Podcast Episode 3: Ling Yu
Continuing Education: Learning And Thriving From Life’s Various Challenges
Imagine moving to the US from China at age 13. You’re in a small town and you’re the only Asian girl in a sea of people who don’t look like and don’t speak your language. You start taking ESL but your teacher doesn’t speak any Chinese, only French and Spanish. What do you do? How do you move forward?
Ling Yu is an AVP SBA Portfolio Manager at Centrust Bank and this is only a small part of her story of standing tall in the face of uncertainty and using every opportunity thrown her way to learn, grow, persevere and be true to herself. Take a look at how she stumbled upon a career in banking and stuck to her guns to create her own path.
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Top 3 Takeaways
1. Use any and every opportunity as a learning opportunity. Be confused. Ask questions. Keep learning. Be open.
2. Grow from the people around you. Accept mentorship and pay it forward. You’ll personally and professionally grow from both.
3. Understand and acknowledge who you are and what your struggles may be but don’t put yourself in a box.
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Dive Deeper
1. “Good people come in your life for a reason”.
While studying at Elmwood College, Ling was a science major who didn’t feel confident with the curriculum and didn’t seem to fit in with her peers. She knew she still loved working with numbers but wasn’t quite sure how to turn that into a future. She met a mentor named Pima Harris who said, “Since you are interested in learning or pursuing a different type of industry, would you be willing to learn more about the banking industry?" That simple conversation changed the course of Ling’s life. It helped her gain the confidence and courage to branch out, meet new people, explore different companies and an industry she had never considered. She realized the banking industry was perfect for her because you can gain knowledge from a variety of companies and different industries, from government entities to manufacturing companies. Little did Ling know that conversation with Pima was her first interview. Two weeks later she had a second interview, and the next thing she knew she was hired in her first banking role.
LESSON #1
Always be appreciative and welcoming to coaching, guidance and mentorship. Remember that conversations with industry professionals can lead to amazing opportunities, so remember to engage and always be prepared for an informal interview.
2. Know when to make changes that get you closer to your goals, no matter how long it takes.
Ling’s first role in banking was as a financial analyst with a municipal underwriting group. Her background was not in finance so it was difficult to learn all of the details of such a specific role. She was lucky to have a manager that gave her a lot of confidence and who was experienced and willing to spend a great deal of time helping her.
Six months in, Ling enrolled in a Finance MBA program at Armor College. Getting an MBA helped Ling find her footing and gain confidence in the knowledge of the field. But more change was on the way! Her manager happened to be switching jobs and invited her to come along to something new. Knowing herself and knowing that she had craved variety in her career, she bravely made the move with him and jumped into a role working in credit. However, there was still something missing. After 4 years of making scary but smart changes, Ling landed a Portfolio Manager role. She recalled,“ I told my manager I don't want to focus on one particular industry - I want to learn different types of industries. So I was kind of like a floater PM. I worked with a variety of relationship managers, supporting them on their many deals, their existing clients, and their new clients."
LESSON #2
Take advantage of opportunities to grow and always stand up for what you want in your career. Upward mobility won’t always present itself to you. Sometimes YOU have to make it happen for yourself.
3. How teaching others can make you a better manager.
Ling has been incredibly open about how hard she worked to excel in her career in math and how it didn’t come easily. So what made her make the bold decision to become a math tutor?
While in college, Ling realized her peers were struggling, along with herself. Professors teaching 20 students at the same time couldn't accommodate everybody’s needs. Ling knew if she took a teaching role, she could provide a different approach. So upon starting tutoring, she listened to each of her students' learning preferences. She gained an understanding of how they wanted to learn and listened to what was going on in their lives.
"Sometimes there's more than one way to get to the same answer. It might not be the way that the professor wanted it, but ultimately you got the same answer, and you have to be okay with it. Because of that, I was able to pay more attention to other students that I worked with, and I learned from them. I learned how they want to be taught or how they want to be coached. I utilized that to help raise them up and provide the support they needed to achieve their academic goal.” - Ling Yu
“I think being a tutor is a wonderful experience, and I wish everybody could have the same experience as I did, because when you know something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can teach that thing. When you actually get to go through the details by teaching the material to someone else, it really increases your knowledge of the topic and it improves your confidence to learn how to do it.” - Ling Yu
"Taking on a tutoring, teaching or coaching role helps you gain confidence and knowledge of your field, but it also allows you to work with different people which is a huge part of maintaining a healthy and successful career. You'e going to work with people you don’t know. You don't know their preferences, you don't know what kind of background they have. You don't know their work style. You don't know their ethics. You don't know anything about anything. Have that open mind. And knowing that we'e all here, this is a safe zone, to have that feeling that you and I are on the same page, trying to achieve a common goal.” - Ling Yu
LESSON #3
There are so many people of different ages, different cultures and different walks of life. Understand that they may also work differently and think differently but you’re on the same team. Be open to adjusting your personal process to help teach them, talk to them and work in different ways toward your common goals. Some people are visual learners, some people are kinesthetic learners. Be open to discovering the learning languages of others.
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Top Quotes
I learned one thing about life. There’s a lot of people who have different points of views where they believe that's okay. But the thing is, it's not our responsibility to force people to change. Either they will change or can they change on their own. So our responsibilities are to ourselves, how we treat other people, how we talk to other people, how we have that recognition about how to make our life better. So given that we cannot change other people, the only thing we can do is change ourselves either way, adapt or slide over it or move on. So ultimately, it's your decision how to make your life a difference or how you want to be a good employee versus me.”
“And we all have unique talents and unique abilities that we can bring to the table, and we all have the ability to be successful if we work hard at it.” - Greg Hunt, Willing to Hunt CEO
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Q&A
Greg Hunt: You've had several different roles in your banking career, right? You went from the internship, credit, public finance, auditor. Of all these roles, which roles do you think probably impacted you the most?
Ling Yu: “I would say that the performing management back in 2014-2016 impacted me the most because that really gave me the confidence to work with different lenders, different relationship managers as well as different company owners. It was a time that really gave me confidence to not only work with people internally, but actually go out on the street talking to business owners that have been doing business for 20-30 years. I will say that there's a reason why I chose to go to a certain position next. We all have an ultimate goal of exactly what we want to do when we grow up. And it might take me another 23 years for me to grow up, but I think all these positions that I held are building me to become the person I wanted to be.”
Greg Hunt: There are a lot of people that are going to listen to this and be inspired by your story and your journey. What advice would you Ling give folks that are into the profession? Maybe they're starting an internship like you, like you did, or folks that have been in for five to eight years and are thinking about how to improve their career.
Ling Yu: “The younger version of me joined the banking industry without even knowing what the banking industry was. I didn't even know how to look at a bank statement.” It's okay to discover something at a young age and change again, because the only thing that's constant in your life are changes from one position to another position. It's okay to know what you want, but it's very important to know what you do not want. Have the confidence to move away. I think this is the best thing I learned from one of my former mentors. She told me that when you come to the office, you sit on the chair. Are you comfortable with the position you're sitting in? Are you so comfortable with what you're doing? And my answer was yes. And she told me, you're in the wrong position. She said that you need to constantly put yourself out there because right now you're trapped in a box that's called your comfort zone. When you get out of the box with uncertainty and you're scared. That's your learning zone. Once you pass the hurdle, that’s your comfort zone.
And because of this, I constantly put myself in an uncomfortable position. You have to embrace the challenges and the differences in your life. But always have the courage to say, "I did my best. I gave it all, now it's time for me to move on." And at the end of the day, do what makes you happy. I see so many colleagues, so many former mentors that trust themselves in one position, and they're doing this over and over and over again. And hey provide me with the best guidance. And I'm like, if you are so unhappy with the job that you have right now, can you make a difference? But they're afraid. They have the best knowledge, the best experience. They're afraid to make changes. It's because they are afraid of the uncertainty. And. I can guarantee you there's always going to be uncertainty. Life is full of uncertainty. Nobody knows which one comes first. The future will be tomorrow. But if I don't give myself a chance, I'd rather be the type of person on my dying bed. I said at least I tried versus, oh, I wish I gave myself a chance. I don't want to be the person that I wish I gave myself a chance. I want to be the person who said, "You know what? I tried. It didn't work out. But you know what? I learned so much from it. I think I'm just that type of person.”
