Jasmine Zeng: Living a Purposeful Life
“In essence, it’s about finding the purpose in your life. In a world where it’s becoming increasingly challenging to distinguish your own personal needs versus those of others, we are constantly in an auto pilot mode... It’s important to regularly de-clutter and filter out things that do not contribute to your personal happiness. ”
Jasmine exudes an unbelievable amount of energy. She graduated from Georgia Tech with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design, works in a corporate leadership program, figure skates competitively, volunteers in local communities, and, all the while, manages her start-up business on the side. Trying to summarize Jasmine is a futile exercise because she is so multi-faceted and dynamic. She influences everyone around her with her easygoing persona and compassion. She has a magical aura that just draws people to her. She is carefree yet determined, cerebral yet creative, pragmatic yet passionate. She has achieved so much in her young adulthood already, yet she handles all recognitions with such humility. This has all been shaped by many pivotal moments in her life.
Having moved to many places throughout her teenage years and early adulthood, Jasmine is the very definition of a “third-culture kid”, a multicultural citizen who is charting her own unique identity that is marked by the sense that home is everywhere and nowhere at once. Similar to many immigrants who are permanently removed from their cultural roots at a young age, the constant quest to find a sense of belonging is often challenged by the difference in language and culture. Living that nomadic lifestyle often makes one feel like a weightless particle drifting through the wind without knowing when and where you will land. Having shared the same disorientation growing up, I know this feeling all too well.
In the early part of her nomadic journey, Jasmine often asked herself where she belonged and oftentimes, she felt existential crisis. Eventually she found her place and became confident in her own skin. Jasmine has developed into a strong woman who is not afraid of change. She is resilient, adaptable and has the ability to flourish in any given environment.
Hearing how Jasmine journeyed through challenges and managed to come out a stronger person all around is exhilarating. In her dictionary, living a purposeful life is essential. Through her personal experience, she sheds light on what it means to live a fulfilled life.
“You always get challenges throughout different stages in your life. As I grow up and as I move to different places, I am still facing new challenges.”
Where did you grow up and how many places did you live before settling down in Boston?
I grew up in Shanghai, China, and spent 14 years of my childhood there. Because my mom’s company needed her in Paris, she brought me along with her. In Paris, I went to British International School where I finished my high school education. After spending five years in Paris, I moved to America and took a gap year so I could prepare for college applications. Eventually I got accepted to Georgia Tech for their Industrial Design program. I graduated in 2020 when COVID was at its peak, then started my career with Schneider Electric in Nashville, TN, for couple of years. Very recently I moved to Boston and settled down in this lovely city along with my family.
As you moved to different places, what were some of the challenges that you experienced and how did you overcome them?
My life in Paris was quite interesting at the British International School. Language was a big barrier. For the first semester, I mainly spent my time studying English. Where I grew up in Shanghai, everyone was required to take English as secondary language at a young age. We learned how to read, write and annunciate. I did not have any issue with writing; it was mostly the speaking part where I needed help. Meanwhile I also had to take French class. For me English was a lot easier to establish than French.
You always get challenges throughout different stages in your life. As I grow up and as I move to different places, I am still facing new challenges. For me, the first major move to Paris, I was having an existential crisis. My English was rusty, social life was difficult, and French culture was not the easiest to assimilate to. In summary, life as an immigrant in European culture was very challenging in the beginning. This all combined into an existential crisis.
I constantly asked myself where I belonged. I felt rootless. The lack of sense of belonging made me want to go back to the familiar home that I knew growing up in Shanghai. Then I stumbled upon this term of “third-culture kid”. It basically refers to people who were raised in a culture other than the organic one that they or their parents were born with. As a third-culture kid, you are effectively a global citizen. If you were to ask most kids in my school in Paris, they would tell you this whole long story of where they came from and the places that they have been to. I would consider all these students in that school to be third-culture kids. They made me feel like I belonged to some place and brought back a bit of normalcy in my life.
When I finally realized that I wasn’t alone and in fact, I was immersed in a community of many others who were equally uprooted from the culture in which they grew up in, it was a pivotal moment in my life.
What did you study in college?
I studied Industrial Design. I still remember very vividly how I came to the conclusion of choosing this major. At the time when I was thinking about college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I thought I could do math because that’s what I was good at, but that’s not really what I aspired to do. I took a gap year in Georgia so I could apply to colleges in America. I was living in Atlanta, and people told me that there is a school called Georgia Tech. I browsed all the courses they were offering and saw Industrial Design. I was immediately intrigued. It looked to me partially engineering, partially science/coding, but also mixing in creativity. I had this blood pumping feeling, another pivotal moment for me. With that, I decided to study Industrial Design and graduated four years later with a degree in this field.
What made you decide to join Schneider Electric?
When I was a senior, most of my classmates were doing stuff in user experience (UX) design or product design. I took a different approach. In my junior year, I got into this entrepreneurship program. They gave me funding and resources to build my own start-up. My friends and I decided to create this start-up idea that was inspired by my own personal experience. I grew up playing violin and piano, and I understood how tough it was in the beginning to have the right poses when playing musical instruments so we created a strip with a sensor wrapped around the wrist. The sensor would show different colors based on how you pose. You would wear it like an apple watch.
That start-up does not exist today, but it was a great learning experience. I gained a lot of leadership experience and had exposure to operations, pricing, sales and other commercial aspects of the business. This experience expanded my horizon and solidified my interest in business operation. As a result, I decided to pursue Schneider’s leadership program, which allows me to leverage my technical training in Industrial Design and marry it with my passion in business operation.
Is what you are pursuing consistent with your dreams growing up?
When I was little, I wanted to be a painter and an artist. As I started getting more exposure to the real world, I realized a lot of it has to do with what you are naturally good at. You will see trends based on what interests you from a young age. For me, it was creativity and leadership. I was always the person that initiated new games with my childhood friends. I influenced other kids to gather around the common area and play games. It was a natural part of me. Over time, I recognized it’s a natural strength of mine.
Admittedly I have a very strange blend of skills. I really enjoy using my creativity to create stuff, but at the same time I enjoy spending time with people.
How did you get into figure skating? What do you love about it?
I started figure skating when I was little in China. I was only taking lessons so I could learn simple tricks. And then when we moved to Paris, I joined this figure skating club, and that’s when I officially started the hobby with seriousness. The progress I made wasn’t that consistent. I was really skating for fun. Then I decided to focus more on skating about two years ago after graduation. As I had more time, I wanted to invest more effort into figure skating.
At that point in life, I was living in Nashville so I joined a figure skating club. We did some intense training, and I made a lot of adult friends. There is a huge figure skating community in Nashville. I remember waking up at 5:30am in the morning for training before work started. It was a super crazy schedule, but I genuinely enjoyed it.
One thing I really love about this particular sport is that you have to be one hundred percent concentrated on your movement, muscles and body because if not, you will fall. It was therapeutic by itself because you are concentrating on one thing at a time. Additionally, you get a good workout, and it’s easy to make friends because everyone is bonded by a common interest.
“In essence, it’s about finding the purpose in your life.”
Tell us about the business you are starting on the side.
I have a side business on Etsy serving the figure skating community. After you finish skating, you need soft guards to soak up the blades so they don’t get rusty. I spent a lot of time searching for good looking soakers, but I couldn’t really find a pair that I liked so I decided to create one by myself. I borrowed a sewing machine from my friends and learned how to sew online. I ended up having extra fabric so I decided to make extra and sell them on Etsy. It ended up becoming a side business today, and I really enjoy doing it.
“I get to express my creativity and make money out of the things I love. And then my customers appreciate the things that I make. It’s a very fulfilling feeling.”
How do you balance your life between a full-time corporate job, figure skating and a start-up business?
It’s so easy that I don’t think it’s a balance between life and work because when I sew, I have Netflix on in front of me. Instead of me eating and watching Netflix, I’m sewing. I get to express my creativity and make money out of the things I love. And then my customers appreciate the things that I make. It’s a very fulfilling feeling.
What is your advice to college graduates who are trying to build a career?
There are different factors you have to consider when finding your first job out of college. You can go into business, banking, consulting and other high-paying industries, but you have to be honest with yourself whether you will actually enjoy the work. One question I kept asking myself as a student was, “should I choose a boring job with high salary or a fun one with low pay?” Now I think it’s important to not go to one extreme and really try to have a win-win solution here.
You talked a lot about living a purposeful life, how do you find your purpose in this world?
I constantly wonder where I am in life and where I need to be. Last weekend, I had a major life de-cluttering event. I was very stressed because I was giving myself a very long to-do list. When I didn’t finish it, I felt stressed out and I hated myself. And I apply the same rigor to other areas of my life such as career advancement, social life, training, etc.
I came to the realization that this was not a healthy way of living so I asked myself very hard about the essential needs that I will need to fulfill in order to make myself happy. Each one of us has our own needs, and I believe it’s important that we pay attention to them and figure out a way to work towards them. For example, one of my needs is to connect more with the local community. As such, I do volunteer work. It makes me happy to be working towards my needs. For things that are not fulfilling my personal needs, I filter them out. If these are things that are not satisfying my needs, why do I need them?
In essence, it’s about finding the purpose in your life. In a world where it’s becoming increasingly challenging to distinguish your own personal needs versus those of others, we are constantly in an auto pilot mode. We do things because that’s what we are taught to do or expected to do, and we don’t question why we are doing them. It’s important to regularly de-clutter and filter out things that do not contribute to your personal happiness.