Young Change Makers: Why and How Amanda Wang of Potencia Is Helping To Change Our World

Raise as much seed funding as you can, probably more than what you think you would need for the first year. This is because you will need to secure sustainability for the next 2 years or so to keep your organization or company afloat, while you grow its impact.

As part of my series about young people who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Amanda Wang.

Amanda Wang is the Co-Founder/CEO of Potencia and she believes in the power of education to realize potential and expand opportunities. She grew up in a small town in China and taught herself English through American shows and English literature. During her free time outside of Potencia, she volunteers as an entrepreneur mentor/instructor at Tufts University and EforAll, and a judge for start-up competitions.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

I grew up in a small, rural town in China called Hohhot. It’s the capital city of Inner Mongolia, and famous for its grassland scenery and Mongolian culture. We didn’t have as much education resources as those big cities like Beijing and Shanghai did — so I had to rely on myself to seek education opportunities through books and the internet. I was exposed to American culture during my teenage years, and taught myself English through English literature, Amercian TV shows like the famous “Friends” series, and of course music — I’m a big fan of Taylor Swift.

Is there a particular book or organization that made a significant impact on you growing up? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I have an interesting book. The name of the book is “Tippi: My Book of Africa.” Knowing that I was a huge fan of animals, my father bought me this book from Beijing — again, in a small town, you won’t even have access to all sort of books — when I was about 7 years old. I read that book millions of times. With the passion for animals, I wanted to become someone who can protect wildlife when I grew up. While I eventually discovered that biology was not my piece of cake, that desire to make an impact was already rooted in me. I guess that experience was what guided me to the social impact field now.

How do you define “Making A Difference”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

Sometimes people think making a difference means you have achieved significant outcomes; for me it’s more about creating a real impact, regardless of how big or small it is. I see people buying a sandwich for a homeless person, and that’s making a difference. Volunteering your time, help someone in need, or even create a social enterprise, those are all the difference you can make to make our community a better place.

Ok super. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. You are currently leading an organization that aims to make a social impact. Can you tell us a bit about what you and your organization are trying to change in our world today?

In the US, 95% of over 25 million adults with limited English are not getting the language education they look for. The free or affordable options are either community classes with long waitlists or fixed schedules, or self-learning apps that don’t offer the real-person practice that helps immigrants build confidence and thrive in the community. Potencia is working to change that. Potencia is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that aims to empower adult immigrants to build upward mobility by democratizing access to real-human, personalized English language tutoring.

We recruit and train civic-minded community members, including college students and corporate employees, as volunteer English tutors. Adult immigrants pay $5 per session to access personalized language tutoring at a time that works best for them, without having to wait for months or even years. The Potencia App, an equivalent of “ClassPass” for adult immigrants, will bring the access to such tutoring services to the fingertips of our learners.

At Potencia, we believe language is at its core human, and we will leverage technology, including AI, to amplify humanity.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

I am an “immigrant” myself twice in my life. When I went to college, it was one of the longest domestic-ish flight you could take in China — From Inner Mongolia to Hong Kong, from grassland to one of busiest cities in this world, from dry, cold weather to constant heat and rain, and most importantly, from Mandarin to Cantonese. In case you don’t know the differences here, just think Spanish and Portuguese. Because of the language barriers, I always got lost on those mini buses — no, they don’t have a stop button, neither do they have a English announcement system; you have to understand what the drivers say and callout in Cantonese to drop off — and never managed to find a part-time job due to my limited Cantonese skills.

Then in 2018, I came to the U.S. as a graduate student, with good English proficiency test scores, only to find that I was stuck in conversation and internships, once again. I was in target and talking to their assistant over the phone inside target, looking for clothes hangers. They just couldn’t understand what I wanted and hang up the conversation. (Laugh)

Overall, I’ve experienced first-hand how language barriers can hinder an immigrants’ potential and limit their confidence to grow. That’s why when I discover the serious issue on immigrants’ language barriers, I was in.

Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions, but never manifest them. We don’t always get up and just do it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and do it? What was that final trigger?

It was when our first few learners came to us after their tutoring sessions that spring, asking me when they can have the next round of tutoring. One of them specifically told me that she “do[es] not want this class to stop.” That hit me hard. Initially when I ran the sessions on campus with my co-founder, I viewed it more like a class project. But I can’t disappoint these adult immigrants — that might be the very first time that they found hope. And at the same time, I didn’t have a great experience during my summer internship — don’t get me wrong, I loved my co-workers — just that sadly I found that marketing was, again, not my piece of cake (like biology and wildlife protection). So I decided that it’s time to take that leap of faith; If I don’t do it now, it might take me another however many years to have the chance to create something from scratch and make an impact from there.

Many young people don’t know the steps to take to start a new organization. But you did. What are some of the things or steps you took to get your project started?

The single most important step is to identify and define a problem that is worth solving. Then everything follows.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?

Definitely the time when we first pitched the idea in a competition, a judge told us: ‘There are already way too many English class around. I don’t see how you are different. This will not work.’ It’s an interesting story because this judge made assumptions not based on what he researched, but what he observed in the community (that he doesn’t belong to). My co-founder and I were very, very discouraged by that back then, but now we can deal with it with laughs. We no longer hear the same comment because we are able to tell people why we are not another ‘community English class.’ Interestingly, what once broke you can also make you stronger, in a startup world.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson or take away you learned from that?

I typed wrong first names in an email I wrote to reach a lawyer. Why is it funny? Because this kind lawyer still got back to me and helped me with my 501(c)(3) application. I felt sorry for my mistake, but I learned a good lesson: double checking your email is not enough in this attention-shortage era. Do it more than you thought you needed.

None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?

I am grateful that I always have mentors and cheerleaders who helped me along the way. I don’t think I can just mention one mentor at this moment, so I will just share how my mentors helped me make through the time when I was outside of the U.S. for 18 months due to some visa issues. That was the time when everyone told me that we would not make it back; and of course, they won’t fund us or believe in what we do. I’m forever grateful to my mentors (including my current board chair) who didn’t give up on us, but stayed with us, carved out the time to meet with us, and made countless introductions to people in their network. Without them, the journey would have been so much more difficult to endure. Thank you to my mentors, advisors, volunteers and friends who stayed with me during that time.

Without saying specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?

We had this learner from Brazil and his story is a great example to showcase our impact. A young man from Brazil, he came to the U.S. in 2018. The English classes in the community didn’t quite fit his work schedules, and after paying $35/hour to a private tutor for a few sessions, he couldn’t afford to take more. In 2019, he came to Potencia and became one of our first few learners. He met with his tutor, an undergrad from Tufts University, once per week online, on a weekday evening, for two years. Then, he graduated from the program because he could confidently talk to anyone in English. He was promoted in his job, met his wife, and moved to Hawaii.

Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?

What politicians can do is to advocate for more funding for adult English language education programs. Most of the community programs are struggling due to limited funding and constant growing number of adults they need to serve. But I know this is very, very hard, so I would recommend the following two options more:

The community can join Potencia as volunteer tutors, to provide more supply of English tutors for adult immigrants in the U.S., in a cost-efficient way. If you can’t volunteer at the moment, consider donate to an organization who’s doing such work.

Fantastic. Here is the main question of the interview. What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each).

• Raise as much seed funding as you can, probably more than what you think you would need for the first year. This is because you will need to secure sustainability for the next 2 years or so to keep your organization or company afloat, while you grow its impact.
• Fellowships are a great seed funding source, especially if you are just starting up. I know these applications can take good amount of time, but as a someone who just started, time is all your asset. Spend that wisely, keep applying, and one fellowship can give you a good break from endless fundraising game for small chunks of donations.
• Building a tech nonprofit doesn’t mean you have to have a fully working application in year 1. Having a MVP, a very minimal working product that solve maybe 1–2 steps of your whole operations, should be the start. We spent some very early-stage seed funding from a pitch competition to develop an actual mobile app — well, I’d just say that we paid $800 for a very expensive lesson.
• Take breaks. This sounds counter-intuitive, but good breaks can give you better energy to move forward, generate new ideas, and avoid burn out (as much as possible.) I didn’t take enough breaks during the weekends when I first started, and I constantly had to take a full 3-day break eventually to deal with my burnout. Not recommended.
• Building upon my last point, pay attention to your physical and mental health. I never knew that founding a company might take longer than you expected, and you can easily experience some burn out/mental breakdowns during difficult times, if you are not doing enough self-care. Meditate, even if it’s just a few deep breath practices. Talk to a friend for fun. Go hiking. Make some tea. Whatever you can do, do it.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

It makes your life more fun and more fulfilled than expected. And this is something that a steady salaried job cannot provide you with. So go ahead and make an impact.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy. I gain insights and strength through his book, his talk, and his interviews on education when I seek answers. I hold a similar belief that we should bring access to education to everyone who needs it, through the power of technology. And I personally benefited from Khan Academy when I was in college, so I would really like to have a breakfast, even just a coffee chat, with Sal.

How can our readers follow you online?

Find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yu-wang-amanda/

This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!

Thank you.