Meet Ja-Tek: An Interview

by Ariel Kim

About Christine

Christine is a rising sophomore at Brown University potentially concentrating in East Asian Studies and an intern at Jatek. On campus, Christine is part of Brown’s Taekwondo team, where she competes in both poomsae and sparring, Kpop dance team, and Christian fellowship. This upcoming year, Christine will be serving as the Student Coordinator of Brown’s new Leadership Development Initiative, Culture Chair of the Korean American Student Association (KASA), and a leader of her Departmental Undergraduate Group (DUG). Outside of campus, Christine is also the Founder and Student Board Director of Asian Diversity Incorporation (ADI) Ambassadors, a nationwide high school leadership program she created in her junior year of high school and continues to oversee. Christine initially became involved with Ja-tek after enrolling as a student in one of Ja-tek’s public speaking workshops, where Kenneth Cain, the founder of Ja-tek and her instructor, recruited her to be a teaching assistant for future Ja-tek workshops. Christine is the Grand Prize Winner of the KyungUhn Speech Competition and has spoken at Asian American networking events, Korean cultural forums, and on Korean television.

About Ja-tek

自tek was founded by a group of Harvard and Yale-trained authors, speakers, and tech entrepreneurs, to help students in China, Korea and first-generation American students reach their full potential in a globalized, 21st century world. We create curricula and teach workshops in-person and online, focusing on practical, concrete skills that are not taught (or not taught well) in school: public speaking & leadership, interview & communication skills, and strategic “soft skills” for college & career prep, such as “creativity.” Our mission is to cultivate self-awareness, self-confidence and self-promotion skills.

About the Contest:

Spring 2020 was among the most consequential periods in history. Abrupt school closings, canceled graduations, quarantining at home, global warming, economic depression, incidents of racism, and social justice protests are only some of the events that have occurred over the past few months. We will tell our children, and our grandchildren about the dramatic events that still swirl about us today.

As teenagers growing up in this century, you will inherit this whirlwind. We invite you to reflect: What has it all meant to you? We all have a story to tell: so, what’s yours? You can riff or rant on any subject as long as it is meaningful to you and pertains to current events (and as long as you are respectful: tip - hate won’t win).

In our 21st century, modern version of public speaking, we encourage students to create an original and compelling three minute (180 seconds) speech on your story pertaining to this moment in time – with a twist. Instead of including quotes from authors, we invite you to use your creativity and incorporate an 18 second external video clip to support your talk, while also giving you the option to incorporate multimedia elements such as background music or green screen – if you want (and you are free to choose not to as well!).