U.S. youth leaders encourage Chinese Americans to show courage in realizing self-value

A group of U.S. youth leaders on Saturday encouraged younger generations of overseas Chinese to display their individuality and be bold in realizing their self-value.

Speaking at the BRI Silicon Valley Youth Forum sponsored by the Bridge Road International (BRI) Foundation, Andrew Yang, founder of national entrepreneurship fellowship Venture for America, Sanjeev Saxena, CEO of POC Medical System, an Indo-U.S. company dedicated to finding a tool to fight cancer, and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs shared with a host of young students their respective experience in starting businesses or serving the American public.

Young said he was offered a "fancy job" as a corporate attorney after he completed law school. However, he wanted to be an entrepreneur and started a business at the age of 25. In April last year, he announced his intention to run in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Saxena encouraged young Chinese Americans to feel free to do what they think is meaningful to society.

"When you want to do something, you just go and look it up to see what you're doing and what can make a difference in this world and what you are excited about," he said.

"Don't worry about ... what the world is going to say ... when you have your own answer, you'll find your purpose right there and you'll be able to do a phenomenal job from that time on," he added.

A 14-year-old girl from American High School in Fremont in Northern California, who preferred to be identified as Maxine, said she felt very much inspired by the stories of the guest speakers.

She said she had thought that entrepreneurship was very "daunting," but realized now that to be an entrepreneur is just about mindset.

"When you have the mindset and know that you have to step up and have courage, you can make all this happen," said the freshman of the Fremont high school.

Lucas Liang, a 13-year-old student of Hopkins Junior School in Fremont, said he got much inspiration from the panel speakers about his future career.

"From the guest speakers, we learned a lot about entrepreneurship," he said.

He said he was very curious about how one of the speakers demonstrated entrepreneurship at such a young age of 14 or 15.

The forum was held to educate younger generations of Chinese Americans to be more aware of their sense of responsibility as a member of the Chinese community, said BRI Co-Chair Betty Yuan.