#52 Vivian Siu - From Rock Bottom to Ivy League and the Macau Grand Prix

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Vivian Siu was born in Hong Kong. At age 6 she and her mother moved to New York in the hope of a better life.

At age 16 she lost her mother, and dropped out of high-school in the USA, moving back to HK to avoid being put in foster care …She then dragged herself up by the bootstraps, hitting the books, and somehow getting into and graduating from Columbia University

She went from bartending around HK and sleeping on friend’s couches with a small suitcase just to survive… to a successful career in investment banking.

As an escape from her harsh reality, she found joy in the underground video arcades of gritty Kowloon. She found community there and found that she was actually really good at the car racing games.

Many years later, she used that muscle memory from the arcade…to unbelievably making history as the first female and first LGBTQ Formula 4 driver ever to finish the Macau Grand Prix. All with just 6 months of experience and 4 real races in an actual racing car, and whilst holding down a job in Investment Banking.

Seriously incredible and the movie about her life so far will be shown on all Cathay Pacific flights starting in December

Vivian’s story is a reminder to all of us that when education and sport, meets a young person with drive… anything is possible.

She was not born into money. There has been no silver spoon to feed her opportunities. And when you don’t have opportunity fed to you on a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off knives.

She’s taken every sliver of an opportunity shown to her and really made her own luck. The odds were completely stacked against her achieving any of these things. And yet, here she is. Record breaker.

Ultimately, I’ve often said that “It’s hard to beat the person that refuses to give up.”

This woman has not, and will not give up. We all have something to learn from her.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.


Guest - Vivian Siu (https://www.instagram.com/viviansiu28/?hl=en)
Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelxcampion/
Instagram: @michaelxcampion

Watch the movie Zero to Macao (https://www.zerotomacao.com/) on all Cathay Pacific flights


(00:00) Preview
(00:41) Intro
(04:41) Moving to New York as a kid
(07:40) Losing her mum at 16
(10:07) The arcade racing game that kept her sane
(13:53) Rock bottom years
(17:19) GED, community college, obsessive studying habits
(20:57) Getting Into Columbia 
(25:42) Ivy League grind
(30:33) Life After Columbia
(31:33) Graduating alone
(36:54) Survival mode mindset
(40:24) From arcade to track
(44:20) Mentors and momentum: the push that made it real
(45:02) The Macau Grand Prix experience
(47:38) Racing for her dad
(51:28) Releasing years of bottled up pain
(54:46) Zero to Macau
(57:52) Who this story is for
(01:00:01) Doing it for mum and dad vs doing it for yourself
(01:03:21) Why every lap feels like a win
(01:07:00) Inner game routines
(01:08:32) What’s next for Vivian
(01:10:11) Outro