Jo Soo Tang on loving Hong Kong, volunteering and making her days count

The founder of charity Rén tells Kate Whitehead about her ‘nerdy’ childhood, how she suddenly found herself Sydneyside, and why the world needs many more good people.

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We spoke to Jo Soo Tang about her life. Photo: Eugene Tang

Published: 5:00pm, 27 Jul 2024

I was born in Hong Kong in 1975, the youngest of three children. When I was three, my two older brothers, who were then six and nine, went to boarding school in Wales. I was effectively an only child. There was hardly anyone at home, aside from my father. He was a barrister. He and I had breakfast together. He’d ask me to choose a newspaper article and read it out loud to him over breakfast and we would talk about it in the car on my way to Kellett School. My mother came from a very privileged family. Her life was made up of getting together with friends and playing lots of mahjong.

Jo Soo Tang’s father, Samuel Soo. Picture: Handout

Day girl

I remember food packages being wrapped up in brown paper and tied with string and sent to my brothers in Colwyn Bay, Wales. I didn’t have to go to boarding school because I was a girl. I think my father was protecting me, he was very old school. I was only allowed to watch television once a day, that was Sesame Street. I was quite a nerdy kid and read a lot. After Kellett School, I did a year and a half at Island School. I’m still in touch with my Hong Kong school friends.

Dashing Down Under

When I was 11, we emigrated to Australia. Everything happened very quickly. I didn’t know what was going on, I just knew we had to get on a plane and were leaving. We went from having three live-in helpers and a driver to cleaners who came twice a week. My mum went from not knowing how to cook to learning everything. She still played a lot of mahjong. I helped her out a lot in the house. I saw my dad in the summer holidays when we returned to Hong Kong.

In love with Sydney

We lived in Lindfield and I went to Killara High School. There were so many Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Indonesian kids at the school. We were two stops from Chatswood, which was full of Hong Kong people, so I didn’t feel I’d left. There were Chinese grocery stores and you could rent TVB Jade movies from the video store. I loved Sydney and living near the coast.

Gossip Girl

My brothers came to Australia for university. There was an expectation that my siblings and I would become lawyers, but none of us did. My dad was very traditional, he wanted us to be either a lawyer, doctor or architect. I went to the University of Technology Sydney and studied law and business and continued living at home. It was a four-year, part-time sandwich course and you were supposed to work in between. I worked a lot.

I was fascinated with having my own coffee shop and worked at a Gossips Cafe in Northbridge, which was run by a Greek family. The chef was German and always angry at everything. I went there after lectures two or three times a week. It did put me off working in a cafe. I also went to The Hotel School at the InterContinental Sydney for 18 months. I was very busy and didn’t have time to think about not being in Hong Kong or with my friends. I feel now people process a lot of things mentally, emotionally, but we didn’t so much in those days, we just got on with it.

A bite of the Big Apple

My dad bought three apartments in Cammeray, Sydney, one on top of the other, hoping that my brothers and I would stay, but we all came back to Hong Kong after university. I came back when I was 24 and lived with my brothers in their flat in Mid-Levels. I met my first husband through friends. He worked for a hedge fund and after we’d been dating for a few years, he got a transfer to New York. We got married in order for me to get a green card and we moved to Salem, New Hampshire, and then to New York.

Riding the dotcom boom

In New York, I worked in a range of dotcom companies – New York New Media Association and then a company called Red, which was launching its internet service. And then I met Miranda Tan and Ed Tsai, who ran a PR agency, and joined them as a partner. We helped launch dotcom companies such as Nibble Box and DoubleClick. Things weren’t working out in the marriage and when my husband got a transfer back to Hong Kong I moved out.

Kids and pro bono

Jo with boys from Holland Hostel (residential care of Hong Kong Student Aid Society, Dec 2023. Picture: Handout

My mum put me up in an apartment in Star Street and I decided to focus on work. I worked for Shandwick International – which later became Weber Shandwick – which was where I met my mentor and boss, Martin Spurrier, who was an amazing old Hong Kong Brit. It was while I was at Shandwick that I met Michael Tang. He was a client and we started dating and then got married. Our kids were born in 2005, 2008 and 2011. Martin Spurrier joined the PR agency Edelman and asked me to join him. At Edelman I did a lot of pro bono work. I volunteered for the Make a Wish Foundation for two years and at the SPCA for three years, helping to launch its mongrel campaign.

Here to help

I’ve always been involved in volunteering. I like being busy. I’m not that much of a shopper. I’m not one to host lunches with big groups of women and sit around and chat. I think I saw too much mahjong as a child. I volunteered at the Hong Kong Adventist Hospital Foundation and then chaired their foundation for three terms. I was also on the board of the Splash Foundation for two terms.

Cookie Smiles

In 2020, I co-founded the social enterprise Cookie Smiles with Agnes Chin and her husband, Felix Zeller. Agnes thought of selling cookies and using the money left after expenses to donate to charity. We supported two to three charities a year. We did that for three years and then I decided I wanted to do something on my own. When you are older, you know what you want and what you don’t want. Plus, my kids were older, so I had more time.

Life of Brian

Chef Michael Smith with Brian and Chef Wilson of Moxie. Picture: Handout

I started Rén in February 2023. “Ren” means “people” (in Mandarin). I think we need to be good humans and it takes a lot of people to facilitate any work in the community. I met 18-year-old Brian through Shine, a special-needs school that is part of the VTC (Vocational Training Council), which I was in touch with through my work at Cookie Smiles. Brian has different abilities and he has intellectual disability. He didn’t speak that much and had little work experience. I placed him to intern as a kitchen assistant for six weeks at Moxie, a restaurant in Alexandra House.

Brian wanted to continue working after the internship, but the market wasn’t good coming out of Covid. I sat down with Moxie’s chef, Michael Smith, and asked if there was any way he could employ Brian, even if it was part time, and suggested he make a pastry and we sell it. Michael suggested lamingtons, an iconic Australian cake made of vanilla sponge, dipped in chocolate sauce and coated in desiccated coconut. The lamingtons were sold for HK$88 for two and that paid Brian’s salary, which was HK$80 an hour. And that was how we started. Since then we have placed more than 35 individuals into part time, full time or internship positions.

Safe spaces

Rén operates under three elements: “Humanity”, which is the placements; “Goodness”, which are extracurricular activities for the beneficiaries, such as classes in skateboarding and English; and “Food”, gathering together for food opens doors and conversations and allows diversity. We now have more than 20 advocates, our volunteers. We support people from the Hong Kong Down Syndrome Association, Christian Action, Justice Centre and the Hong Kong Student Aid Society.

We placed one person with Down’s syndrome at Shake Shack in Pacific Place and another is starting at the Ladies Recreation Club as a cleaner. And we placed a refugee into The Repulse Bay two months ago. The minimum wage in Hong Kong is HK$40 an hour and we target above that, about HK$65 to HK$80. We target places that have a good environment so that they have a buddy system.