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There are certain things they don’t teach you in school. OWN Academy Founder and CEO Natalie Chan is on a mission to introduce real-world learning to Hong Kong and the region.

OWN Academy is building a new, innovative education ecosystem. Natalie is passionate about the decentralisation, democratisation and personalisation of learning and encourages an open and honest conversation on all things education and career between mentors, professionals, students and their parents alike.

In this episode, you will learn:

• why students should start exploring directions of their life at a much earlier stage.
• why today’s job market requires a new set of skills as well as career planning.
• what role parents play to support their children exploring their talents in an increasingly complex world.

Real-world learning

Natalie grew up in Hong Kong where she started her education at a local school, then international school. Later on, she went to boarding school and college in the US. Natalie often felt restricted by what the traditional school system had to offer when it came to learning for life. Looking back at her educational journey, she had her fair share of frustrations and that’s what motivated her to inspire the next generation to take ownership of their career – something she wishes she’d done much earlier in herself.

Starting the conversation 

Over the last decade, the job market has rapidly changed and today’s requirements for the next generation to compete in an increasingly complex marketplace is very different from the time when parents and teacher generations started their careers.

That is why OWN Academy is a career life incubator and has developed a proprietary discovery process to enable students through exposure, exploration and experiences to start taking charge of their lives.

With events like OWN Future Fair Natalie encourages an open and honest conversation between mentors, professionals, students and their parents alike to explore modern career options of today’s world.

“There is so much talent in students”

Natalie empowers the new generation to discover their talents by connecting them with professionals who give them an honest and authentic insight into a wide variety of industries.

OWN Future Fair: 1 day. 40 speakers. 1000 registered participants.

They organized their first OWN Future Fair back in April 2016 as an opportunity for students to meet inspiring young leaders and to explore the different life paths that are in today’s world.

OWN Future Fair is just one of many OWN Academy’s impactful programmes. This is not a career fair like any other. OWN Future Fair’s mission is to allow students, and parents to explore the future, potential career paths together and begin a conversation.

By bringing in professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds, OWN Future Fairs supports students to find out more about the career and life paths they are interested in and explore new industries they are unfamiliar with. At the same time, a parent speaker series helps to guide 21st Century Parents to understand their children better and learn how to support their children navigating today’s increasingly complex world. 

Hands-On Workshops – OWN Academy makes it possible

The power of shared experiences

At OWN Future Fair Natalie carefully curates speakers to make sure they are relatable and authentic when sharing their professional experience to deconstruct the complexity and misconceptions often attached to certain jobs and to encourage students to start thinking about their directions in life.

More importantly, OWN Academy stands for everyone is smart in different ways and takes inspiration from Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory. Each speaker profile is represented by their self-assessment of how they are smart.

The shared experience of an open and inviting environment where questions from parents and students exploring modern career options together are answered- without judgements, pressure or expectations. This is exactly what makes this fair so unique and impactful.

“Students need to have the exploration stage (….) It is important to try things at a much earlier stage”

It was rewarding for Natalie to read the feedback forms after the event, paying tribute to the inspiration that students drew from the event. Also on site, the impact the conversations the students had with the professionals and representatives of modern careers that shared their experience with students and parents alike, was obvious.

“You can see minds being switched on.”

The support system

Making your vision a reality and running a business is hard work. In this interview, Natalie shares what her family’s support means to her. Natalie’s parents often asked her why she started this business because they thought to tackle education is an impossible feat. So it meant a lot to her that they joined her OWN Future Fairs and experienced for themselves the growth of Natalie’s movement.

“It means so much to see them there”

#proud

Regina Larko, host of #impact Podcast, who took part at the OWN Future Fair as a speaker could witness herself the proud support of Natalie’s Mum when they bumped into each other at the registration. Regina is not surprised that Natalie’s family is proud of her. Behind the scenes, Natalie was running OWN Future Fair by herself. An army of amazing student volunteers supported Natalie on site at the Rennaissance College, Ma On Shan, Hong Kong, but it was Natalie, who was solely responsible for the smooth operation, organising, moderating, speaking and coordinating the overall programme.

“There is always going to be unexpected things happen when it comes to live events”

Natalie shares how she pulled off running such a large scale event by herself and enjoyed herself at the same time. In this episode, she also lets us in what did go wrong behind the scenes.

Programmes with impact

OWN Future Fair is just one of the many impactful programmes that Natalie is working on. OWN Academy also runs after-school activities, weekend programs, summer camps, and career workshops for students.
Natalie launched OWN Media channel on Youtube teaching youngsters how to create video content in collaboration with Cartoon Network.

“Content creation is a very important skill to have in today’s world for students”

Growing the movement

Natalie is working hard to grow OWN Future Fair across different cities in South East Asia, Europe and US. She envisions for the OWN Future Fair concept to be adopted all over the globe. As decentralisation of learning is one of Natalie’s biggest passions, she is also working on a new digital platform which allows students to learn from mentors all over the globe. She envisions to set up a new school and ecosystem, reinventing how learning is done in the future. And we have no doubt that she is on track to do just that.

Be the best self you can be every day, shares OWN Academy Founder Natalie Chan Share on X

Click play to find out why it is so important to take ownership of your life and career and why to be the best self you can be every day will make the world a better place.

impACT – Some ideas to make a change

• Start to take ownership of your life and career – no matter what age you are and find helpful resources on the OWN Academy website and follow and like them on Facebook.
• If you are a parent, have an open conversation with your children about what their dreams are and support them to learn more about their career options.
• Be brave enough to be yourself! Discover more about your own passions and talents and reach out to people that work in industries that you want to learn more about.

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If you enjoyed this episode, you will also love hearing from Vince Siu, Co-Founder of Press Start who is all about raising awareness for the importance of play and games in education. Listen here. 

So much goodness ahead. Subscribe.