Harue Liu

Founder,
GreenStyle

Growing up in Japan as a Chinese, Harue Liu grew up in an environment of speaking Japanese and Chinese with her parents and family in China when she went to visit them. She has been spending her high school years in Singapore at Stamford American International School, and she is currently in grade 11. Being a third culture kid led her to struggle with understanding her identity, a challenge that provided Harue the opportunity of self-discovery. She has realized that her identity is not only defined by citizenship and residency, but the heritages she has, such as cultural background and languages, as well as her own individual thoughts and perspectives. 

Given her unique multicultural background, Harue has been polishing her language abilities to become solidly multilingual in Japanese, English, and Chinese. The process of self-reflection has shaped her to be not only socially active at school through communicating in different languages but also allows her to believe in her ability and possibility, and shown her that hard work is the surest and most necessary factor in terms of achieving her objectives. 

Through her journey of self-discovery and perseverance in a culturally ambiguous upbringing, Harue cultivated a strong belief in civic involvement and community-building. As such, she is now part of the Student Council, and the president of the Japanese Culture Club at school. Outside of school, she has dedicated her time to volunteering as part of a local charity for two years, as well as teaching Japanese online to students in Myanmar.  At the same time, she has danced ballet for 13 years, enabling her to develop discipline, responsibility, and endurance. Harue is an avid student across disciplines, though she is most interested in environmental studies and economics, particularly the intersection between behavioral economics and environmental solutions, as major change can only be affected by micro behaviors at the individual level. 

At school, she is the founder of GreenStyle, a club that advocates for environmental issues, specifically towards more sustainable fashion. Building upon GreenStyle, Harue is developing further initiatives outside of school. Her target is to raise awareness of the negative externalities of fast fashion and help people reprogram their spending and consumption habits towards more sustainable fashion. Only through education and a change in attitude will people change their behaviors. Through the project, she can not only contribute to sustainability but also learn firsthand the realities of changing ingrained consumer behavior.