Theme: Refraction

Just like how the direction of light changes when refracted, we aim to explore how different environments and experiences can change and shape people's perspectives, experiences, and values.

UWC South East Asia (Dover Campus)
1207 Dover Road
Singapore, South West, 139654
Singapore

Adya Jain

Student

Adya Jain is a Grade 11 student at UWCSEA, Dover. She is deeply interested in the intersection of for-profit business and socio-economic development, art, volunteering, debating, and writing. Last year, she stumbled upon a question in the John Locke Essay Competition about the meaning of spirituality for someone who—like Adya—saw herself as 'spiritual, but not religious.' After introducing the personal experiences motivating her exploration of religion and spirituality, she will interrogate the so-called differences between spirituality and religion, before concluding with what they have to come mean to her.

Emma Frank

Student

Hi I’m Emma. I am grateful to have joined the last “FIB generation” of UWCSEA Dover. I am very pleased to share a real-life story which I have been going through while I was first transferring from a totally German domestic school in Shanghai to an international school in Shanghai. The different life experiences and beliefs people had gave me a hard time to "structure” my values and boundaries. As a half White half-Asian person, invisible boundaries appeared in my life were making me struggle quite a bit in my first few years of middle school (G5-G6). However, I overcame this with support from my parents and friends, funny and happy moments are still lying in my memory.

Hester Spiegel

Founding and Managing Partner of Epic Angels, author

Hester Spiegel is an entrepreneur and investor, author and speaker, and mum of two boys. She is Founding and Managing Partner of Epic Angels, the largest all-female angel investor collective investing in women-led startups and author of ‘Thinking Big and Small: a guide to activating your entrepreneurial mindset’. By moving between countries, industries, professional and private roles in life, Hester has reinvented herself multiple times. Before starting her own companies, she had more than 15 years with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deutsche Bank in Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt. Hester pivoted her career and brought the modern education system and coding school ‘42’ to Germany, before launching Epic Angels and Ladies who Launch in APAC, creating access for women to become change makers through allocating time and capital. Adding perspectives by changing views regularly has shaped Hester's view on life and work and everything that is possible in it.

Julia Piórko Bermig

Student

Julia Piórko Bermig is a Grade 11 student from Poland, Germany, and Belgium. Her speech is based on her experience volunteering at the KZ/KL Stutthof Museum, a former Nazi concentration camp located in Sztutowo, Poland - her grandparents' hometown. She will focus on our power to overcome cyclical narratives of history striving toward ameliorative governance—one that refracts history, rather than repeating it. Outside of this, she is passionate about writing, photography, and collecting old books and records.

Mimi Nguyen

Co-founder of ‘The Matcha Initiative', COO of Handprint Tech

Mimi Nguyen has transitioned from corporate roles in the banking and insurance industries to the not-for-profit and startups worlds in 2019. Based in Singapore, she co-founded ‘The Matcha Initiative, a community-based organisation that accelerates sustainability transformation within companies, where they organised the first of its kind AlterCOP in November 2024. She is currently the COO of Handprint Tech, enabling companies to capture business value out of their nature-positive actions, by building tools to close the data loop and engage stakeholders in more impactful ways. All through her journey, she's been inspired by the kindness, the courage and the perseverance of the community of change-makers in the region and beyond, and aims to give back whenever she can, giving time, sharing experiences or funding impact projects. She loves wildlife, doing manual stuff - writing, pottery, cooking, growing plants, you name it - books, and a good laugh in good company.

Nicola Pak

Student

Nicola Pak is a G12 student from Singapore. As a published author, National Library workshop facilitator and two-time New York Times finalist, she’ll explore the role of literature in presenting a refracted version of reality, and the impact of media curation on the dominant narratives being presented. How do social media algorithms, publishing houses and the Western Canon determine the books we read, and by extension, the thoughts we think? Why is conscious consumption important, and how can we regain agency over it? When she’s not asking rhetorical questions, Nicola also enjoys cooking, chemistry and learning Asian languages.