In management and community development, we often begin by asking: what is missing? Is it people, skills, resources, or opportunities? But another approach turns the question around: what do we already have, and how can those existing strengths be used more effectively?
This idea has been at the heart of more than 20 years of work in education, leadership development, and community transformation by Chu Thi Van Anh – Founder of Active Skills and a speaker at HORECFEX VIETNAM 2026.
Her work is grounded in Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). Rather than viewing a community primarily through its limitations or needs for support, this approach focuses on identifying the knowledge, skills, relationships, and capabilities that already exist, empowering people within the community to take an active role in leading change themselves.
Through this approach, Van Anh has worked alongside thousands of leaders, schools, small social enterprises, and vulnerable communities across Vietnam. Her experience with Abilis Finland and the Hanoi Association of People with Disabilities has also helped her develop deep expertise in inclusive leadership, women’s empowerment, and training core groups of facilitators and trainers.
For the hospitality industry, this perspective offers a thought-provoking way to approach people development. An organization does not become stronger only by recruiting more employees or introducing new processes. Significant potential may already exist within the current team – in employees who have yet to be given the right opportunities, ideas that have not been heard, or internal connections that have not been fully activated.
Van Anh’s session at HORECFEX VIETNAM 2026 therefore goes beyond leadership skills alone. At its core is the question of how managers can create the conditions for people to recognize their own capabilities, participate in decision-making, and share responsibility for the organization’s development.
Selected by the Coady Institute at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada as one of 18 Global Change Leaders, Van Anh brings experience from models where change is created not simply for communities, but together with them.
For hospitality, tourism, and service businesses, this perspective offers an important reminder: before looking outside for additional resources, perhaps the first step is to look more closely at the people and strengths the organization already has.