Welcome to another “face of ACS”, an interview series starring ACS Volunteers and their journey in serving the non-profit community.
Data Fok is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded 3 startups. He is an expert facilitator and practitioner of design thinking, lean startup and agile methodology. He is also a certified ScrumMaster. He has provided design thinking workshops and hackathons to NGOs and Social Enterprises since 2017. He has been a business strategy and fundraising consultant to NGOs since 2013, helping NGOs and Social Enterprises in Hong Kong.
Data has more than 20 years of experience developing and managing software and business projects across both geographies and industries, including for OpenRice.com, Dealogic and Stanford University in the USA. Data received his MBA from HKUST and holds a double major in Computer Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin.
What 3 words would your friends use to describe you?
- Informative, Creative, Cheerful
You have been a passionate, enthusiastic volunteer on many ACS programs over the years – could you share your volunteering journey so far and your motivation for volunteering with ACS?
I first got introduced to ACS during my MBA back in 2012. That was the first time I volunteered at the Ascend strategic consulting workshops. I found the workshops very inspiring and meaningful. As a Christian, I always try to find ways to contribute back to society, so I kept volunteering for ACS. It has been a wonderful journey and I am glad to see that the scope of the workshops provided by ACS keeps evolving. In particular, I was privileged to help ACS build their new curriculum for a Design Thinking Hackathon a few years ago. To me, it was the pay-it-forward moment to consolidate what I had learned and practiced as a design thinking facilitator for 3 years and summarized it into a one-day workshop.
From your volunteering experience with ACS so far, what would be your 3 tips to those who have just joined the ACS Volunteer Community?
- 1: Un-learn to re-learn as ACS’s volunteering experience will introduce you new concepts for everyday problems
- 2: Read carefully the given instruction in the worksheets, as the curriculum creator has put a lot of thought into these instructions
- 3: Feel free to give your feedback: ACS is very open to feedback and treats every feedback seriously.
Thank you Data for your time in this interview, and for sharing your journey story with us. We look forward to seeing you at our next ACS activity. All the best!
