VINH NGUYEN

Vinh Nguyen is founder & CEO of the Young Entrepreneur Forum. His organisation creates unprecedented and unique programs that help young entrepreneurs to achieve their goals. Vinh is on a mission to change youth communities, stimulate education in Vietnam, promote peaceful and inclusive societies. He does whatever he can to add value to the enchanting beauty of Vietnam, accelerate his business, innovate his industry and contribute for the Vietnam's Economic Growth. Previously he has been a part of Harvard University’s HPAIR; World Business Dialogue, Germany; and World Bank Fellowship, USA.

“If we want our teams to feel safe and comfortable at work, we need to foster an environment that supports that safety and comfort.”

Q: Tell us a few things about your country, and also your life's story!

I come from Vietnam, an awesome country which has been recognised as a rising star in Southeast Asia's economy. We're a well-known country of staggering natural beauty and cultural uniqueness. Pho, Banh Mi and Vietnamese coffee are things that people like to mention when they talk about Vietnam cuisine. When I was a kid, I was impressed by how people in my country lived optimistically and recognised challenges to change it step by step. The thing I have learned from the Vietnamese people is their solidarity and love. If a war can foster bitterness and animosity between classes and destabilize the economy, we can address it surely by our compassion. When I started working, I realised that I could create a community of people who absolutely care about others and have a willingness to provide their own practical resources in entrepreneurship. We would love to help young and energetic people to do business in the right direction and with true purpose. We believe that people skills can make positive change. That was the day that Young Entrepreneur Forum was born. 

Q: What was your experience of the global pandemic crisis? Did it change your life and/or your views about the world? If so, how?

As the coronavirus outbreak spread around the globe, we learnt a lot about people’s thoughts and concerns. My nephew needed to stay at home with me during the pandemic. It was a time where I could not just focus on my remote work. I found myself struggling to strike a work-life balance, adjust myself and stay focused without reacting to the noisy environment around me. During the lockdown, large groups of society have been isolated, with people’s regional and global movements greatly restricted. We changed our working mode and improved our workload based on quick online meetings of around 15-30 minutes. Moreover, the economic status of many individuals and communities has changed rapidly because of COVID-19, driving potential changes in human interaction. We are always looking for better ways of delivery, service support and finding new industries to explore. Now it's time for us to test it out and get rid of old and inefficient methods. The world has just spontaneously opened a completely new opportunity for us all.

Q: What are some of the key challenges in your society currently?

Although the gender gap in literacy rates has been significantly reduced, ethnic minority groups, people with disabilities, girls and young people living in rural areas still face obstacles in accessing education. There are considerable differences in enrolment as well as drop-out rates between groups of young people depending on their gender, ethnicity and location.

Secondly, young people account for a large share of the labour force, with nearly half aged between 15 and 39 years. Making the transition to a higher value economy, Vietnam is facing the challenge of producing jobs for its young people, expanding the labour force and providing them with relevant skills for the growing service and manufacturing sectors.

Furthermore, Vietnam’s ambitious infrastructure projects to expand industrial parks; build more entertainment facilities, hotels and resorts in exotic locations; and turn agricultural farmland into urban areas place a strain on its ecosystem, destroying many forests, and depleting its natural resources.  Without a long-term development strategy with an emphasis on sustainability, maybe the state of pollution in Vietnam is likely to become a problem.

Q: Can you share with us some of the hurdles that you have had to overcome in your life so far? How did you handle them? 

We built a framework for our team members who came from different countries. We also didn’t just expect them to follow it, we arranged small meetings to make sure all team members were clear on who was responsible for what at the onset of a project. Empowerment is the key to letting people make decisions and solve problems on their own within that framework. Let people build their own towers, help them come up with new ideas and thrive on their own. That autonomy, and the lack of micromanagement, is what you need to succeed while scaling.

Understanding problems with your unconscious bias can sometimes sabotage your results. When you work with people, be sure to listen carefully in order to collect different feedback. It comes from a cognitive ability to see what is going on around us. In the same vein, having a solution-oriented mindset is ideal when it comes to maximising the effectiveness of your team. Solutions-oriented people don't let past results impact them, instead they keep their focus on what needs to happen for them and their team to continue moving forward.

Q: If you were to ask one thing from our current leaders, what would it be?

What values are most important to you as a leader? 

Q: Why is the role of a mentor important for you?

It's important to find a mentor who is willing and able to take you on. A good mentor is someone who will support and encourage you to reach for higher goals, to take the next step and to push yourself to succeed in business. The perfect mentor is one who is experienced in an area where you need a little bit of extra help.

Mentors look for ways to encourage personal growth. Once they understand your skills and abilities, they may put you to work on a specific task to see how well you perform. Based on your performance, they might give you another challenge to test you or give you detailed feedback on what you did well and what you can improve upon. Mentors look for teaching moments that help you grow along the way. 

Q: Do you have a lesson that life has taught you and you would like to share? 

If we want our teams to feel safe and comfortable at work, we need to foster an environment that supports that safety and comfort. Our environment plays a huge role in how we feel, how we think, how we carry ourselves, who we hang out with, what we care about and what we do. We need to ask our team for feedback on ways we can better support them and when they share that feedback, we need to listen, support and celebrate their ideas. 

Q: Name a project, a foundation or a person in your country that you think is doing great work in helping improve other people's lives!

Young Entrepreneur Forum is a platform that provides innovative solutions in the current modern world through initiating multicultural and intergenerational dialogues about pioneering trends and ground-breaking changes in different fields of industry. (https://www.facebook.com/theyoungentrepreneurforum)

Q: What are some of the challenges that women in your country face and what efforts are being made towards gender equality?

Challenges faced by Vietnamese women include societal and cultural notions of women being homemakers

In Vietnam, just like in the developing world in general, women continue to account for a large percentage of the working poor, they earn less income and are more often affected by unemployment and precarious working conditions, when compared to men. Women in Vietnam are principally found in lower paid occupational sectors or in vulnerable employment. The majority of women work as unpaid family workers, and in largely "invisible" areas of the economy as domestic workers, homeworkers and in the entertainment industry.

To solve this problem, men and women should talk to one another more so that men can see how hard it is to be a woman in Vietnam. As Vietnam’s economy shifts from farming to manufacturing, women are often able to find employment opportunities within key export sectors such as textiles, footwear and seafood processing. In recent years, the Vietnamese government has passed reforms to drive progress towards better recruitment and working environments for women. For example, in terms of healthcare, female workers are entitled to breaks and days off depending on their circumstances. For mothers with children under 12 months, they are entitled to a 60-minute break each day during work hours for breastfeeding and rest.

Q: Share with us a phrase, a poem or a story that you love or you find interesting!

Praise Song for the Day, by Elizabeth Alexander

Q: Can you share with us a project that you would like to make happen for your country or a cause that you are passionate about? 

Young Entrepreneur Forum. We've been creating the next generation who feel they are confident to make changes through entrepreneurship. We're happy to support them with re-skilling and upskilling programs, creating business opportunities and providing sessions on leadership. From that, they can become better leaders in the future.