Social Change Rockstar: Crystal Yan

Next up in my “Social Change Rockstar” series is 17 year old Crystal Yan. I was looking for young social entrepreneurs on twitter and happily came across her work.

Crystal describes herself as a Trilingual Chinese-American. She’s a blogger, graphic designer, and Founder of Torque, Social Startup Summit, What’s Next, and EconForAll, a curriculum program that makes economics accessible to kids in grades K-12. She is working on a ton of wonderful projects aimed at getting more young people involved in social change, including the book “What’s Next: 25 Big Ideas from Gen-Yers Under 25” inspired by Seth Godin’s What Matters Now. This interview really shed light on her work and drive. Enjoy!

Tell us about major projects you are working on and your inspiration?

Right now the major project I’m working on is What’s Next: 25 Big Ideas from Gen-Yers Under 25. It’s basically like TED talks in a book, but everyone writing for it is 25 and under. We’re curating a free ebook and a special print edition to benefit the favorite charities of our 25 contributors. If you’re a young innovator, you should write for us! If you’re a little more grown-up, you should suggest someone to us or back us on Kickstarter (so we can make the print edition happen)! We were inspired by Seth Godin’s What Matters Now.

I’m also trying to find sponsors to start the inaugural Social Startup Summit, a one-day social venture incubator (youth come in with vague ideas, and leave with a newly-founded service project and the action plan and resources to start it), recruiting high school students for a Gumball Capital microfinance youth leadership program, and working to mobilize 6000 students to raise $100,000 and eradicate polio worldwide by June 2010. I also do a bit of graphic design and consulting.

If you want to get involved in any of those, email me here: http://www.crystalcyan.com/contact-me.html

What challenges do you face as a young social entrepreneur?

In terms of legal issues, if I’m under 18 and I have to have a parent sign five million forms to go on a field trip for school, the same issue comes when I go to conferences and I have to wear the “don’t take a picture of me” sticker because they didn’t know there would be any under 18 attendees so they never sent out a photo release form. It’s a bummer, because things like that mean less free publicity for your causes, you know?

So from that I’ve learned to just make my own photo releases for those organizations so I can get that PR opportunity and hey, I learned a bit about law beyond watching Law and Order in the process. 🙂

What resources have been helpful to your success?

Finding mentors is vital to success. People are your greatest resources. They can offer you introductions, feedback, and camaraderie when you feel like your friends at school don’t “get” you. They can help you redefine success. When you feel like you totally messed up, they turn it around and show how a shortcoming can be a lesson learned.

How do you balance being a high school student and the many projects you are working on?

Interesting, I seem to get this question a lot. Funny story: last year, at least five of my friends signed my yearbook with: “My goodness, you must have snatched a Timeturner from Hermione or something.” I wish! 🙂

It’s tough, especially when you’re crazy enough to take 4 AP classes. I think it comes down to identifying what’s important to you. I love challenges in academics, so signing up for advanced classes made sense for me since I really like school. But I also love student organizations, working on creating leadership opportunities for other students, particularly in service and entrepreneurship education. And then I also love creating my own projects and going out to be a part of tech events in the Silicon Valley startup community, turning crazy scribbles on scraps of paper from 2am into scalable ideas is so exciting.

My little secret? These things often overlap. I worked with a teacher one year to create service-learning initiatives to blend academic work with service organizations, I bring in my connections from events I’ve gone to representing my projects back to school to speak at my student org. It’s this type of interdisciplinary approach to designing my lifestyle that helps me get stuff done and makes me proud to say the only time I pulled an all-nighter in my life thus far was in the 2nd grade (which was because I couldn’t sleep since I was scared about moving to a new school, not because I was overworked). No lie. 🙂

What advice do you have for other teens who want to be social entrepreneurs?

Beyond finding mentors, try to also mentor younger students. Find about five or so people you consider your cheerleaders: your parents, your teachers, your counselors. Then think about what they’ve done for you, how much you appreciate them. Let them know. Thank them. And then turn around and find five more people you want to share your insight with: your younger siblings, your friends a couple grades below you. By empowering other young social entrepreneurs, you can pay it forward and make sure your legacy of awesomeness continues.

You can find her: linkedin.com/in/crystaly or @crystalcy.

You can find a longer bio here: http://crystaly.wordpress.com/bio/