TheBridge profile: Rebecca Yang
Name: Rebecca Yang
Current city: Seattle, WA
Current job: Business Advisor, Worldwide Public Sector, U.S. Education & State and Local Government
Past job: Global Operations, Facebook; US Diplomat, US Department of State
Q. Favorite spot for a coffee meeting? Storyville Coffee at Pike Place Market
Q. Describe how a skill you learned in a previous job helped you in your current job. Diplomacy taught me the importance of building mutual trust and respect by first listening and understanding. Once this foundation is established, progress is possible even with the most antagonistic relationships.
Q. Job advice in three words? Live your values.
Q. How are you (or your company, org, nonprofit) currently bridging the gap between politics and tech / innovation and regulation? I'm building relationships with people who also want to bridge the gap between policymakers and tech and encouraging people I meet in policy and tech to start doing the same.
Q. What can innovators learn from policymakers? Understand the people you serve - think through the unintended consequences and disproportionate impacts of your decisions before making them.
Q. What can policymakers learn from innovators? Understand the people you serve - when the status quo is no longer working, change it for the better. Establish success metrics.
Q. Favorite book/podcast/long-form article you recommend? Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.
Q. Looking back, what advice would you give yourself in the beginning of your career? Meet yourself where you're at.
Q. What's one piece of advice you are still trying to master? Accepting the things I cannot change.
Q. Living person you admire? Amanda Nguyen, 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee and CEO of Rise, a nonprofit that fights for the civil rights of sexual violence survivors. A rape survivor facing a broken criminal justice system, Amanda penned her own civil rights into existence: She wrote and advocated for the Sexual Assault Survivor Bill of Rights, codifying civil rights for 25 million rape survivors in the United States and has passed 20+ laws since 2016.
Q. Most underrated virtue in an employee? Emotional intelligence
Q. If you had to live in another city, which would it be? Tokyo, Japan
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