3. Has the WWA influenced your personal or professional life in any way?

For sure it has. I made many friends at WWA events including speakers, audience members, and DCB staff. At a previous WWA event I met a parent speaker on the panel, and later stayed in touch. We are establishing collaboration in the field of structural innovation.

At this year's annual summit, I connected with teachers from the University of Notre Dame and the Keynote Speaker Dr Zhuge Yue. My daughters are slightly younger than Dr Zhuge Yue's children, and we are both Tsinghua alumni. We started to talk about university application experience, and now we are exchanging ideas on educational development. I also connected with DCB teacher Yosef Karasik and discussed cooperation projects with Israel. He attended the Israeli forum at Tsinghua University as a guest. I never imagined that I would make connections in my children's school community that have meaningful impacts on my own career.

4. Over the past three years, have you witnessed any development or changes in WWA?

WWA has grown to be more diverse. There are more ways for both students and parents to get involved. The collaboration in WWA has also become more dimensional. Compared with three years ago, WWA activities now are more like a comprehensive expo.

I also witnessed that the community is constantly changing. I remember that the first WWA events were English-only events. Recently, WWA has become bilingual, and there are even interpretation devices on site. The change itself is objective, and it also brings new opportunities. More parents now get to share their industrial expertise in the language they are comfortable using for an in-depth conversation. In this year’s annual summit, Dr Chi Yufeng shared many intriguing ideas, and you could see from the response of the audience it worked well.

5. As a professional in higher education, what do you think of the educational significance of WWA to students?

Education takes place everywhere. Educational work is a silent process of nurturing growth. For example, we work with experts in Israel to help Tsinghua professors promote technology applications. Many young people joined us along the way, including graduate and doctoral students. While discussing a potential technology application with the professionals, you can see that those students are learning and proliferating.

DCB students are much younger, which means the growth is more subtle. My two children both participated in WWA activities. When my younger daughter applied for a student leadership position, I could see that her application touched on many observations and insights from WWA activities, then processed and explained with her own understanding. Students are not always instantly inspired by a WWA event, but it is extremely valuable to be immersed in such an educational environment, discussing social and industrial topics with parents and peers.

During the process, the students absorbed a lot of information. At some point in the future, when the time is right, this information, together with students' own ideas, will grow into something incredible.