32 HandsOn HK Executive Director Ms Sue Toomey （杜曉晴女士）@ Fireside
Interviewer: Zen Kwan
採訪者：關辰
Zen: Thank you for coming today and can you start with telling us more about yourself and what HandsOn does?
Ms Toomey: Sure, well first off thank you for inviting me to come today and I’m thrilled to be talking to one of our youth ambassadors today as well. So, my name is Sue Toomey and I am one of the executive directors of HandsOn in Hong Kong, and we are a local non-profit organization. Our mission is to empower everyone to volunteer, we really believe that everyone has something to give to the community and their fellow neighbors. We also believe that in the process of helping others, people really help themselves too. It’s a really good thing to do for their own well-being. So what HandsOn does is that we partner with more than a hundred other local charities who are doing a whole range of things, community centers, elderly centers, environmental groups, educational groups, organizations supporting animal welfare, food redistribution, plastic waste… you name it! What we do is that we partner with these organizations to develop programs that meet their mission and we also invite volunteers. So we recruit and manage volunteers depending on the organizations, sometimes we just provide volunteers for them and that’s great, sometimes we go a little bit deeper and we co-develop programs together.
Zen: HandsOn is a great platform and I personally use it a lot too. So could you please tell us more about yourself and how your previous workshop worked and are there any skills or lessons that you find important to this day?
Ms Toomey: Yes, that's a great question. Well previous to joining HandsOn, which is around five years ago, loved every minute. I had a corporate life in marketing, advertising and media and previously worked for the Economists Magazine in a role running events and conferences and other big initiatives for Asia and then globally for my last couple years. Couple things which stuck out for me and inspired my transition is that I found that working for the Economists there were many interesting topics, but the ones that actually interested me and kept me thinking even after work hours are social impact. Whether they were around ocean sustainability or LGBTQ+ equality or food security or things about nature were the topics that I was really excited about! I really like to think about those things all day and every day. And hence I decided to move to a non-profit. My role is all quite similar to a leadership role that you would need to bring thoughts and capabilities about developing strategic plans, having strategic visions and being able to create operational plans to bring that vision to life in a real and concrete way. Being able to lead people whether in a corporate or non-profit way is about building trust with the people that you work with, so they want to get on board with you and they want to be part of the effort so there's a shared vision. And I think that any role as a manager, corporate or non-profit, your number one job is helping your teams to be better at what they do. To me, management is all about uplifting, empowering and enabling your team to be successful.
Zen: As you mentioned you have worked in a diverse range of industries before, including marketing, sales and NGO, how do you find your passion and you said you want to make an impact in the work you do and how did you find this passion and any advice for teens who are going to find what they want to do in the future or unsure of what to do in their future career paths?
Ms Toomey: So the first thing I would say is don’t worry. Teens have a long way to go...
Due to word limit, see full transcript at: https://bit.ly/3Em8E4x
Editor: Vynci Law
