EIY Vietnam

I was the person who stayed silent in meetings. Good ideas - I had them. But they'd stay in my head. Too afraid to speak up. Too scared someone would ask a follow-up question I couldn't answer. Better to say nothing than to sound stupid. That's what I thought.

EIY broke that. Not with motivation posters or confidence exercises - with repetition. Stand in front of thirty people. Speak for two minutes. Get feedback. Not "great job" feedback. Real feedback - your hands were shaking, you said "um" fourteen times, you lost the room in the middle. Do it again next week.

The program director, Lan Anh, saw something in me that I didn't. She kept pushing. Lead this workshop. Organize that event. Present at the final competition. Every time I said no, she'd ask again next week. Not aggressively - patiently. Like she already knew I'd say yes eventually.

I did. Said yes. Led workshops. Organized events. Spoke at the final competition. The fear didn't disappear - it got quieter. The thing nobody tells you about public speaking is that preparation is the antidote. Not confidence. Not talent. Preparation. You rehearse enough times, your mouth remembers what to say even when your brain panics.

This mattered more than any technical skill I've learned. At KPMG, I presented to partners. At GaraSTEM, I pitched to incubators. At Datum, I sit in client calls and translate between business requirements and engineering reality. None of that works if you can't speak clearly. EIY gave me that foundation. Everything else built on top of it.