Prieeyya Kaur Kesh Talks Key Skills for Professionals to Future-Proof Their Careers
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Young Women in Business Toronto (YWiB) aims to provide our diverse community of young, self-identified women with genuine career advice, encouragement, and examples of local role models. That's why, for the next few months, we’ll be interviewing both career professionals and entrepreneurs our community can be inspired by and learn from. This interview is also part of our October 2020: Learning & Development series.
Prieeyya Kaur Kesh, Founder & CEO of Our Wave Hub
Tell us a little about yourself, Prieeyya!
For sure! I was born and raised in Malaysia to 3rd generation Punjabi-Malaysian parents and moved to Canada by myself in 2015. I'm the eldest of three sisters so I grew up with an embedded sense of leadership and accountability (mostly by being blamed for things my sisters did! haha). My sisters and I all play ancient Sikh instruments called the Taus and Rebab. All three of us also played in a bagpipe band in Malaysia and have competed at the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow, Scotland with both the Malaysian Sikh Pipe Band as well as representing Canada with the Peel Regional Police Pipe Band. I can speak five languages - English, Malay, Mandarin, Punjabi and Hindi and hold a Black Belt in Taekwondo.
Wow, your personal talents and hobbies are very cool! Prieeyya, what is Our Wave Hub? What led you to found this company?
Our Wave is an early stage company (under 3 yrs old) in the ed-tech space based here in Toronto. We create, collaborate and deliver courses and training programs in emerging technologies, soft skills training as well as leadership development training with partners like RBC and Ryerson University.
I founded the [Our Wave] based on the premise that our educational system at scale is not preparing people for the future of work.
"The future of work" is a catch all phrase we reference when speaking about what work activities, the workplace and the workforce at large could look like in the next 5-10 years. Another big "why" in starting Our Wave came from my own university experience and the gap I felt it had from the "real world" as well as the increasing trend I observed in how the adoption of Artificial Intelligence and automation at scale could be disruptive.
Read more: Bhairavi Shankar on why there's 'space' for everyone in the STEAM sector.
How are your personal values reflected through Our Wave Hub?
This is such a great question! I think because Our Wave is still in its early days that it somewhat feels like an extension of who I am. I believe that two things really make a business great - its people and its culture. I've spent and currently allocate a good chunk of time to think through and manage the internal culture of how we're building Our Wave.
My leadership style is informed largely by two books - Radical Candor by Kim Scott and Principles by Ray Dalio. I lead a small team of six and aim to create an environment where my colleagues and employees feel safe to bring their whole selves to work. The concept radical candor proposes two main ideas - to care personally for the people you work with i.e. build genuine relationships with them as people and to challenge directly i.e. create a feedback loop for learning, criticism and growth.
My leadership style in three action items is to; create a culture of guidance (where both praise and criticism have a place), to understand what motivates each person (this is to avoid boredom and burnout) and to drive results collaboratively.
From your perspective, how has the pandemic and massive shift to working from home impacted professional learning and development?
The uptake of MOOCs and online learning has been exponential - professionals are finding ways to keep themselves relevant and continue to upskill as business double down on only retaining people that are essential to their business operating models
It has in a way forced workers to diversify their abilities - the world has seen a seismic shift to everything being digital first - if you weren't savvy digitally pre-COVID you could still get away with it, but not in this current climate.
The pandemic has also highlighted inequities among the working demographic. People who relied on their employers for technology access i.e. access to the Internet or a laptop have it disproportionately harder than people in the workforce who have this access.
Read more: YWiB Role Model Interviews: Shakira Rouse on learning disabilities, stigma, and the workplace
What are the top, in-demand skills that young professionals should be acquiring now for the future workforce?
Analytical Thinking and Innovation
Active learning and learning strategies
Creativity, originality and initiative
The World Economic Forum reports these as skills with a growing demand in the future workforce. I totally agree - I think as we enter this new era of work and learning, cross functional skill sets will become more and more important.
Young professionals should focus on having some level of technical understanding and continue to sharpen their soft skills or "human skills" as they progress in their careers.
What is your advice for young professionals who want to take skills development into their own hands, but aren’t sure where to start or what they might be interested in?
Try, fail, put yourself out there and learn from people you admire.
Don't just do things that look good on your resume - do things because they challenge you to grow
If you're early in your career, don't get hung up on thinking about the ROI of opportunities that come your way, instead think - "How can I be of value?" and "What can I learn from this?"
With the Internet and social media - professional careers are not black and white anymore.
You can literally be whatever you want and whoever you want.
I would challenge young professionals to think through the Japanese concept of Ikigai - and figure out the intersection of what you're good at, what you love, what the world needs and what you can be paid for.
You’re also the host of the Future Of podcast. How did you get into podcasting, and any advice for members of our community who might be exploring this activity?
Yes! I did a pilot with 5 episodes, all around the theme of emerging tech and how it's affecting our collective future. I'm working on season 2 with many more episodes and topics to come out soon but to anyone considering this, my only piece of advice is to just start! Record on your phone if you have to, draft graphics on Canva, do whatever you need to do to just start.
A mistake I made was that I overthought production quality - it slowed me down, and cost way more than it should have to produce each episode. So if you enjoy speaking and talking to people to understand their points of view, I would say go for it!
Check out this #TheFutureOf Podcast episode from Prieeyya: Is Your Education Future Proof?
In your IG bio, you describe yourself as a ‘a student of life’. What does that mean to you?
I love this question. A student of life to me means someone who embodies a growth mindset and is an optimist. Who sees every experience - good or bad as a stepping stone and learning opportunity. I think there is so much we can learn just by being aware of the people, environment and places we associate with. I think these factors shape who we are and a student of life is someone who no matter how bad the day or how horrible the experience, walks away with a list of lessons learned.
Prieeyya Kaur Kesh is the Founder & CEO of Our Wave Hub. Our Wave is an early stage ed-tech company based in Toronto that is focused on emerging technology education. They create, collaborate and deliver courses with leading industry partners in Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Blockchain as well as soft skills training and leadership development training.