"A good mobility system is really like the lifeblood of a city. It makes the city move, it comes alive."

Premesh Chandran is the co-founder and CEO of Malaysiakini.com, Malaysia’s top independent news website, reaching over 8 million readers in English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil.

He is TED Senior Fellow, a recipient of Asia Foundation’s Chang-Lin Tan Fellowship and the Media Personality of the Year 2012.

In 2018, he started his second company - Asia Mobiliti, a next-generation mobility platform, enabling mobility as a service.

We discuss his vision for mobility in Southeast Asia, social housing and how he has taken the entrepreneurial approach to address some of the most difficult problems confronting us.

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

Email your feedback, questions, suggestions at [email protected]

Full show notes can be found here

Faraan Muzaffar is a student at the Dignity for Children Foundation and he walks us through how he made his first ever podcast. Subscribe to Faraan's podcast here.

Learn more about the school that Faraan attends, Dignity for Children Foundation

Support our work at wecanacademy.org/podcast

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

"We found out that a user's personality can be used to detect cyber bullying in textual communication"

Dr. Vimala Balakrishnan (Website) is an Associate Professor at University of Malaya mainly researching on machine learning (data analytics) and sentiment analysis, particularly related to social media. Her research domains include healthcare, education and social issues such as cyberbullying and misinformation dissemination. She is also a Fulbright Research Scholar (2018) and a recipient of the Leadership in Innovation Fellowship (by the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK) award.

We discussed her work researching cyberbullying and the intriguing relationship with personality traits

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

Full show notes can be found here

"They're also very aware of the fact that they maybe they are a disappointment to their family or the people around them and that is just never a good foundation for learning."

Eileen Soon (LinkedIn) is the founder of LemmeLearn, an inclusive Vocational Training program for young adults with Autism and other special needs. She did her Masters under longtime Special Ed inclusion researcher, Dr. Pam Hunt, and Integrated Play Group (IPG) creator Dr. Pamela Wolfberg.

We discussed why special education must happen in the mainstream as Eileen explains the process of how skills crucial to independent living must happen within contexts of everyday life.

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

Full show notes can be found here

"The people who will be affected by this are the most vulnerable people groups. It won't be the people who are making billions out of this,"

Dr Lee Jo Kien (LinkedIn, IG, FB) is the Lead Analyst of Tropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Centre (TRCRC) and People for Peat (PFP), a component of the Sustainable Use of Peatland and Haze Mitigation in ASEAN (SUPA) programme.  Dr Lee graduated from Monash University Malaysia with a Doctor of Philosophy in Science, BSc. Biotechnology (Hons), and BSc. Biotechnology. His doctoral thesis focused on the Sources of Carbon Dioxide on the Forest Floor of Mt. Kinabalu.

We discussed the outsized importance of peatlands as a carbon sink and the difficulty in saving them. We talked about the nature of his work as an ecologist and the nature of funding in his field.

To learn more about the work TRCRC is doing with People for Peat, follow their socials: LinkedIn, FB, IG

For further reading, research materials, topics referenced here as well as book recommendations are listed on the show notes on our website.

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

"When you at the top for so long, you don't realize how much energy or effort that has been put into being pushing yourself to the max, every match every training session, you're always 100%. And that takes a lot of effort. And my mind was starting to like push to its limit. And when it came to a breaking point of me winning my last eight was a world title. I kind of felt something broke"

Datuk Nicol David has won almost every accolade that can be won in her sport. She was the first squash player to have won the World Junior title twice, before going on to win the World title a record eight times. Her consistency at the very top saw her recently claim the World Games Greatest Athlete of All Time title.

So we talked about how she kept herself mentally strong during her sports career, about creating the right environment and the next phase in her life creating a foundation for youths. I got to interview her as part of the TEDxKL team that collaborated with four other TEDx chapters in Southeast Asia in the glenfiddichimaginenext.com project.

We Can Academy is supported by Co-labs Coworking. Redeem your free day pass at any of their five locations in Klang Valley here.

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

"Some of these psychological distress  actually comes not from covid or the crisis itself, but the systemic problems that have been present for a long time, that have just been magnified by this covid crisis."

Shahril Zaini (IG, FB) is a registered counsellor with Malaysian Board of Counsellors or Lembaga Kaunselor Malaysia (LKM). He works in the District Health Office of Muar (Pejabat Kesihatan Daerah Muar) where he was responsible for setting up counselling services in six public health clinics in Muar. He is part of the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support team that is providing Psychological First Aid and tele-counselling programs.

We discussed his work supporting healthcare workers, the process of therapy and how he balances the needs of the individuals working within a flawed system.

Here are some resources for those seeking mental health support:

We Can Academy is supported by Co-labs Coworking. Redeem your free day pass at any of their five locations in Klang Valley here.

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

"I wish that the field of genome editing is something that can develop in Malaysia. I don’t want us to just look to the US or UK and use their technology, but for us to be able to contribute to the field"

Dr Kumitaa Theva Das completed her BSc in the US, and did her PhD in one of the pioneer labs of genome editing in the US. She has spent almost fifteen years working on various genome editing tools, a technique that is able to change the genetic sequence of any organism. She has more than ten on-going nationally and internationally funded CRISPR (genome editing) projects, and serves as a consultant for several companies in genome editing. She is a recipient of numerous international awards for her work in CRISPR and recently returned from the University of Oxford, where she pursued an attachment for her CRISPR project. She is currently working with many international groups that aim to make gene therapy and genome editing affordable in all countries. She is also involved in COVID-19 work, and enjoys volunteering and giving science-based talks to the public during her free time.

We discussed her journey being part of a pioneering technology, the ethics of genome editing and her work in treating AIDS.

We Can Academy is supported by Co-labs Coworking. Redeem your free day pass at any of their five locations in Klang Valley here.

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

"Do we see the care issue as urgent, as a crisis, as fundamental? And a lot of times we don't, because we think that women will still have to absorb the majority of the cost"

Christopher Choong Weng Wai (@chrischoongww) is Deputy Director of Research at Khazanah Research Institute in Malaysia, and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics. His research interest is in the everyday reproduction of inequalities and exclusion.

We discussed his research on unpaid labour that quantifies for us, to an extent, the double burden of women. He also shares his perspectives on the role of research in the larger context of creating social impact.

We Can Academy is supported by Co-labs Coworking. Redeem your free day pass at any of their five locations in Klang Valley here.

Music by Caffeine Creek Band

Coming soon: Work in Progress, hosted by Yeap Mei Yi. Brought to you by We Can Academy.