824: What It’s Like to Be a Chief Culture Officer at Education First With Ming Chen, EF Education First [Main T4C Episode]

Ming Chen is the Chief Culture Officer at Education First, an international education company specializing in educational travel, cultural exchanges and language training.  She started out her career journey in sales working for Turner Broadcasting in Hong Kong before pivoting into on-air presenting on Star Television.  After a few years she returned to school to get her MBA from Harvard Business School.  Ever since graduating she’s worked at Education First and today runs its global marketing, branding and communications. Ming is also the co-author of three children’s books with her identical twin sister. Her most recent book is Escape: One Day We Had to Run. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE: How Ming’s passion for running marathons began (4:11) What is Education First (5:36) Why experiencing cultural immersion is a valuable experience for young people (6:32) What does the Chief Culture Officer at Education First do (7:41) What it means to “own your job” (8:24) Why asking questions is important when working any job (9:34) How Ming helped to break the Guinness World Record for longest English lesson ever taught (12:18) What the advantages are of staying at a company for over 20 years (17:00) What is the difference between a generalist and functional experts (20:10) How long distance running has helped Ming throughout her life and learn her 10 tips on how to train for a marathon (24:04) Why Ming believes that a work-life balance is a myth (26:30)