Volans Team: Kevin Teo
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You're a citizen of where?
I was born and raised in Singapore, and have spent several years in the United Kingdom, United States and Switzerland for either study or work. If home is where the heart is, I find myself having a particular attachment to Southeast Asia.
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Education in a nutshell?
I am a technology geek by training and systems architect by interest. After graduating from consecutive computer science programs at Imperial College and Carnegie Mellon University, I tried convincing myself that becoming a star software engineer was my calling. As it turns out, what I was really passionate about was the pursuit of elegant and effective problem-solving, which has led me to social entrepreneurship.
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Your working life?
I discovered the joys of working in a small company environment by accident when I entered my first job with Trilogy Software in Austin in 1998. Ever since then, it’s been one technology startup after another, which eventually led me to the California Bay Area. Sun Microsystems acquired one of the startups I was working at (CenterRun Inc.) and after a brief stint at the acquiring company, I was reminded of why I cherished the startup environment and subsequently left. In 2006, I made a major career shift by entering the Global Leadership Fellows program at the World Economic Forum and working full-time for the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.
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Things you are proudest of?
Co-founding the Southeast Asian Service Leadership Network (SEALNet). This entailed nurturing a community of young service leaders who are passionate about development in Southeast Asia and regularly convening them to support one other in making the region a better place. When I see them working together on service expeditions, I cannot help but feel hopeful for the future of Southeast Asia.
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Most recent job?
Head, East and Southeast Asia at the Schwab Foundation of Social Entrepreneurship, and Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum.
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Something about the family that have to put up with all of this?
My parents: who supported me through a top-notch education and then having to stress over what they thought were highly ephemeral stints at technology startups. My wife: for sacrificing her career and social network as I moved us from country to country in pursuit of making the world a better place.
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Why Volans?
Working at the Schwab Foundation has raised my awareness of the work of social entrepreneurs. Creating an organization to focus on supporting their work, as well as integrating it into the broader ecosystem of private and public sectors seemed like a natural progression from there. I also have a specific goal of bringing this mindset to Asia, where there is a tremendous opportunity to generate greater awareness and produce broad social impact.
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Your potted vision for Volans 2010?
For Volans to become the de facto thought leader in how to create highly elegant social innovations
Kevin Teo is a Volans Founding Partner and Director. He runs Volans Asia. Kevin was previously Head of East and Southeast Asia at the Schwab Foundation of Social Entrepreneurship and Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum (2006-2008). Prior to that, Kevin had an eight year stint in the enterprise software arena; he held senior positions at Bay Area software startups funded by Sequoia Capital - CenterRun Inc (2001-2003) and Clearwell Systems (2005-2006). Through CenterRun’s acquisition by Sun Microsystems, he became Principal Engineer (2003-2005) in the N1 Software Integration Group. Kevin also learned many priceless lessons from failed startups like Fisix.com (2000-2001) and ApplianceOrder.com (1999-2000). Prior to that, he was a member of Trilogy Software’s development team (1998-1999).
In 2003, Kevin co-founded the Southeast Asian Service Leadership Network (SEALNet), a California-based 501(c)3 organization that focuses on building a community of service leaders who are passionate about development in Southeast Asia. He currently sits on SEALNet’s board and is an active mentor to the student chapter at Stanford University. Kevin graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a MS in Information Networking, and holds a BEng with Honors in Computing from the Imperial College, London.