Building a Bridge: Welcoming Dominic Jukes & Edward Zhang
Dominic Jukes & Edward Zhang join Wonk Bridge’s core team as the organisation’s Head of Business Operations and Marshall respectively
It’s a delicate science, the act of building the core-team of a start-up. The total spectrum of human personality types is broader than even the most glorious rainbow, and striking the balance right within your core team can and will make the difference between a great idea that remains a great idea, and a great idea which flowers into a great company.
That’s why, in our early flower, we’re delighted to formally announce the addition of Messrs. Dominic Jukes and Edward Zhang to Wonk Bridge’s core team. Both of them have been long-standing affiliates of the site — and, in Edward’s case, one of our most frequent and most popular writers —and both have been absolutely essential to the leaps and bounds we’ve made as an organisation in 2020, both before and behind the headlines. We are, a result, very proud to announce their accession to the core team, and profoundly grateful that they chose to bring their talents on board.
A word now from Dominic and Edward on their arrival, what each of them will be doing within the core team, what their ambitions are for the organisation, and how you can contact them.
Dominic Jukes — Head of Business Operations
Hi everyone — it is an honour to be able to introduce myself to our community today at the start of what I believe is an extremely exciting and defining period for Wonk Bridge. The best way to describe myself is someone who likes to take on problems and find practical solutions, which is why my professional background is spread across a plurality of disciplines and why I am always interested to keep on learning. But my three primary fields of interest for the moment are technology, sport and business.
As someone who has always been fascinated by journalism, I have, for a long time been frustrated by the direction that the industry has been travelling in. Reader expectations have moved on as the world becomes increasingly digital, but the industry has been slow to evolve. In particular, the current dominance of the ad-revenue business model online, has led to the quality of the content available steadily decreasing.
The effect of which has been a disengagement in news topics and apathy towards the profession. In my new role as the Head of Business Operations at Wonk Bridge, my ambition is for the publication to be at the forefront of reversing this societal trend. We aim to be an organisation where the writers and readers debate with each other about the most important technological topics of our world and the effects on our society. It is a space where we as a community can jointly break down the filter bubbles that have been created and together build-up our knowledge on any given tech topic.
This is the philosophy that I take when I write as well — check out my analysis of fake news, as well as a deep dive into the UK’s CCTV policy.
I would love to hear from our audience with any questions, comments, criticism, feedback or suggestions. To reach me, please use:
newsroom@wonkbridge.com
desterhaasy@gmail.com
Edward Zhang — 1st Marshall of Wonk World
Hi all; for all those of you who don’t know me, I’m Edward (a.k.a ‘The Beast from the East’). I’ve been Wonk Bridge’s formal China correspondent for almost three years now, filling you all in on Shenzhen’s tech-capital-of-the-world pedigree and China’s high speed rail revolution, among other things. In my secret (daylight) life I work for Investec, specialising in Operational Risk.
Having been a general advisor to the other guys in the team for some time, I’m excited to be stepping into this role of Wonk Bridge’s Marshall, the first ever in the history of the project. Our ambition is that Wonk Bridge grows well-beyond being just a tech publication — we want to, among other things, create a truly global tech network, aimed at studying the conditions under which great ideas form around the world, bringing people together in a spirit of learning and collaboration, and surfacing brilliant new technologies. My job is to build the beginnings of that network.
The best working teams have people with various traits. I’m pretty outgoing, I love to contribute directly — I think Yuji, Dom, Max, and the rest of the team are great at meshing with that ‘Beast Mode on’ style of creativity and communication. Of course, great teams will have some similar traits as well as contrasting ones. That we all thrive when communicating with people, that we all prefer talk about problems collectively, that’s so important. And that we are optimistic, that’s even more important. You’d have to be either crazy or crazy-optimistic to try to do something like this.
Being Wonk Bridge’s first marshall is a pretty big undertaking, and I’m proud to be one of the pioneers at the frontiers of this new ‘Wonk World’. From Bolivia to West Africa, to China and the Phillippines, and everywhere in between, I’ll be searching out technologists and entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas to share. If you’d like to get in touch — for anything to do with Wonk World, or about the latest in Asia tech, which I’ll still be regularly writing about — please use:
newsroom@wonkbridge.com
edwardzhang@gmail.com
