Have balance, take the time to know who you are and what you want, and commit to your goals.

That’s the advice from Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader: slow down and take a moment to think and reflect.

“I was definitely one of those impatient people who wanted to do things really quickly, to the extent of driving myself and everyone else around me crazy,” she said. “Now I think I’ve changed a bit in terms of understanding that sometimes, you just need to commit time and just let time pass — even if you’re not doing anything. Time actually helps you understand things, it helps you clarify a lot of things. Even if it’s just in your own mind.”

“Because really, it takes time for you to really understand what you want. Sometimes I just sit down and think what makes me happy. And to be happy and to serve society in my own little way is good enough for me,” Keyu said.

Keyu Jin: Have balance, know yourself, and commit to your goals

Have balance, take the time to know who you are and what you want, and commit to your goals. That's the advice from Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader: slow down and take a moment to think and reflect.

Born and raised in China, independent thinking is important to Keyu. Her focus is international macroeconomic policy, and she has studied and written about the (now former) one child policy and its impact on her peers.

“These children are very subject to parental pressure, and I think you need to be really independent in your thinking, because only they know what’s best for them,” she said. “Their parents come from a very different generation. It’s your life. You can’t live you can’t live for other people forever.”

Keyu has written that this is a golden age for Chinese women, but there’s still a struggle.

“Women are caught in between two different kinds of paradigms. One is there is still a lot of social pressure for women to conform, to be more traditional,” she said. The other is “their own responsibility and duty to society to be independent and to be successful and driven professionally. Successful women need to free themselves from the mental shackles that are imposed on them. Whatever profession they decide to pursue, as long as they pursue it with passion and (are) fulfilling their dreams, I think for me that’s all about what successful women are.”

Can women have it all?

Interview with Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. We asked if women can really have it all in an era of "Lean Forward."

She also writes advice about life and students on her Weibo account. “Sometimes I wish I had a little bit more guidance before I made certain decisions or jumped into certain things.” Character and commitment are recurring themes in her advice.

“The successful people I respect, one of the key characteristics is really about their moral standards and how much they want to contribute to community,” she said.

Many of her students are undergraduates, and come to her for career advice. She makes them think hard, she said, about the challenges and what they need to do to become successful, rather than just liking the sound of “professor” or “lawyer.”

“I really do believe in commitment. What it takes to be a professor is five years of PhD (work), careful research and analysis. And the same thing with banking and law. It’s important for the young people to recognize that the first few years is a lot of hard work and they need to commit to that in order to get to the next level.”

Keyu Jin on \'Tiger Moms\'

In an interview with Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, we asked about the impact of so-called "Tiger Moms" on the current generation.

As a teenager she left her mom and dad (the latter is the current president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) in China for high school in New York.

“I had just come from China – a uniform, straight hair – and then I come to New York to be the first exchange student from China at Horace Mann,” she said. “I saw myself from going from Communist China to supporting the Democratic campaign because my host family the host was running for state attorney general in New York. So I went to Chinatown and gave people flyers and learned about the whole process. But I think it was also a very important character building process.”

What do women need to do to be successful?

Forum Young Global Leader, we asked about what women need to do to be successful. Women, she said, are still caught between the social pressure to be traditional and have children and the pressure to be a successful career professional.