Season 3 - Episode 7 | Journey of Resilience - From Child Refugee to Corporate Warrior to Entrepreneur: Chrystie Dao (Vietnam)

Join Dr. Ramesh and Chrystie Dao, an inspiring entrepreneur and venture builder with a rich, multicultural background. Chrystie shares her compelling journey from fleeing Vietnam as a refugee child, to carving out a successful international career in banking and tech entrepreneurship. Thriving in different cities from Sydney, London to Singapore, and ultimately back to her ancestral home of Hanoi, Chrystie shares her early life challenges, such as dealing with racism and adapting to new environments, which built her resilience and shaped her entrepreneurial mindset. 

Chrystie now plays a pivotal role in Vietnam's startup ecosystem, focusing on venture building, social impact and sustainability. Additionally, she shares her practices of meditation and mindfulness, which help her manage crises and maintain balance. This groundedness brings to life her commitment and vision to contribute to her country's thriving startup ecosystem and build a brighter future for the Vietnamese people.

3 Key Insights from this Podcast:

1. Resilience and Adaptability: Chrystie's journey from child refugee to a successful international banking executive and entrepreneur highlights the importance of resilience and adaptability in overcoming life's challenges and seizing new opportunities.
2. Mindfulness and Meditation: Practices like meditation and mindfulness help manage stress, enhance introspection and maintain balance, crucial for navigating the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey.
3. Sustainability and Social Impact: Focusing on sustainable practices and contributing to social impact initiatives create meaningful, long-lasting change and ensure a better future for the next generations.

Host: Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra, Author, Podcast Host, Founder of Talent Leadership Crucible & Founder of Impact Velocity

Guest Speaker: Ms. Chrystie Dao, Managing Director of Vietnam Silicon Valley Foundation, Venture Builder, Investor, Payments Executive, Founder & CEO of Exceler8 Data Analytics

Tune in, and together we'll be Thriving in the Age of Disruption. 

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Transcript

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 00:00

Chrystie, welcome to Thriving in the Age of Disruption podcast. We started this podcast in December of 2021, during the Covid times, because I want to give the people who are listening to a slice of life variety from different people, so that they can see that the journey to entrepreneurship is very varied. And at the same time, you can start anywhere, and there's no right or wrong answer about it. Some of the people who have participated in our discussions, they range from entrepreneurs to impact change makers to people in the ecosystem, like yourself. So, let's start off with our discussion. Christy, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about what you do in life and your journey. 

Chrystie Dao 00:45

Sure. Thank you, Dr Ramesh, for having me on the podcast. The best way to describe me - Made in Saigon, assembled in Sydney, improved in London, commercialized in Singapore and now repackaged in Hanoi. So that kind of sums up my journey in life. I was a child of refugee parents. My parents left Vietnam on a boat with me in tow and my older brother when we were quite young. So, we sailed the open seas and landed in island off Indonesia, very close to Singapore, where I'd been living the last eight years. We finally resettled in Australia. I grew up in Sydney. I was educated there, and embarked on a banking career, which took me to London, and spent a lot of time in Europe as well. So, I worked in many cities in Europe. Came back to Sydney for a few years and felt another need to move and learn and spread my wings. So, I ended up in Singapore in 2016 and that's where I started my entrepreneurship journey. Back in actually, February I found myself moving back to Hanoi, and that was a very spiritual calling for my ancestors to come back to really contribute to the thriving sad ecosystem in Vietnam. So, this is where I met you. So that's pretty much my journey in a nutshell. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 02:02

We've heard about Vietnam's past and a lot of people who had to move out during the troubled times. How was it for you to grow up in an environment outside of Vietnam when you were in Sydney? How was it like?

Chrystie Dao 02:15

I was pretty young when I left, so I have sketchy memories of my childhood, but I still sometimes I have these flashbacks of my escape on the boat. We had three tries, and we finally succeeded on the third go, I believe. And I still have flashbacks of my movements as a child, escaping what was that, and my journey on the boat. Actually, I started Primary School in Australia. And as back in those days, Australia was a very white culture, very white country, and Asians were quite foreign. I think the first wave of Vietnamese were in the late 70s and 80s. Was very few Vietnamese kids at school in Australia. I grew up in Sydney, so I experienced, I guess, a lot of racism, but a very young age, you didn't know what racism was. It was treated differently, and you were called different names. I guess that's where I build thick skin and resilience and to get used to the fact that I was different and accepted my difference because I wasn't white, I wasn't blonde, wasn't blue eyed, so that kind of made me a little bit stronger later life, but yeah, so I was always different, which kind of made me to believe that to be different is fine, and to accept being different.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 03:31

Excellent. I was born in Sri Lanka, and my parents left in the early 70s for Singapore to give us a better opportunity, as well as access to grow up with other things that was difficult to have during that time because of their internal turmoil. I remember as a six year old, flying out to Singapore was difficult because I had all these attachments to the extended family, and then I was going to be living with just my parents, so it took a while for me to grow up and let go of that hurt or the upset. So, thank you for sharing your story. What I wanted to talk about was the entrepreneurial mindset, and you're someone who has actually spent enough time in the corporate world, as well as gone and been an entrepreneur yourself, and now you're also involved with venture fund as well as incubation. I say that someone who has an entrepreneurial mindset is a person who is resourceful. That means you bump up against a problem, and you're able to define what the problem is, and you look at getting the problem sorted out. Number two, it said, you're also very effective in dealing with uncertainty and in managing risk. And lastly, of course, you're someone who is able to create value, both financial and non-financial, value, not just for yourself, but also for everyone else. Let's hear a little bit about your own entrepreneurial journey and how this mindset has supported you in your journey.

Chrystie Dao 05:00

Sure, there's a saying the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So, my parents were very entrepreneurial people, and had multiple businesses in Australia when I was growing up. But interestingly, my father was very entrepreneurial. He started the first English school in Saigon back in 1970 and this was on the back of this great interest after learning English, because a lot of Americans were stationed in Vietnam. 

Chrystie Dao 05:24

So, my dad had a very thriving business, which is English school. So, when my parents moved to Australia, they had multiple businesses, the first being a bakery, Banh Mi shop, right? And that was around mid-1980s and it was the first Vietnamese bakery, and I still remember the shop name, called the French Hot Bread shop. As a young child, I was forced to help my parents work on the weekend I was serving customers. And then, having moved from the bakery, they opened another one, another bakery, and then they moved on to have other businesses, such as in real estate. They had a Vietnamese sport shop, and I had also what they called a lottery shop in Australia, where you can go and buy a lotto. Having worked in many of my parents’ businesses taught me to be quite entrepreneurial. I saw how they were dealing with things, and I saw my parents having to do with many difficult situations as well, because in the life of an entrepreneur, it's always ups and downs, right? 

Chrystie Dao 06:23

And I saw they had to work really long hours, always buying back finances and trying to grow the business and throwing everything they had into the business. I saw that growing up, and I saw to myself that I would never be an entrepreneur, because I saw how difficult it was. And so that kind of shaped my career and chose a banking career where I felt that it was stable, gave me a stable income, but it also allowed me to travel the world and see different countries. And so that's what I set up my career to become. And I did live in many cities. I did experience amazing things as part of an over 20-year banking career, but something was a myth along my career path, and I thought that I wanted to do something for myself. There was a calling, you know, to be my own boss. But even as a banker, I remember the way I dealt with my clients or within an organization, I was always looking outside the box in terms of my own team or my own products. Always trying to forge alliances, trying to look at how I could provide more for my customers, more for my employer. So, it was always looking at, okay, how can I work with that team or the app team to provide a much more global solution for my clients, and not very much, just whatever my team was tasked with. 

Chrystie Dao 07:44

I was always wanting to solve problems for my clients right looking beyond borders all the time, although I was maybe stationed in either Australia or London or Singapore, I was looking at, how do I offer something much more valuable, so that my customers always choose me as ultimate provider. So I think my childhood, growing up with having worked my parents various businesses, and seeing that, helped shape my mind and shape the way that I was operating, even as a banker, yeah, it's always about solving a problem, a need for my customers, and that kind of played to my stress, right? Because clients really wanted to work with me, because I could offer them something much more than what they bargain for.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 08:26

It's spot on about solving a problem, because that's the resourcefulness aspect of an entrepreneurial mindset. You can actually use that in a corporate setting as well, and so you're adding value, not just to yourself, but to the team, to the company, by having that a way of thinking, and what is it that you're doing right now?

Chrystie Dao 08:45

Okay, it's back to my story. So, I became an entrepreneur and built two companies. One was a FinTech and Singapore, the other one was an AI technology company. So, I came to Vietnam or Hanoi in particular to really build up my tech team. But I got more than what I bargained for, what was a calling, which I thought was much bigger than building company, and that was really trying to come back and help, you know, contribute to the thriving data ecosystem Vietnam. So that led me to my current role, where I play as a venture builder VSV Capital and VSV Foundation. At VSV Foundation, it's really around working with much more social impact startups and helping them build out the business, raise capital, and help them to scale and be successful in their ideas.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 09:32

And what's a typical pain point for many of these social impact startups?

Chrystie Dao 09:38

So, what I'm saying really is people have great ideas, but it's that, how do you actually make those ideas very commercial, like bringing commercial acumen to that particular idea, right? So, it's looking at the business model. How can I scale? How do I build an ecosystem around me to support? How do I get investors, right? How do I get customers? How do I test that idea, if it's really viable? And this is where guess my banking experience has really come home to roost, which is really allowing me to really leverage everything that I've learned, and that's really around not just financial analysis element, but looking at businesses from a different perspective, and then using my connection to reach out to my network and seeing and then connecting people. So, I think in this world, it's not what you know, and it's really abounding, building that ecosystem, leverage the connections, and then helping connecting people. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 10:36

Excellent, given your experience in the corporate world, as well as now in startups ecosystem, what do you see about women in leadership in these two areas? And what's your advice to young women?

Chrystie Dao 10:52

I was young at one stage, and I always been a very ambitious, driven person, so I've always wanted to be the number one in everything that I did, right, in my career, in my job, and I always have surrounded myself with mentors, right? So very early on, I had both female and male mentors, and I really believe in the power of the network, so I used to do a lot of networking, which means it takes a lot of time out of your day, whereby you can spend time with your family or friends. For me, it was really important to build that ecosystem, to have the network whereby I could call on people where I need support. But it's really having the belief in myself, having belief that I can do it, I know it's hard work that's really having the confidence to really move out of your comfort zone.

Chrystie Dao 11:40

And that's really how my journey of entrepreneurship came along. Because all these years I was very in a comfortable role at a very good role, financial was doing very well, but I really wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone. I was brought through many training leadership programs with all the banking organizations that work for. And then people used to say to me, you're really good at this, that and that, but then how do you test that you're very good? What is the litmus test to see how good you are? And that is really testing how good you are prepared to yourself, right? So that's why I took the leap of faith and decided to go up my own to really test whether really good, to see how resilient I am, to see how good my network is, and to see what I'm really made of.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 12:26

That's right, yeah, so you've called that some really important point is about having mentors and having them early, whether it's male or female mentors. And the other point is the power of network, and there's no shortcut to that, because you've got to be out there building those relationships so that when you want to call on them, there is a real connection, and people are willing to step forward and provide you with that support. But in the process of these two you've also developed along the way a belief in yourself, like a kind of confidence, so that you are you can always be on the edge, to step out and to take on something new as part of your own fulfilling journey in life. I describe crisis as a setback, and it sometimes can be a failure, and it's one of those moments where you either die or you move on. So, our response to the crisis is really critical. And as an entrepreneur, we would be facing a lot of these setbacks on even a daily basis. And you actually alluded to some of these as you were growing up with entrepreneurial parents who kept expanding their business and what they had to deal with in terms of the time component, as well as always having to manage the cash flow for expanding the business and managing what are the commitments they had in your own personal life? How did you deal with prices or setbacks, and what practices do you actually follow?

Chrystie Dao 13:57

Everybody, like any economic cycle, go through cycles right up and down. I'd say to people, when my life changed from a corporate slave into entrepreneurship, it felt like I was in a constant rollercoaster ride and was always more down than we're up. So, there was more days of lows that were days of high, yes, and so what I learned is I spent a lot of time questioning and introspection. I started to take on meditation. I always thought that meditation was too slow for me, right? Because I always love fast sport. I used to do kickboxing, anything was fast or with me, martial art. Therefore, I never used to focus on yoga or Pilates or meditation because I thought it was too slow for me, but during times of crisis, I talked about to really look really within the finances. Spend a lot of time in introspection and really starting to look at mindfulness as practice and meditation, which really helped me to finance this internally within myself, which I guess it was there. But I spent too much time racing against the club, always racing against myself. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 15:05

Yeah, that's a great point, the ability to slow down, because in a crisis, if we can slow down our reaction, then we have the opportunity to breathe and to really sense what we need to do next, rather than just do an auto reaction, or we'll still get paralyzed and do nothing. So, thank you for sharing those practices. And what sort of meditation do you do?

Chrystie Dao 15:29

I now have a daily routine whereby as soon as I get up in the morning, I meditate for 15 to 20 minutes, and I practice what is called creative visualization. And I spent a lot of time going through, like my own guided meditation in my head. And I quit a day that I want to achieve, and I say, talk myself through all the things that I want the outcomes to be. And, of course, practice gratefulness, and which is something that I've only recently adopted, and I find that for me, it's a lot more fulfilling. And yeah, that universe have a really funny way of granting you things, and it does it in its own universe. Timing, right? So, I might want something so desperately, and doesn't mean I'll get it right today, tomorrow, come next year.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 16:23

That's right, 

Chrystie Dao 16:24

But I've got to put it out there, right? 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 16:26

Yes, and that's what the power of the creative visualization, to be able to create your day and the outcomes that you would like to have, and you can have a sense of fulfillment and control knowing that you've created that day, I want to talk a little bit about spirituality. Where are you in your spiritual journey?

Chrystie Dao 16:49

I believe I'm a very spiritual person. Always have been. I believe in God. I always believe in the universe, and I believe, as I mentioned about greater visualization and asking for things, and by then back the universe doesn't give you what you want. It gives you who you are. So, you've got to become that person. I'm being ready to receive the gifts. And so that what I've been recently discovering, because I used to always be very ambitious, was want things instantly now and whatnot, but I've learned that you don't always get what you want at the time that's convenient for you, right? It will come, but it come at a time you least expect it.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 17:31

That's true. That's really profound. I've never heard someone say it quite that way. It sits really well with me. The universe gives to you who you are so that you can get what you want, right versus what you want? Yeah. So, you have to become who you are to get that. And it's that transformation process to get to who you are that will bring those gifts of what you want. Wow, okay. And do you think it's possible for us to live a simple life?

Chrystie Dao 18:01

Simple, everybody's different, right? So, it's different, and simple could mean different things to different people. So, for me, I think the world's changed, and it's evolved whereby there's a lot of amounts of consumerism and also instant gratification. People want things right now, right here. So, for me, I believe that people can live a life depends on what makes them happy. Looking back, when I was growing up, I used to associate success with having accumulating, amassing, huge amounts of stuff, right, like designer goods and labels and things which, like, personifies that I'm a successful person, like, if I wear a certain brand watch or have a certain designer bag, then it shouts, hey, I'm so successful in the world, but I could be so empty inside. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 18:53

Yeah.

Chrystie Dao 18:53

So, for me, it's no longer that. It's really about I seek peace and I seek tranquility and I seek love and just the simple things whereby happiness is important to me to achieve. What's happiness like? I have a great day. I get to do things I love, which why comes back now, be part of this ecosystem, be exchange catalyst, do things that is much more meaningful.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 19:18

So, what was the moment that caused you to make that shift. Was there like one particular incident, or was it just part of the natural growth and evolution?

Chrystie Dao 19:28

I think it's part of growth phase, as one goes through light. At one stage, we think like you have all these bags, and then all goes in the cupboard. Nobody sees it. You look at people whose so much worse off than you, and the kids who lived very simple lives, they just kept free. When I was like, that was my life. When I was a broke person, when I landed in an island Indonesia, almost seven years old, and we didn't have to go to school, it was best thing ever. We stayed in UNHCR compounds, but with the beach, we had nature that was the best days of your life was hit, right?

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 20:04

So, in some ways, it's like going back to the basics, and it came from within you, right? Because it's like that journey, like that spiritual awakening you talked about, and it probably came along with you moving out to Hanoi to be part of this entrepreneurial startup ecosystem. So, do you have a vision around what you want to accomplish, or you're just allowing yourself to be guided by where you can contribute and what you can do?

Chrystie Dao 20:32

I mean, my vision and my mission are to be involved as a mentor helping or a venture builder helping this social impact startup Vietnam. So, I'm really interested in looking at climate change initiative, renewable energy and circular economy. They're the three key focuses, looking at how can we preserve this earth? Because I think we're all interconnected in some way, and we have to really look at how do we preserve this earth would durations. So, we look at sustainability, we look at Regeneration, we look at preservation as the key themes. And how do we do that? Go back basis. Look at sample, Vietnam, big and agriculture. In terms of agriculture, what are the key strengths? What the key products? Vietnam, rice, coffee. How do we preserve that? How do we scale it? How do we make it much more abundant for our people? Right? How do we enable that through technology? And then best know how. It's all about regeneration, like circle economy, one kind of ecosystem feeds into another ecosystem, and it's just like connecting the dots, and my role is to be that connector dust. Great, thriving economy based on that. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 21:42

Okay, great. So, you can count me in whatever that you're doing, because that's exactly what I'm doing as part of impact velocity as well. How do you look at sustainability? What's your definition of it?

Chrystie Dao 21:56

Yes. So, as I mentioned, for me, sustainability means two things. It means regeneration and it means preservation. If you look at last few generations, we've depleted a lot of natural resources on Earth. And if we don't do anything this, do not do anything. Option is not an option. We have to do something. So, what do we do? We really need to look at regenerate and preservation, and that's through looking at the Earth. What resources can we preserve? How do we scale that? How do we make more of that? The same thing? So, looking at what mission, physical economy, right? You look at, how do we then all interconnect each other and make, for example, like coffee. We look at coffee's Foundation, right? The copy, the Haskell copy, is then used for chicken feed, right? And then the chicken can be used to looking at ECO Farming, right? How do we sustain that? How do we build all that stuff around that to then feed them to another ecosystem? Because that's regeneration, that's preservation. So that's how I look at sustainability, trying to preserve what we have and build on that using technology. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 23:05

Wow, great. For us, we look at Sustainability from the individual mindset first. So we look at it as the ongoing thriving of a living system, and that for anyone or any corporate or any group to really sustain what you talked about in terms of regeneration and preservation, they've got to own it as you know that we are all part of this interrelated, interconnected world and that we can have unintended consequences on each other if we are not conscious about that system view. I want to round off our formal part of the discussion by just asking you to use three words to describe thriving. 

Chrystie Dao 23:46

Thriving, okay? For me, I think when someone's thriving, they're happy, right? Fulfilled. So, I would say happiness, fulfillment and love, right? You have to have love to be thriving. You've got to love, doesn't mean love someone, but love yourself, right? Be peace with yourself, and have that internal happiness, and then you thrive. Yeah.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 24:08

That's wonderful. I'm going to ask you some quick questions, and don't think through that too much, just answer it. What's your favorite book?

Chrystie Dao 24:20

Oh, my favorite book. The Aim, it talks about systems to create businesses. I'd say that's my favorite book. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 24:27

Yeah, great. And what's your favorite travel destination?

Chrystie Dao 24:30

Haha, so many favorite destinations. Really hard to pin down a favorite destination. I'm still for ethnic Vietnamese. I've actually not explored Vietnam, right? I don't know it very much, and I love to explore more. So, I probably have to say it's probably Vietnam as a country. This is so much to explore for me. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 24:53

Yes. Okay, cool. And if you could have dinner with anyone who would that be?

Chrystie Dao 24:58

I could have dinner with anyone. It would Richard Branson. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 25:04

Ah, okay, and what's the most unusual food that you have tried?

Chrystie Dao 25:09

Most unusual food? Okay, probably alligator. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 25:14

Oh, where? In Australia? 

Chrystie Dao 25:15

Yes, yeah, I had alligator pizza. Tasted like chicken, okay. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 25:19

And if you could have any superpower, what would it be?

25:22

Ah, see, be able to forecast what's going to happen. Look through my crystal ball. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 25:28

Okay, and what's the best advice that you've ever received? 

Chrystie Dao 25:31

Keep giving.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 25:32

Well. Christy, thank you so much for being candid and sharing your life and what you're looking at in the next phase of your spiritual awakening. I've enjoyed our chat. Yeah, you're welcome. We've been trying to schedule this for a few months. You were part of season two, and now you become part of season three. 

Chrystie Dao 25:51

At least I'm still part of some season.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 25:53

That's right, oh, let's catch up soon. 

Chrystie Dao 25:55

Thank you. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 25:56

You're welcome. Okay, bye bye.