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Steelcase in the backyard Link to the original article: http://tedxpeachtree.com/steelcase-in-the-backyard/ One of the favorite things I used to do when moving into a new environment was to explore the workspaces that were accessible to me. I spent the majority of my first week of college life on campus visiting buildings after buildings, hoping to find a perfect space where I would enjoy the most when studying. Six years later and over 8,000 miles away from home, I found here in Atlanta this familiar spirit that I had lost for a long time. No matter which colleges they belonged to, numerous Georgia Tech students came to the Klaus Advanced Computing Building (KACB) at the center of the campus, simply to find their own favorite spots. Dedicated in 2006, KACB is the home to the College of Computer Science and the College of Computational Science and Engineering. When standing outside the building, you can feel the glass walls and doors are encouraging you to stroll in. The interior of t...

A Month of Unconditional Dedication to Safety Link to the original article: http://tedxpeachtree.com/a-month-of-unconditional-dedication-to-safety/ June is National Safety Month. Each June, the National Safety Council (NSC) organizes this annual observance to educate the public and raise awareness in the leading causes of injuries and deaths. In honor of the NSC celebrating its 100th anniversary of safety awareness this year, I would like to showcase breakthroughs in safety improvement history via TED, in the order of topics the NSC is featuring each week of this month. Week one is on Slips, Trips and Falls, with particular emphasis on falls from heights. Falling is one of the major causes of injuries and fatalities in our work places. Although he might not help you much in preventing injuries in the office, Steve Truglia has stories to share. As a stuntman, the number of times Truglia has fallen out of buildings is most likely more than I have cut my own fingers in the kitchen. See h...

Back in 2009 when I was preparing for the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam Level II, one of my studymates introduced me to the website of Aswath Damodaran . Damodaran is a Finance professor at Stern School of Business at New York University, who teaches Corporate Finance, Valuation, and Portfolio Management. This website was very resourceful when I was learning financial modeling. Recently I revisited the website and learned that the website not only offered financial modeling tutorial, but also concepts for Corporate Finance. I like Professor Damodaran's perspective of Corporate Finance principles in this audio , and I summarized the content as below: In order to maximize the value of the business, all of Corporate Finance is built on three principles: 1. The Investment Principle : determines where businesses invest their resources - invest in assets and projects that yield a return greater than the minimum acceptable hurdle rate. The hurdle rate should be higher for risky p...

The 2013 Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam is around the corner. I volunteered to proctor one of the mock exams with Kaplan this morning. The CFA program is a three-level exam towards earning the CFA designation upon related work experience, and the designation is a global gold standard for finance and investment professionals, particularly in the fields of investment management and financial analysis of stocks, bonds and their derivative assets. I started the Level I exam in 2009, and completed the Level III in 2012. Since then, I have been an affiliate member with both the CFA Institute and the CFA Society of Atlanta. I look forward to accumulating four years of related work experience to become a CFA charter holder, hopefully, in 2017! There are two types of CFA memberships at the Society Level. Regular Membership is for those who have passed CFA Level I and have had four years of related working experience. Affiliate Membership is for those who are not qualified for regular ...

The Exploration Revolution: When TED-Ed met Webby Link to the original article: http://tedxpeachtree.com/the-exploration-revolution-when-ted-ed-met-webby/ After having lived on the other side of the world for over 20 years, in 2009, I decided to come to the States to taste the feeling of leaving my comfort zone. Leaving the comfort zone was quite uncomfortable honestly. After her third attempt, I finally understood the simple sentence “How are you doing?” on the street from a friendly lady who tried to greet me. Apparently the slow-speed English learning tapes in my hometown did not prepare me well enough for the reality. With my heart in my mouth, I searched the web ferociously for good English learning websites, and that was about when I discovered TED. It did not take me long to step into TED Talks without captions from those with captions, not because my English listening ability improved at the speed of light, but because the talks transcended my original intention of purely pick...

Since I started my job search in October 2012, as a girl from Asia, soon I learned of the difficulty in finding work clothes in the United States. I am 5'3'' tall and 115lbs, which is on average in terms of the size of Taiwanese girls. However, in the U.S., I look so small, and the clothes in most of the stores are too big for me. People around me suggested I should look for "Petite" clothes. According to Wikipedia, a petite size is a standard clothing size designed to fit women of shorter height, typically 160cm (5 ft 3 in) or less. Being a frugal shopper, I started with discount stores such as T.J.Maxx, Marshalls, and Ross. I used to be able to find clothes in my size in these stores when I was looking for casual wears. However, I encountered barriers when looking for professional wears, both suits and business casual. Sometime it was the pants that were too loose and long, sometimes it was the tops with shoulder width being too wide for me. And then some local ...

Leave the Comfort Zone - August 9, 2011 - I’d like you to think about a moment when you felt you were growing up. When I was in my sophomore year, my favorite professor Dr. Guo said, "Only when leaving the comfort zone can a person really grow up." The so-called leaving your comfort zone means leaving your family, the friends you are familiar with, and the environment you grew up. Therefore, I made up my mind to study abroad after college. When I was in my senior year, one day I went to a finance professor, Dr. Li's office to ask for advice for schools in the U.S. He gave me a list of all the top schools in the U.S. such as Harvard, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, and so on. The next day I received an email from that professor. A friend of Dr. Li, named Dr. Chow is a finance professor at West Virginia University. He was seeking two students at Dr. Li's department to his new program of master in finance with full tuition waiver. "Studying abroad experience for fr...