I was very open about my condition and I was lucky that my family and friends were very supportive. I also learned that a lot of my own friends and acquaintances were dealing with mental health problems in silence.
It hit me that something needed to be done. This was how my other company Mind Peers came about. Mind Peers offers a holistic mental health technology platform, which aims to do three things: One, to remove the stigma around mental illnesses by providing a safe space for people to let out their feelings. Two, to provide an option for self-therapy. Instead of having to go to a psychologist or counsellor to take some costly tests, you can take the tests on a complimentary basis on the Mind Peers platform and get customised results. These could be tests for depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, or even to better understand your personality. Third, to matchmake people with quality mental health professionals.
This platform was launched first in India in July 2019 as the situation there is more alarming than in Singapore. I call both countries home. In India, there’s no real set of standards or structure to the provision of mental health care. There are plans to expand the project to Singapore and we’re looking to collaborate with organisations like the National Youth Council.
When I was going through anxiety, my menstrual cycle also took a hit. I went through symptoms I never had before. I started Fem Peers as another business. I have paused it for now to focus on Mind Peers. But how it worked was that women could subscribe and get their choice of menstrual care kits every month. Someone who gets a lot of cramps may want to have more chamomile tea in her kit while a sports person may get energy boosters. It’s all personalised.
The idea was to pair the customer in Singapore with someone living below the poverty line in India. I met a few girls in India who had left school once they got their menstrual periods. They had stained their skirts because they lacked access to sanitary napkins. So whenever someone in Singapore buys a kit, someone else in India who cannot afford sanitary napkins would get those and other supplies like handwash from us. We also came up with a campaign called ‘I am Unstoppable’ where we ran a mothers-and-daughters circle to help families hold conversations about going through the first period and other puberty concerns.
There’s no key reason, but I think the beautiful part of running an enterprise—even if it’s more challenging—is that it’s somehow easier to measure the impact. When you’re running your own organisation, you want to see the impact. You see the results of what you are driving every day, whether negative or positive. To me, that’s important.
I’m not saying that you can’t see results in NGOs. I just feel that when I’m running my own thing, I can see the results more clearly. I’m also very fortunate to have come across people who join me and they themselves are very driven about the same causes. I don’t know if Mind Peers will be my life’s calling, but I know that it somehow fulfils my sense of purpose.
In hindsight, is there one piece of advice you would wish to give to yourself?I have two. The first one is specially for people who are planning to become entrepreneurs: Always test the market, see if the timing is right. Sometimes you might be coming up with a business that is either way ahead of its time or you’re entering a ‘red ocean’ that you already have a lot of people operating. Do your research by talking to as many people as you can. These could be potential investors or entrepreneurs who have been in the same business area.
When I started out in digital marketing, it was a very saturated space. I told myself, had I done this three years ago, it might have been less challenging. Knowing the market defines how challenging it would be for you in all aspects, whether in hiring or raising funds with investors. For my first business, we had to pivot a bit. I realised our offerings were meant more for big brands than the SMEs we initially had as clients.
The second advice is more general, which is to be authentic. It was a big lesson for myself. I burnt out because I was trying to mimic other people’s journey. If I saw that this person was working 16 hours a day or achieving certain success within two years, I thought I had to do the same. But that’s not true. You have to know what suits you.
I was telling you earlier that I had forgotten to take care of myself. When the anxiety attacks happened, it was a blessing in disguise. It told me what I was doing wrong with my personal health.
So right now, as a side project, I’m working out a lot. That’s my way of channelling my anger, stress, and all of that. Working out is something that I enjoy. Besides that, I have resumed my travels. I make it a point to take a long break every six months and travel. Every two weeks, I’m also traveling to visit my parents as they stay in India. I know they’re aging, and it gives me immense happiness just to be able to spend time with them.
It can be a serious struggle to rejoin the workforce after a career break. Divya Gehlot Mishra knows this too well. She left her job to be a stay-at-home mom and later returned to work in the competitive field of data analytics. How did she do it? It took grit and resilience to push past outright bias, but those weren’t the only factors.
Read on!
Most of the time I work on designing and building big data and cloud computing solutions. These are based on business requirements and my conceptual understanding of the technology. You can get training and become certified, but before I knew the role existed, I was in “dark mode”. There was no clear path and I was basically led by my curiosity.
Wherever I went, I was usually the only “big-data person”. It helped me understand people’s perception of big data and I get to explore different tools. When I was with PayPal, I worked as a data engineer. However, I was also the one helping my team understand what big data was, back when it was still a new buzzword. I would attend meetup sessions to learn about how big data technology could fit into different business use cases.
Then I worked for a start-up where we needed to have a product on a big data platform. My role was to help people pick the right infrastructure, whether it meant setting up a data cluster on premise or on cloud. I provided the analysis on the pros and cons of choosing one option over the other. That got me started with doing a comparison of various data tools. When I picked up Apache Spark (a data processing engine), I got exposed to dealing with bigger datasets. I basically learned Apache Spark by digging into the code on its Github repository! I kept learning and applying what I learned to the next organisation, which came to be Johnson and Johnson.
It’s all a personal choice. When I had my daughter, I could have put her in childcare and then started working again or I could have taken time off to take care of her. My hubby said to me that at least one parent should be there with the kid. This is a special time for bonding with the kid. He asked me for a favour, could I be that parent? I thought, okay, I don’t mind doing it. Even at that point of time, in my subconscious mind, the question was there: If I were to take a break, will I be able to return to work?
But back then, my priority was to take care of my daughter. I put my career goals on hold. I never stopped learning or doing my certifications though. When my daughter was around two and a half years old, I felt she was old enough and I could take time to refresh my career.
I rejoined the workforce in 2015 after a lot of struggles. I started by brainstorming about what to do. Some of my friends took on some random jobs when they returned to work because they wanted to earn some money first. That was not for me, I don’t mind working hard to get a job but I have to do something where I feel satisfied. I wanted to return to IT. I uploaded my resume and started looking for possible jobs.
My hubby supported my decision. He helped me with all his networking efforts, but somehow it didn’t work out. My mum would motivate me, saying that it was all part of the learning for me. I’m from India, where there’s this saying where you are entitled to focus on your karma, but not its fruits. Sometimes you have to wait patiently to taste the fruits of your hard work. That’s how it happened with me. I would say it took me one and a half years to land a job in IT.
Many interviewers told me, “I don’t think you can be a developer or be in the IT industry as you have such a long break in your career”. I disagree. I took on freelance projects. To truly understand how things work, I did things like set up the Hadoop cluster on my own machine. That helped me so much for my interviews.
There’s this misconception that if somebody takes a break, this means they can’t do the work. I believe you should look at the person’s calibre rather than how different their resume may look.
When I was learning about big data such as Hadoop architecture in 2010, there were not many resources beyond white papers. Today, you have many resources, including blogs and youtube channels.
You don’t need to know how to use as many tools as possible, but knowing about the fundamental differences between the tools will help you. You will be able to make informed decisions when you do need to use the tools. For example, you won’t have to worry about the compatibility of Apache Spark with Scala-based (a programming language) solutions if you know that Spark is written in Scala.
I do have some in mind, like blogging or making videos to help people learn, but those are on hold for now. Maybe I’ll start on those when my daughter is more grown up.
It’s about having some work-life balance, and I’m also involved with BigDataX. I currently head the curriculum team. Running whole-day technical workshops does take a lot of effort—you have to consider many angles, including the participants’ mixed backgrounds and how they might understand the material—but for us, it’s about giving back to the community.
Perhaps you’re giving a big presentation about your passion project. You’re feeling great about it, and you’re in peak performance mode, talking up all the cool details, all the thrilling plans. You’re practically bouncing on your feet.
Eager to share more, you ask if there are any questions. Dead silence. Finally, somebody from management asks something so irrelevant, you wonder if they actually heard you at all.
Huh? What went wrong?
Very likely, you haven’t been on the same page since the beginning. And your fundamental mistake? Assuming that your layman audience has your same expert, insider point of view.
So how can you bridge this communication gap?
Jargon is the specialised language used by experts in a certain field. Often, it’s unavoidable, because it helps communicate specific concepts with clarity and precision.
But what if your audience are not experts?
The average person actually fears jargon, because they don’t like looking ignorant. Sometimes, management will pretend that they understand, and start using terms like “machine learning” and “deep learning” and “AI” interchangeably.
Nope, don’t show your frustration. You need to keep a straight face. Actually, you need to make them feel safe and therefore receptive to your ideas. Your job is to explain.
As a product owner, engineer or specialist, you’re rightfully excited by your awesome product, and can’t help sharing all the cool features.
“Our accounting and payroll app has plug-and-play support, is designed for cloud, mobile and desktop environments, and even has a user-researched intuitive client interface!”
Cool! Er… so what?
This is a very common mistake that hides in plain sight. Technical communication is full of exciting features, specifications, and details. But technical people often forget to tell their stakeholders why that information is important.
They forget to explain the benefits.
Some definitions:
To convert features into benefits, ask yourself “Why does this matter?”
For the example above, imagine selling the app to a boss of say, an import and export company. Yes, go ahead and list the features. But then follow up with:
“This means that you can install this app easily and use it everywhere, with no additional staff training cost!”
She’ll prick up her ears. Because true benefits connect to your users’ deepest desires, such as saving money, saving time, reducing hassle, being more productive, getting good value, solving their pains, and generally leading an easier, happier life.
In fiction writing, it’s usually said: show, not tell.
What this means is that instead of simply informing a reader about information, you have to paint a picture that they can see in their mind’s eye.
By doing so, you’re getting them to visualise, conceptualise, and recognise, instead of passively accepting your words.
It’s like a light bulb going off in their heads. An emotional response will always keep an audience engaged.
So how do you do this?
And finally, for one catch-all tip that applies to all persuasive communication: always start with the end in mind.
If you know your desired outcome, you can come up with a clear message to drive that outcome.
“Fund this project – it’s going to have benefit x, y, z”
“Give me a pay raise – I’m fantastic because (list reasons)”
“You need to buy our widgets – they’ll help you double productivity!”
Consistently apply that message across all your communications with management. Repeat over and over in various forms… and you might just sneakily get them doing what you want.
Grace is a b2b tech copywriter based in Singapore. Need help with words? Call her for a coffee! www.gracegoh.com
What does a career based on telling stories with data look like? An interactive graphics journalist with The Straits Times, Rebecca Pazos introduces us to data journalism. It takes a nose for storytelling, a mix of skills, and above all, teamwork, especially when you also have a full-time job as a mom to a toddler.
Read on!
Back in 2011, I was studying Journalism, and I came across a video by Hans Rosling of Gapminder. It opened my eyes to what’s possible and I became very interested in telling stories with data. Before that, I was angling myself towards broadcast media.
In hindsight, it was an opportunity for me to look beyond the normal ways that we gather sources for journalism. Typically, you talk to people, and the news articles are more anecdotal in nature. Using data gives us at least more context than a few people’s point of view.
Around 2012 when the Australian census came out, I worked on a few projects with the Sydney Morning Herald on a voluntary basis. That was mind-blowing, and I really enjoyed looking at the data, figuring out how to display it, and making it useful for people to understand. I was working with my then-boyfriend/now-husband who is a designer. During that time, I also became involved with the Hacks/Hackers group in Australia, which boosted my passion for this sort of journalism.
We moved to Singapore, and I got a job in content marketing, which deviated from my actual dream job. Later through my contacts with Hacks/Hackers and organising meetups in Singapore, I managed to know a lot of people in the media industry. That’s how I got my current role with the Straits Times. My husband started out at a separate company, but is also now with the Straits Times’ digital graphics team.
Talking about a data-driven project on National Day Parade songs during The Big Story, a live Facebook and Instagram show run daily out of the ST newsroom TV studio on July 3, 2019. ST SCREENSHOT
It’s a little different now from what it was before. I recently went back to work in December from maternity leave, and I have a 16-month-old son. My role has shifted from hands-on work to more of an editorial role.
I work part-time from 8am to 12pm, then my husband comes in at about 1.30pm. He’ll do the rest of the shift till the evening. In summary, I find the story in the data.
For a typical project, if the idea comes from the digital graphics team, I already have a sense of how to proceed, but if it comes from the newsroom, I’ll have to figure out what their angle is or the story they’re trying to say. Then we look at what data is available. Most of the time is spent copying, pasting, scraping, cleaning, and processing the data.
I don’t do crazy processing in R or anything like that. I use Google Sheets. I’ll run a pivot table and a few simple charts, and that shows me the shape of the data. That’s usually how I come up with the story angle, and then from there, if I found something that’s worth doing, I need to throw it back to my editor.
Nine out of ten times with data, it just gives you something that you’re not expecting. Then, there’s also following up with the usual journalistic way of emailing, calling, and interviewing people that have worked on the data or know more about what the data is saying.
Once we have some concept, the designers will come in to do the mockups and brainstorm on how to make the visuals look good and create a good user experience. At the coding stage, we have the developers come in and they may make the visuals interactive or create virtual reality or augmented reality effects.
To give an example, the Pakatan Harapan party, which won the Malaysian General Election, had its first anniversary in May 2019. We were asked to look at the overall promises of the party and do a follow-up report. But for me, each of those promises made was the data point. Visually, it was quite nice to see how many were still in progress, how many have been fulfilled, and how many were still yet to be addressed.
Journalists for the story had a general angle they wanted to push, which was that although the Pakatan Harapan party made some progress, there was still a lot of upset from the general population, and there was a quote from the Prime Minister that he didn’t really expect to win so they made all these promises that they couldn’t keep!
With this general angle, we kept trying to figure out what’s the best way to tell the story. Typically for the print version of the news, you might focus on ten key promises and provide a breakdown of those promises. But I realized that doing this wouldn’t tell the full story. It would suggest that the Pakatan Harapan party was doing really well and that they almost achieved all their promises.
Attending a data-driven workshop for journalists hosted by data.gov.sg on Jan 6, 2017. PHOTO: REBECCA PAZOS
Then we went through all the promises, verified the state of things, and presented the outcome in a visual way. It gave a sense of breadth, and you could tell why people would be feeling a bit upset about the progress of the party.
I don’t do the coding or design side of things. There are awesome people out there who do all three (including journalism) and they’re really impressive. It’s tough for me to wrap my head around coding, but it’s important I know the basics to communicate with the developers and understand the difficulties that they face.
With my journalism background, my passion for data, and six years of experience working with visuals, I’m trying to balance and connect the two aspects: the journalistic angle and how to visually display the story.
Most people don’t even know that we are doing data journalism at the Straits Times, but I totally understand. Working on interactive graphics takes a lot of time and effort. This means that our work can get lost in the daily breaking news, which get released in a more common format.
I might be shooting myself in the foot with this next comment, but I think it’s important to address it. There is this general idea that data presents the whole truth, but the data itself can present some biases. That’s something that I try to be very aware of. I think that data has the power to give us a better context for the story or a different view of the story, but it’s not going to give us the whole objective truth. So we always have to bridge the data with findings from more traditional journalistic methods.
We have to be aware that some of our readers may not have much graphic literacy, and we do have to be careful not to present graphics in a very complex way. I have to balance that against oversimplifying things. I don’t want to find that we’re missing different facets of the story.
Everybody has the ability to read graphics and understand complexity. It’s how we tell the story. What I have tried to do with a lot of our stuff is use scrollytelling, where we break things down and use text overlaid on visuals to give a nice narrative way of understanding complex ideas.
I also aspire towards Hans Rosling’s type of visualizations. He combines personality, fun, and emotion with the data storytelling. I try to bring in this human aspect in my work.
On a basic level, you need to have a nose for news and storytelling. You need to know how to construct the story in different formats. If you’re coming in at the entry-level, I would suggest finding people to work with, like a developer or a designer. Working in a team can be very fruitful and you will also learn so much from them than you would on your own. Find people to share your passion with and work on projects. Be hands-on, find a dataset you’re interested in, and give it a go.
Hosting a talk on post-US election graphics for Hacks/Hackers Singapore on Oct 25, 2016. From left-to-right: Alan Soon, CEO of The Splice Newsroom, Simon Scarr, Graphics Editor for Reuters, Chi-Loong Chan, co-organiser of Hacks/Hackers and founder of VslashR, local data viz firm. PHOTO: FACEBOOK (HUI YI LEE)
Another thing is to stay on top of the latest goings-on. Be on Twitter and follow people who are in the know about the industry. About two or three years ago in the interactive graphic industry, we were talking about vertical videos. That has all changed again, and it’s now more about scrollytelling. I find it valuable to be very aware of what other publications are doing and analyse how they execute their work.
This may seem weird for somebody who works online, but when I communicate, I have to get a piece of paper and just draw it out. Having my ideas out on pen and paper makes it more tangible to me.
I’m very lucky, and I’m grateful that I have a workplace that’s really flexible. Even so, my workplace can’t always understand the things that I might face. To be honest, there was one time where I was publishing a graphic and my son was vomiting. While he’s vomiting, I’m having to check my phone. These things happen.
I can’t bespoke edit for projects like I did before. I need to pass on my skills to others in the team so that they can follow up when I’m not around. It’s also about not getting stressed out that sometimes things don’t get done. I think to myself, thankfully, I’m not a nurse or doctor, no one is going to die if things don’t get published today though there are other consequences.
At the end of the day, my son is my priority so I have to think in that regard. Taking a step back, delegating and training others have become an important part of my job.
I’m very lucky that I’m in a job where I love what I do. A project that we did about two years ago was groundbreaking for data visualization to me. We looked at sea-level rise and used virtual reality to take people to the Merlion by Marina Bay and actually raise the water level. You get a real sense of context and scale that you wouldn’t get through a graphic chart. Say, you can indicate an increase of seven meters in a chart, but what does that actually mean? To put that into a visual space was groundbreaking for me.
Covering elections is my bread and butter and I love it. With the Malaysia elections last year, we spent three months just gathering data and trying to figure out how to present the live results. These days, I think most people come to the newspaper not for many things anymore, but they do for elections and live results. That’s where we get to do some really fun things with data.
Ever doubted a career decision you’ve made in the past? Anila Federicks’ experience shows how the idea of a right or wrong career move can be a fallacy, it’s what you make out of your decisions. By defying conventions, first by joining a grad program as a mature candidate and then applying for a role others thought was too senior for her, Anila is now leading teams to achieve customer service excellence at Telstra.
Read on!
I was a very young mom, and I had to go back into work—my first daughter was eight months old then. Back then, all I wanted to do was stay at home with her. So even though I had an MBA and I was a pharmacist, what I wanted was a part-time job to support my family. Maybe it was the worst career decision to just pick the first job that I got, which was at a call center as a sales and service consultant. But in hindsight, it was fantastic training.
There was a five-week training program where they took you through everything that you needed in Telstra. Then for three months, we were part of a kindy, where they train you to take calls and you learn customer service 101. I worked for about a year, then I had my second daughter.
When I went back, I saw in an email that Telstra introduced a grad program for internal staff who had completed a degree. I applied, got in, and topped the grad program. I was a mature-age grad, because I was 31 when I joined. It’s unheard of, right? All the other grads were just straight out of university.
As soon as I finished the program, I applied for a service director role. There were a lot of naysayers. Even some of my grad mentors said, “No, you can’t.” People told me that after a grad program, you have to get into a starting role and then work your way up. Well, I feel I can do it. I’m passionate about service. I’ve got 10 years of work experience, I can do it.
I got the role. So it’s really about believing in yourself and pushing through. Don’t ever think that any job is too small or too big, because in every role you can learn. You can learn from every single person. Sometimes you can get bogged down thinking, did I make the right decision? But I think from a family as well as career perspective, now I feel rewarded.
Authenticity is a big one for me. It’s about being true to what I believe in. Whatever you do, you check against that value system. Is it right for me? I would always speak up and explain why I think I will do it. That’s very important to me.
Paying it forward is a big principle in my life as well. In the last six or seven years with Telstra, I never had to ask for a role. It’s always been a tap on the shoulder and someone saying, hey, would you like to do this? I’m very grateful. I feel that as people are giving me opportunities, I have to pay it forward. I think the more you share, the more you encourage people to come up, it gives immense satisfaction. It’s like the legacy you leave behind.
Many people think it’s very uncool being in post-sales, because pre-sales is what brings the revenue, then you deliver the service, and then it goes into assurance. One of the questions that people have asked is, your work is in post-sales or it’s purely just break-fix, how come you get involved in continuous improvement, data analytics or design thinking?
I think what you’re dealing with in post-sales gives you credibility, you really understand what the business needs. The misconception is that people in post-sales may not be able to contribute to strategy and transformation. But that’s not true. You need representation from every area of the company if you want to succeed.
What I really like about my job with the company is a culture of flexibility. As a mother, as a family member, as a senior member in the organization, I value that flexibility. I’m in a job where I’m on call 24/7. I can be called anytime of the day.
For me, what works is I’m at home with the family, I have breakfast with them and send them off to school. Then I come to work after the peak hour. I’m there till about seven or eight o’clock because I’ve got support at home in the evening. That works really well for me. But for some others, they start at seven or eight in the morning and they finish up at four. It’s about embracing that flexibility and making it work.
The other thing that works really well for me, is taking time off. When I have time off, I’m usually just dead to the world. Yes, I can take emergency calls, but I make a conscious effort not to be looking at my phone all the time. I role model that for my staff as well. You give your staff time to breathe and enjoy their earned leave. I think that makes a huge difference. I think if you firmly believe in something, you’ve got to role model it.
Another thing is prioritizing, because I get over 1,000 emails a day. How do you let go of things so you can focus? How do you delegate better? Delegation is building the next-generation leaders. I now have such a good structure and strong leaders that I could walk away and hand things over to someone in the team. Also, one thing I learned through a program I implemented, is about never touching something twice. Whether its email management or any work, I try to deal with it once. I hate repetitive tasks, I don’t like doing things over and over again.
I took this role as the head of international service centers three years ago. What I found was, there was very little information. First, we didn’t have any data, because we combined two systems of two companies together. There was no baseline. Second, we weren’t measuring what mattered. The metrics were all over the shop.
One of the first things I did within the first two months was to create a jeopardy report. We used Tableau and got the metrics that mattered into a report. If I look back at our first report, it’s so basic, but it was the start of what we do today.
Today, everything is underpinned by quality data. We have a service operations team that provides us with the analytics, whether it’s on workforce management, daily performance management, or even picking up recurring faults. It helps us prevent future outages. It’s about reducing volume into our center so we can manage the work more efficiently and reduce cost.
We share a daily report every morning at 10 to all our stakeholders, so they know exactly where their issues stand and which customers are impacted. The other thing we’ve done is to have dashboards on our ticketing system, and we have data available at multiple levels—the consultant level, the manager level or senior management level.
The people who built the dashboards came from the grassroots, from the team itself, so they know what they’re measuring. As we digitalize and automate, a lot of the roles that they did previously is now redundant. You don’t have to have go hunting through lines and lines of Excel sheets, the information is all there at your fingertips. What we’ve had to do is up-skill people, so we have people with inherent capabilities or interest go for free Tableau training that anyone can do. If they show promise, we spend the money and get them to learn, challenge the status quo, and ask questions. It’s about continuous improvement as well.
For me, you don’t need to be a data expert with certificates. It’s about curiosity, interest, and passion. You may not have all of the skills yet, but that can be taught. But some people shy away from it, saying, it’s too tough or there are too many numbers. It’s about peeling through the data and asking, how does that impact your organization?
I tell the story of my duty manager, who was an escalation specialist. He saw me one day and said, have you looked at my resume? I told him, yeah, I hired you, I know what you do. He shared his interest to do something different and we gave him opportunities. Today, he heads all our improvement/digitization and automation initiatives. It’s just quite amazing.
The responsibility is also on the individual, isn’t it? You have to take ownership of where you want to lead your career. You have to be able to share what you want to do. But as leaders, I think we need to be approachable and create an atmosphere where people can actually share, hey, I’d like to try this.
I remember when I was doing the grad program, one of the senior mentors at that stage said, you’ve got to say what you want to do. You might want to become a future CEO one day, but if you never talk about it, people won’t know and encourage you. But under some forms of leadership, you just feel you can’t share. I think as leaders, we need to encourage openness.
Another thing I always say is, if you attend a meeting, contribute. You’ve been called to the meeting for a purpose and if you don’t do that, then you miss the opportunity. One of the things I’ve noticed while working in Asia, after having worked in Australia, is that people aren’t as outspoken or upfront about what they think. You really got to encourage it, sometimes it’s like pulling teeth. Now my team’s great, everyone’s contributing and sharing. But initially, it wasn’t like that. People were a bit wary. Maybe it’s their schooling, I’m not sure what it is.
The other big thing for me is communication. I’m very grateful to my parents. I grew up in India. My dad would take me to debates, and he would coach me and push me forward. When I moved to Australia, people told me I spoke good English. What I find with my team in Malaysia is, a lot of my leaders are technically skilled. They are data-savvy, but they lack the communication skills or their English is not as smooth. When you put them in a meeting together with our Australian counterparts, people will assume that the person who speaks well is more intelligent or a better leader. It’s unconscious bias but it affects whether people respond to what you’re saying. We are rolling out communications training for the team.
I love mentoring people. I’m constantly speaking at schools, like with my daughters. One just finished her ‘O’ Levels, and the second one is in secondary three. So I pick up opportunities to go and speak—get people together. I love working with people, it energizes me.
The other thing is needle craft. I attend conventions, and I collect a lot of yarn. When I finished a full day’s work, I go back and I’m crocheting or stitching. My daughters are very interested as well. Everywhere we travel, we try and go and find some local craft. I think creativity is a big part of who you are, as well. It inspires you to do things and push boundaries.
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