「Hear Her Voice」1：Improving public speaking
[Theme review]
[The “Hear Her Voice” activity was a regular speech exercise, hosted by Huang Xinyao. Guest Ding Ping talked about “How the family of origin would have influenced your attitudes towards marriage and romantic relationships”. The guest and host introduction and video playback of this speech sharing session are as follows.]
Host: Sheri Zhang
Sheri Zhang moved from Shanghai to Cambridge in September 2017. She has a Master’s degree in Communication and Information System from Shanghai Jiaotong University. She is a Staff Software Engineer, TPIP manager and DIB leader at Arm Ltd Cambridge UK within the Machine Learning Group.
Sheri is super energetic, she enjoys travelling, gardening, cooking, and all kinds of sports, such as cycling, snowboarding, kayaking, scuba diving, golf, marathon, hiking. She loves challenges and to date has completed 5 Half Marathons, 4 Full Marathons, and a 42km Trail Run . She journals her adventures in life using her blog. She has two dogs, one Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in UK and one Border Collie in China. Currently, Sheri is a member of UKCWC committee helping to organise an array of events.
Guest: Huang Xinyao
Xinyao is a senior investment analyst, managing fixed income portfolios at Western Asset Management. A CFA and FRM charter holder, she is a CFA Digest Abstractor and a member of CFA UK Structured Learning Committee. She has a strong academic interest and teaches at universities as a visiting lecturer.
A CFA and FRM charter holder, she earned her master’s degree in Edinburgh University and graduated from Newcastle University. She is a mother of two, enjoys reading, playing badminton, running and learning from new life experiences.
She shares the felling of online community and public speaking to give an opening speech of “Hear Her Voice”.
Guest: Ding Ping
A new starter who has recently started her early career in the UK. Ding Ping graduated from University of Bristol with an MSc degree in Political Science. After graduating from University of Bristol, Ding Ping continued with her education and obtained a master degree in Psychology at BPP University. She has always been interested in feminism, gender studies and psychology.
The inspiration of her presentation comes from her dissertation. During Ding Ping’s dissertation she interviewed a few participants, which enabled her to learn about their past experiences and how they have shaped their attitudes towards marriage. This presentation will share these stories with you, and most importantly, give you a more in-depth insight into how the family of origin would have influenced our attitudes towards marriage and romantic relationships.
Summary (By Xinyao Huang)
Hello everyone, my name is XinYao. I’m glad to be here today, and see you guys around…virtually. This is funny, it reminds me of an old technique to cope with public speaking nervousness – that is to imagine your audience as if they are not there. Apparently I don’t need to do that today, actually,I have to imagine you are there, smiling, nodding, interacting with me to keep myself going.
My mom called me a couple weeks ago to check out if everything was ok as we had been working from home for a long time, she knows how much I love outdoor activities. Let’s put it this way, even if I decide I’m going to stay at home to do something for a whole weekend, I guarantee you would see me at least going out for a run or a coffee on Saturday and Sunday.
But now, I literally haven’t stepped out from my little house for two weeks, if not three weeks. And, for the reason everyone knows, this has been the pattern for me or for many people for the past half a year or so. She thought I would be depressed and was ready for me to moan about it, but actually I said ‘everything is fine mom, I’m having fun, we had a virtual team drink & quiz night yesterday with colleagues, I am about to finish the book that I wanted to read a long time ago and there’s a very interesting presentation about bamboo ceiling that I plan to watch tomorrow…; oh oh we even played escape room organized by UKCWC a couple weeks ago’. ‘Oh nice’ she sounds surprised, and, in fact, I was surprised myself realizing how many things I have been doing while being restricted to stay at home. I didn’t feel lonely, and quiet on the opposite, I felt as if my social circle or social experience actually got expanded during this lockdown period.
Like today, although I have to imagine your faces, you are there. We will get to know each other as this hear her voice programme continues, we may even become friends offline one day.
Of course, I miss my family in China and haven’t had any chance to meet my old friends for a long time. I want my normal life back, I wish COVID19 can be over soon, I hope everyone gets back to their normal life as soon as possible and be healthy. But now, staying at home is probably the most responsible thing to do, without social activities in real life, Online communities really help with mental health. So, find a group with common interests, share thoughts, feelings and interesting things, at least you won’t feel lonely in this way. With mutual support, we will get through together, and you may surprise yourself by learning something unexpectedly new.
Talking about online communities and surprises, I have to say UKCWC is one of the biggest surprises for me in the past few months, a nice one though. If you happen to know me in person, or say in real life. Then you must be very surprised to see me joining this group.
Let me tell you a bit about myself, I’m the only girl in my team and the only Chinese in the firm. This is not unusual in my life, it has always been like this, I studied science in school, economics in University and then entered my career in this buy-side firm in the finance industry, either I was only one or I was one of the very few women or Chinese in the group.
Check the full video below.