One Sneak Peek Into A Journey from Pet Projects to Purposeful Careers

When I first entered university, I was really confused as to what I wanted to pursue.

To alleviate my frustration, I took to attending various events in NUS, as well as scrolling through linkedin for the profiles of interesting people.

One of the interesting profiles that I came across, repeatedly, both at events and on LinkedIn, would be that of Adriel Yong.

As such, I have always seen him as my role model, and was really excited when I got the opportunity to interview him.

Adriel is currently Head of Investments at Ascend Angels, an angel investment firm, and was on the founding team of well-known local charity Access Singapore.

Access Singapore offers career exposure opportunities for disadvantaged students in Singapore.

He is very active in community work, and served as an ambassador for Roses of Peace, a ground-up, youth-driven initiative that seeks to bridge the gap in interfaith discourse by empowering youth to be change leaders and peace ambassadors.

Adriel also co-founded internship network InternFirst, which lists internship opportunities in both venture capital and startups.

Here are my main takeaways from our conversation together:

1. Great opportunities can come from pet projects

“Over the years, I serendipitously met various friends through the National Youth Council’s events and volunteering in grassroots initiatives. It was interesting how friends from these different pockets eventually came together to help start Access.  At the start, it was only a two-week long programme, where we would bring in speakers to help teach soft skills, guide students on building their CV and bring them on company visits and students would get to do a week long work attachment where they shadowed various employees in the company to gain firsthand experience in the working world.

Soon, we built up a pretty large base of corporate partners. HEPMIL Group, the parent company that runs the social media website SGAG, was one of our early partners back in 2019. We also brought the students to see SMRT’s command centre, and secured more high profile partnerships with corporates like Endowus, SHEIN, and Resorts World Sentosa. We were lucky enough to meet then SM Tharman, who shared his views on social mobility and kindly introduced us to various schools in his constituency.

Over the years, Access has had more than 100 volunteers supporting us across our various functions like partnerships and programmes. We also built out a large network of facilitators to help us execute our programmes. Several of our early donors like BinjaiTree Foundation, Majurity Trust and National Youth Council have continued to support us significantly with funding which helped us to hire a full time team and make our operations sustainable. Eventually, we received charity status from the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF).

During COVID-19, I launched an internship spreadsheet as I saw numerous peers scrambling to find new internships when their offers were rescinded. Over 200 people found jobs through this spreadsheet, and eventually GovTech called me out for this. I even got on a call with Li Hongyi* from GovTech, and they were talking about how to leverage tech to solve the some of the unemployment issues during COVID. He is a very smart man, his brain works at least 100 times faster than mine (Laughs).

*_{Li Hongyi is the first-born son of former Prime Minister, now Senior Minister, Lee Hsien Loong. He is currently the director of Open Government Products at GovTech.}

When I did my spreadsheet, the newspapers interviewed me and subsequently a lot of venture capitalists reached out. Then Jeremy Au, former Chief of Staff at venture capital firm Monk’s Hill Ventures, listed an opportunity on my spreadsheet. I subsequently joined him in building the BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech podcast, which is now a leading Southeast Asian's number one startup and venture capital podcast with more than 20,000 listeners. Afterwards, we compiled our top 10 stories on the podcasts into a book with profits going to The Codette Project. We got Minister of State Alvin Tan to write the foreword and also received funding support from the National Youth Council for the book launch event.”

2. Be open to a change of plans

“At the age of 18, I was a typical Junior College graduate who thought success was receiving a government scholarship. A friend of mine recommended me for an internship at the Ministry of Communications and Informations* (MCI) where they were doing a lot of cross-functional work involving senior levels of government.

*_{Recently renamed to Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI)}

Across my teenage years, I considered various career pathways such as being a chef, being a police officer or doing trust and safety in big tech.  The various side projects and internships I have done over the years have led to numerous enlightening conversations that better helped me to understand my strengths and weaknesses, as well as pathways that might be more suitable for me.

I think at the end of the day, you really have to decide which intersection of learning, financial rewards, mission and people makes you the most happy. This will help you to decide your path.”

Connect with Adriel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrielyongcj/

Join our telegram channel: https://t.me/onesneakpeekinto

Stay tuned for more insights from our interview series as we continue to explore the stories of trailblazers breaking barriers and redefining success.