Yesterday I had the privilege of of being on the panel for the DEIJB Lab’s SOLEMN programme which covered “𝗟𝗮𝘄𝘆𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗞𝗼𝗻𝗴: 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗝𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗠𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀”.
DEIJB Lab is the Diversity, Equality, Inclusion and Belonging Lab set up by HKU Professor Puja Paryani. SOLMEN, or Soaring with Legal Eagles Network is DEIJB Lab’s mentoring programme.
BEIJB Lab and SOLEMN focuses on providing a structured mentoring programme to ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. The students are paired with mentors and the programme runs regular workshops and panels, including the one I was speaking at. Yesterday’s topic focused on demystifying international opportunities for the students.
At the start, while Puja assured me the panel would be fun and informal, I was actually quite nervous and felt out of my comfort zone. I’ve done public speaking in the past, but it’s been a while and quite a lot has changed in my career since then. Also my fellow panellists were very accomplished professionals.
Reality was I had nothing to worry about. It was a very engaging session both for me and the participants. I learnt a lot from the session, especially how there are many different pathways people can take even within a legal career, with the irony that I’ve probably had it quite “easy” especially compared to others.
The students themselves were very inspiring and were all keen to explore international opportunities. And this isn’t because they want to “escape” Hong Kong or their homes, but, in many cases they feel they have the support of their families in Hong Kong.
After the panel discussion I joined the breakout session with some of the students. I was pleasantly surprised as to how engaged, astute and switched on the students were. They asked very intelligent questions and provided well thought out responses. Honestly the true stars were the students.
Some other key takeaways from the panel were that people should always keep their options open, look out for opportunities (especially where you least expect them), be curious and the power of networking (something I’ve written about before).
It was a very rewarding evening and I am glad I got invited to take part in the panel.