YIAN XIE

Future of Design,
Youth Advocate

Yian Xie is an assertive student who can make decisions carefully and logically. Global issues that he cares about include climate change, disability rights and mental health, and he knows that these issues intersect. He is passionate about coding especially web development through making several online games and also planning to set up a coding club at school.

Growing up, Yian remembers a few moments in his life that have contributed to shaping his current character and outlook on life. During primary school, he once earned an award in a class vote, just by being himself. Another student asked why Yian can often be awarded while she could not, which led him to understand that not everyone may congratulate you just because the overall public is behind you. From this experience, he faced a hard lesson in social life and has since learned to develop his soft skills. Later on, when Yian was in grade six, he took the precious opportunity to create a Go club with one of his friends at school. However, he realized despite being the founder, no one was listening to him in that club at all. This experience taught him that power and respect either have to be inherited, like teachers, or earned and has led him to refine his approach toward leadership. Finally, in grade seven, in order to have more time to work on personal stuff, he rarely talked to others in his class. This resulted in him being soon being left out of group activities. As a result, he has learned to strike a better balance and has committed to communicating more with his classmates that year. 

As he continues to work towards high school, he has realized his favorite subject area is design. Despite design class requiring writing, it allows students to create products by themselves which cannot be done in other subjects. In addition to this, the pace of design class is also slower compared to the rest of the subjects. There are only four units in one school year which gives students an opportunity to create their best work in each of them. To expand his breadth of interest, he has taken up badminton, coding in four languages including HTML, JS, CSS, and Python, creating 2D or board games with these aforementioned languages, and playing Go. To spend quality time with his family and friends, he likes to present card tricks and also play games with them. Once he enters high school, he would like the opportunity to join a varsity sports team as well as set up a coding club focused on gaming. 

Looking ahead, Yian aims to continue his passion in coding and gaming to design new innovative online games for his peers. He also wants to conduct more research and exploration into various areas of social and technological impact so that his work can contribute to solving the global issues he cares about, such as climate change, health equity and disabilities inclusion, and leave behind a strong legacy for future generations.