Growing up as an Asian, I never really thought about what it meant to study. Finishing up secondary school with a decent grade then completing my bachelor’s degree and getting a stable job in a well-established corporation — the standard formula for a typical Asian. I rarely question why I need education, until I had my first experience at an official full-time job.

Working in an SME allows me to learn a lot of things that I didn’t even expect. My education has supported the foundation of my daily tasks but there is so much more than that. Unlike any big corporation, we do not have departments to handle different duties, so I had the chance to develop my multitasking skills and confront any weakness I have while learning on the job. This is when I realise with my current product design skills, it is simply not enough. Design is beautiful and functional, but it needs external support to be shared with everyone globally. I have picked up new knowledge along the way, from marketing to branding that gives purpose to our brand to even small back-end duty with Excels, which all leads to strengthening my belief in developing an all-round skill set.

I have a more introverted personality type, as such, I never imagine I will do any customer service related work. Yet fate set me up and gave me an eye-opening experience from dealing with thousands of customers for our crowdfunding projects. Any product can look great yet customers come and go; but for us, it was the company’s purpose and our heartfelt and sincere interaction that makes the customers stay and work together with us towards the same value. This is exactly why I am looking forward to pursuing an education in the ID&BM programme especially for courses on managing value. We have witnessed the world gearing up to make a change, to respect others with different cultural backgrounds and leave discriminatory actions in the past. The world is becoming one and we have to be able to work together and the bridge to it is respect and understanding.

I am grateful for all that I have learnt in my current employment but I believe the ID&BM programme can take me to a new height and offer a new perspective of design and business for me to head towards the next step of my life. I believe the programme, along with the guidance of teaching staff that are experts in their respective fields, will help me work towards this goal and be ready to share knowledge with great designers from different ethnic groups and make a great impact on the future design industry.