About this seminar

Moving to a new country involve making a series of big decisions, choosing an area to settle in, a home, a school, a job, making new friends and colleagues, etc. You may find yourself overwhelmed by the many decisions you face in every step you’ve made yet realise there are many more to make. Many people and channels offer different information and advice, despite everyone have different priorities and criteria. How can we know what is true, distil the right insights and make the best informed decision for ourselves and our families?

Culture is known to be a set of unwritten rules which guide the behaviour of the same group of people. As you are moving into a new country, you are interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds who may share different rules to you. How can you know if you are behaving in a way that is suitable under different rules to form sustainable relationships with others?

Unlike some common vloggers and bloggers who could be influenced by sponsors or biased by their personal experience, this is an independent seminar base on scientific research, such as, behavioural economics, intercultural psychology and neuroscience. Supported by King's College London PhD Impact Fund, this unique seminar aims to increase your decision-making and intercultural capabilities to enable economic and social wellbeing, from the perspective of HKers settling in the UK.

What this seminar covers

This 1.5 hour scientific, practical and interactive online seminar are divided into below two short talks with many groups and individual exercises and activities to facilitate learning impact. Presentation material will be in English, whereas the medium of instruction is Cantonese. If you are not from Hong Kong but interested in knowing more about this or related topic, please contact us for future events.

Short talk 1: How to build effective relationships with people from different cultural background?

• What are the strategies and tactics to interact with other culture?

• What are the communication dos and donts?

• What is the common misunderstanding between UK and Hkers?

• Workplace or professional etiquette.

Short talk 2: How to avoid common decision-making bias and errors in risky and uncertain choices when moving into a new country?

For examples, deciding on:

• Locations

• Properties

• Investments

• Careers

• Job interviews

You’ll develop an informed awareness of the barriers that can impede your decision-making capabilities, e.g., cognitive bias. You’ll gain knowledge and strategy on skills to interact with people from different background effectively.

Who should attend?

This seminar is designed specifically for people who have recently moved to the UK from Hong Kong. It will also aid individuals looking to advance their critical thinking and interpersonal skills. Regardless of the educational and professional backgrounds, or life stages, you’ll gain knowledge to make better decisions and connections with others. Job seekers, employees and entrepreneurs can use these new capabilities to help boost your career or business growth. Homemakers and retirees can learn new skills for your personal or family planning and build sustainable relationships with others from a different cultural background in a new country.

This seminar is for you if you want to:

1. Make better decisions in uncertain situation

2. Build more sustainable relationships with people from different cultural background

3. Gain critical thinking skills

Benefits to participants

Upon completion of the seminar, participants are expected to:

• Acquire basic understanding about decision-making blind spots and cognitive bias, to make more informed, bias-proof decisions.

• Improved intercultural awareness and skills to form sustainable relationships with others.

About the speaker

Valentina Chan is the founder of social enterprise YKC Venture which aims to use science to make a better connected world. She is also a PhD candidate of the Business School at King’s College London, as part of the strategy, international management and entrepreneurship research group. She investigates decision-making under risk and uncertainty and how the human mind and behaviour may differ under different language contexts.

She has over 15 years of experience working for large global companies, such as, PwC and eBay, in roles focused on growth. She has been a Teaching Fellow at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for four years where she has received the annual faculty award of “Excellent achievement / performance in teaching” out of about 500 faculty members by pioneering teaching interventions that create lasting impact to students’ lives. Her teaching philosophy is to inspire people to become life-long learners by equipping them with transferrable critical and thinking skills. She has led many workshops and strategy sessions for Fortune 500 clients.

She speaks fluent English, Mandarin and Cantonese, as well as elementary Italian and Thai. She has lived in multiple countries and is experienced in leading teams across cultures and industries. She is also a qualified senior martial arts instructor and technical scuba diver who enjoys cooking and playing the piano.

For more information, or if you’d like to receive future event information, please contact info@ykcventure.com.

This event is a brought to you by Bishop Ho Ming Wah Association & Community Centre which has a long tradition in supporting and enriching communities, especially Chinese. Presented by YKC Venture with the support of King's Business School Impact Fund which awards researchers to engage the public through research to create impact.