In the Hot Seat at The Giles Agency | Meet Jenny!

Welcome to In the Hot Seat at The Giles Agency! Over the series we aim to introduce you to the stars that make The Giles Agency the best place to work in Hong Kong and Singapore.  We hope you enjoy getting to know a bit more about us.

Introducing…Jenny Li!

What’s your role at The Giles Agency?
Senior Chinese Editor

How long have you been at the agency?
One year and two months!!

What do you like best about working at The Giles Agency?
I love the setting – that each team basically shares one big table, breaking a kind of invisible boundary created by partitions in a regular office. This also encourages us to talk to the each other instead of sending emails. Plus team lunches and other flexible measures, these small things add up to build a unique culture of our own, which I think many people would love to enjoy in their traditional Hong Kong offices too.

Describe the agency in 3 words:
Storyteller: We tell/write stories for our clients, in their culture, tone of manner and practices.

Dance partner: Going to the same direction doesn’t always mean we all take the lead or we all step “forward”. We communicate and operate with our colleagues just like we are dancing, i.e. sometimes I take a step with my right leg while my partners take their left leg a step back, or vice versa, so we all move smoothly and create a beautiful dance.

Family: It is no doubt that we are a big family who can share ups and downs in our lives with (not only what we are facing at work, but in our daily lives.) May be because we are in similar stages of life.

What’s your favourite colour?
Pompompurin yellow and turquoise

What’s your coffee or tea of choice?
Apricot Elderflower Tea

Tell us something we might not know about you:
I love chairs and I love collecting designer chair miniatures. I bought my first one in 2006 with my pocket money. And then I earn money as a part-time tutor when I was still in secondary school, so that I could buy more. Now I have 30 chairs in total. Once I went to a designer chair store in Roppongi, Tokyo. I bought a big designer chair poster, which shows one chair created in each year in the past century. It was like I was going home with 100 chairs with me.

Here’s my collection at home:

My favourite chair:
Heart Cone Chair (the red one in front row), the design is so elegant.

The reason why I love chairs:
Each chair has its own story, relating to the functionality and culture at that particular period of time. They are a record of human history. For example: “The Chair” represents a debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
In September 1960, ten years after The Chair’s debut, it earned another spot in the history books when, thanks to its comfort and quality, it was selected for use in the first-ever televised U.S. presidential debate between candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Each of the candidates sat in Wegner’s Round Chair throughout the debates.

And that’s it for this month, hopefully you’ve enjoyed getting to know more about Jenny.  Watch out for the next in the series of In the Hot Seat!