Serendipity Strikes Again!
The mood this week, unless you're a hermit, has been pretty dour. The week started with the bankruptcy of Lehman, the sale of Merrill Lynch to BoA, the rescue of AIG and stock markets around the world plummeting to unseen depths. Conversations with friends ranging from fellow entrepreneurs to bankers to those in various industries has been filled with uncertainty and anxiety.
Today, as I woke up, the gloomy weather reflected the mood of days past. During my morning yoga class with Wendy, as we heard thunder and the rainstorm pattering on the windows, Wendy observed, "When it rains, change comes". Stretching in downward dog, I agreed with her observation, but I was thinking along the lines of change that might come a few months down the road (i.e. Barack Obama in the White House, stiffer regulation governing short-selling, etc.). Little did I expect, that change would come when the rain stopped.
After yoga, I headed to Segafredo for coffee, free wifi and a dry, quiet, comfortable place to finish writing my blog entries on my recent trip before my meeting with Marie So (no relation to me). Earlier in the month, an e-flyer for a talk by Marie had landed in my inbox: "Yaks for Development: Social Entrepreneurship in China on the Rise" was the title of the talk. The talk was scheduled for 20 October at KEE Club and I thought it was a perfect background talk in the context of my Grameen Foundation field trip to Sichuan scheduled for that following weekend, which also coincided with a recce trip for a client outside Chengdu. In preparation for the Grameen Foundation trip, I've been reading Muhamud Yunus' Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (I had actually said half-jokingly and half-hopefully to some banker friends that perhaps all the out-of-work bankers might find a calling to create more socially-sypathetic businesses, go into microfinance or come up with innovative ways to finance and incubate fledgling social enterprises). So when the e-flyer came, I thought it would be great to meet a practicing social entrepreneur with a business that I found interesting (luxury consumer lifestyle products, see Shokay for their beautifully-designed accessories for home, babies and fashion made from sustainable yak down). Shokay is one of two start-ups created by Ventures in Development, a social enterprise that uses "innovative approaches to solve social issues while applying traditional business skills to achieve sustainable financial and social returns". Marie and Carol Chyau are co-founders of Ventures in Development, a business idea they cooked up while they were classmates at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government three years ago.
I dropped an gmail chat to DA at Time Out Hong Kong and suggested I write a profile on Marie So for their Hongkonger column. "Why don't you just let me send one of our writers. We can't afford to pay you, you know. Unless, of course, you have the writing bug," replied DA. "It's OK," I typed back, "Just come to the talk with me. I do have the writing bug and I want to meet her," I typed back.
So I dashed off an email to Marie and set up the meeting for today. I expected to hear all about yak down and yak cheese. But I was in for so much more. My personal holy grail has been to come up with a project that uses luxury travel as a platform for creating social change and sustainable economic development -- one that combines my interest in luxury travel & lifestyle, consumer technology and microfinance, more specifically, their ability to unleash a new class of entrepreneurs, ways of thinking and doing things. But thus far, the light bulb idea has eluded me.
Within minutes of Marie sitting down, I found out that she was piloting three sustainable tourism projects in northern Yunnan, in the region bordering Tibet, working with the Lisu tribe to help preserve their culture and way of life. Suffice it to say, we had a very productive hour and a half conversation. Now, my October trip to China has further evolved to accommodate the new ideas from our chat over two skinny lattes.
There's a saying in Chinese: "守得雲開見月明," which in English basically means that if you patiently wait for the clouds to break, you will see the brightness of the moon. As I left Segafredo, the sun was shining.
For details and to register for Marie's 20 October talk, download and fill in this form:
OC_Newsletter_-_ViD.doc
Today, as I woke up, the gloomy weather reflected the mood of days past. During my morning yoga class with Wendy, as we heard thunder and the rainstorm pattering on the windows, Wendy observed, "When it rains, change comes". Stretching in downward dog, I agreed with her observation, but I was thinking along the lines of change that might come a few months down the road (i.e. Barack Obama in the White House, stiffer regulation governing short-selling, etc.). Little did I expect, that change would come when the rain stopped.
After yoga, I headed to Segafredo for coffee, free wifi and a dry, quiet, comfortable place to finish writing my blog entries on my recent trip before my meeting with Marie So (no relation to me). Earlier in the month, an e-flyer for a talk by Marie had landed in my inbox: "Yaks for Development: Social Entrepreneurship in China on the Rise" was the title of the talk. The talk was scheduled for 20 October at KEE Club and I thought it was a perfect background talk in the context of my Grameen Foundation field trip to Sichuan scheduled for that following weekend, which also coincided with a recce trip for a client outside Chengdu. In preparation for the Grameen Foundation trip, I've been reading Muhamud Yunus' Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (I had actually said half-jokingly and half-hopefully to some banker friends that perhaps all the out-of-work bankers might find a calling to create more socially-sypathetic businesses, go into microfinance or come up with innovative ways to finance and incubate fledgling social enterprises). So when the e-flyer came, I thought it would be great to meet a practicing social entrepreneur with a business that I found interesting (luxury consumer lifestyle products, see Shokay for their beautifully-designed accessories for home, babies and fashion made from sustainable yak down). Shokay is one of two start-ups created by Ventures in Development, a social enterprise that uses "innovative approaches to solve social issues while applying traditional business skills to achieve sustainable financial and social returns". Marie and Carol Chyau are co-founders of Ventures in Development, a business idea they cooked up while they were classmates at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government three years ago.
I dropped an gmail chat to DA at Time Out Hong Kong and suggested I write a profile on Marie So for their Hongkonger column. "Why don't you just let me send one of our writers. We can't afford to pay you, you know. Unless, of course, you have the writing bug," replied DA. "It's OK," I typed back, "Just come to the talk with me. I do have the writing bug and I want to meet her," I typed back.
So I dashed off an email to Marie and set up the meeting for today. I expected to hear all about yak down and yak cheese. But I was in for so much more. My personal holy grail has been to come up with a project that uses luxury travel as a platform for creating social change and sustainable economic development -- one that combines my interest in luxury travel & lifestyle, consumer technology and microfinance, more specifically, their ability to unleash a new class of entrepreneurs, ways of thinking and doing things. But thus far, the light bulb idea has eluded me.
Within minutes of Marie sitting down, I found out that she was piloting three sustainable tourism projects in northern Yunnan, in the region bordering Tibet, working with the Lisu tribe to help preserve their culture and way of life. Suffice it to say, we had a very productive hour and a half conversation. Now, my October trip to China has further evolved to accommodate the new ideas from our chat over two skinny lattes.
There's a saying in Chinese: "守得雲開見月明," which in English basically means that if you patiently wait for the clouds to break, you will see the brightness of the moon. As I left Segafredo, the sun was shining.
For details and to register for Marie's 20 October talk, download and fill in this form:
OC_Newsletter_-_ViD.doc
Labels: entrepreneurship, events
posted by 10000miles at 15:42
1 Comments:
Thanks for posting the info about that sustainable development talk, wish I could go but I'll be in Rome that wee!
Looking forward to reading your take on the talk in TimeOut HK.
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