Awesome Member of the Week: Jay Ku Offers Insight About Being a Leader
GOOD is featuring interviews of devoted members each week on good.is. Jay Ku served us for six years as a leader, working his way up to Head of Corporate Sponsorships. He's leaving us for another opportunity, but his insight will always be valued. Here's what he has to say.
GOOD is featuring interviews of devoted members each week on good.is. Jay Ku served us for six years as a leader, working his way up to Head of Corporate Sponsorships. He's leaving us for another opportunity, but his insight will always be valued. Here's what he has to share.
The last time I did good
I sit on the Advisory Council for the Institute at the Golden Gate, which is the part of the National Parks Conservancy that focuses on utilizing parks and public lands to educate people on environmental and health issues. I am helping to broker some creative partnerships between them, businesses, and organizations. We recently created a program in partnership with Kaiser Permanente and a local free health clinic in San Francisco to prescribe nature to adolescents dealing with ADHD. We found that 18 minutes a day of play outside in nature has the same effect as taking a daily dose of Ritalin. So we trained Kaiser physicians on how to prescribe nature to these patients to get them outside each day, utilize public parks, and find healthier ways of combating their ADHD. We are now looking to expand that program nationwide, and I continue to look for partners and allies to make it possible.
Book I'd Recommend
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Whether you make a living selling ads or not, everyone has to sell something at some point. Getting a better understanding of how people think – often times very irrationally – can only help in that. This book has some fascinating insights that give one a better understanding of people and why we do things that just don’t make any sense.
My hero
Abraham Lincoln. Of course, I admire him for all of his monumentally historic accomplishments, but I also respect him for his personal principles. He did what he thought was right, what was just, and what was best even if it meant breaking or ignoring the law. Those who know me can understand why that resonates with me. He sacrificed his own ambitions for what was best for his party when he first ran for the Senate but ended his campaign because he didn’t want to pull the Republican Party apart and weaken it against the Democrats. To me, nothing is more noble than recognizing one is a part of a larger team and then to make everyone on that team successful.
My favorite quote of his: “Be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.”
My manifesto
Nobody is a nobody.