I grew up in the east end of Willowdale (and still live and worship there), part of the “borough” of North York, which was changed to a “city” and then later became part of the City of Toronto. You get a sense of how long I’ve been around and how I’ve witnessed the changing face of the land I was born in. My parents immigrated from Hong Kong in 1968 in the first wave of applicants to the new points-based immigration system after race-based restrictions were finally relaxed following the Chinese Exclusion Act.
I wrote a case on women in leadership that kept me up at night. It was on the topic of gender differences and women underrepresented in STEM fields. While writing it, I was terrified that I would get in over my head on a tremendously sensitive and divisive topic. But that made it a rewarding and transformative case to teach because it touched on essential questions about identity and truth in relationships.
I use trauma and tragedy in my teaching. It sounds morbid, but we can all identify with stories about people’s struggles, and such experiences connect directly with organizational behaviour and ethics.
There was a moment in my 20s when I broke down in tears with the realization that God truly loved me. With that, there’s been nothing else that has really mattered.
I sometimes feel that people have a narrow view of God’s intelligence and mastery based on how they think he accomplishes his purposes (like a moralistic answer-to-prayer dispenser who controls the world by manipulating individual outcomes). Given everything we know about the social, biological, physical and astronomical sciences, I realize that the way he has designed the world’s systems are tremendously interrelated, intricate and intergenerational. So I’d ask Jesus, “Tell me how it all works” and hold on tight to my seat for the next few years. Relatedly, I would ask, “Tell me how all the things we enjoy now come from the godliness and virtue of generations past.”
I love the religious and educational heritage of the Redeemer community and the ice rinks nearby! The heritage is a tremendous gift that students have inherited and a potential light to so many others who don’t know us. As I have three near-college-aged children myself, I sense that today’s young adults, believing and non-believing, are losing their grasp of who they really are and what a life of faith and love means in a world that is increasingly self-consumed, fractured and media driven.