YANG CHAO

Connector, Entrepreneur, Event planner, Explorer, World traveler

Yang Chao I've spent my life exploring one question: why do people change — sometimes, and sometimes don't. Today I design immersive experiences that help people slow down, step outside their anxious thinking, and rediscover clarity in an increasingly complex world. I'm fascinated by what I think of as our "unknown unknowns" — the things in ourselves we don't yet know we don't know — and by the moment a person first truly sees themselves, and changes because of it. This is not where I began. For more than twenty years, my work was in business — starting at McDonald's China in 1991 as part of its first management team, and later founding ventures in consulting and mobile learning, and serving as an operating partner at a private equity firm. I studied at UNSW and Yale SOM. It was those years, meeting so many people and seeing so much, that slowly led me to a deeper question: beneath all the restlessness that success creates, what is it that people actually need? What is truly worth pursuing? That question is what my work turns on today — including as one of the founders and the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of Journeyers, where I design experiences that help people find clarity. For the past 13 years I have organized an annual non-profit talk event called "Warm Gathering," where ordinary people share extraordinary, true stories with an audience of around 150. I also helped launch the Gobi Desert "Xuanzang Road" Challenge, a 121 km endurance walk that has guided tens of thousands of people toward resilience and self-awareness. A lifelong learner and a desert runner, I believe awareness is where change begins. A passionate TED follower, I hope to host a TEDx in China — to bring people together around ideas that move hearts and minds.

What I care about most is helping people discover the things in themselves they cannot yet see — what I think of as their "unknown unknowns," the parts of ourselves we don't even know we're missing. (When I attended TED NEXT in 2025, this was the very topic I put on my badge as something I wanted to talk about.) I care about it because of my own life. I've found that my real growth, and my deepest sense of happiness, almost always came after a period of being stuck — when no new understanding could get in. Over time I realized why: it was my own mind that had closed the door. When we are tense or on guard, the mind quietly shields us from the very things we most need to see. What looks like the world blocking us is often us blocking ourselves. That is why this matters so much to me.

Most of our unhappiness doesn't come from the world around us — it comes from not understanding ourselves. When we don't know how our own minds work, we get trapped inside them. We become tense, and quietly close the door on the very things we most need to see. The first step toward a calmer, more open life isn't getting more — it's learning to step outside our own thinking and truly see ourselves. That is where real change begins.

Event Curation, Facilitating Transformative Experiences, Leadership & Self-Awareness, Mindfulness & Inner Clarity, Storytelling & Speaker Coaching

I watched my first TED talk nearly twenty years ago, such as "How great leaders inspire action", and loved it. I went on to watch many more. Over the years, we would even share a TED talk video to other people— using its ideas to help everyone understand a thought more deeply. At 48, my path changed. I moved away from a life centered on business, toward work that helps people — and myself — discover their own direction. From then on, I paid much closer attention to TED and TEDx, and to this kind of gathering where people come together around new ideas. I began organizing talk events of my own. In 2025 I attended TED NEXT, hoping to take part in the TED community more deeply — even to organize a TEDx event in China. This past January, I applied for the first time. It wasn't approved: I hadn't realized that my proposed venue and event were tied to another non-profit's activity, which doesn't fit what a community TEDx is meant to be. But that hasn't dimmed my enthusiasm in the least — if anything, it taught me the TEDx rules more thoroughly. I hope to become a more active member of the TED and TEDx community.

After more than twenty years in business, people often assume I'm all about strategy, performance, and results. What they don't expect is that what I'm actually best at is helping a person slow down — and see themselves clearly. My way of doing it is quiet and simple. I create a sense of safety, and then ask the right questions — or help someone begin to ask those questions of themselves — so that, step by step, they turn their attention inward. And I've watched the same thing happen again and again: the more clearly a person sees themselves, the calmer and less defensive they become; and the calmer they become, the more clearly they can think, the better they can tell what matters from what doesn't, and the wiser the choices they make. People often come out of it with far more energy than they came in with. This comes naturally to me, and I've done it for more than a decade through "Warm Gathering," the annual non-profit talks I host, where everyday people share extraordinary true stories. Helping someone find the one true thing worth saying — and the courage to say it — is what I'm most quietly good at.