MAI PHUC HUY - Building bridges between ideas and action

I am a Hanoi-born academic researcher, creator, educator, athlete, and author currently based in Singapore. My work explores the complex friction between identifying a challenge and motivating communities or individuals to adopt meaningful change.

I thought information changed people.

I used to believe that the hardest part of solving a problem was finding the right answer. Debate complicated that idea: a strong argument could still miss the person across the room. Teaching complicated it again, because knowing a concept meant very little if I could not make it click for someone else.

Then SchoolFootprint made the gap impossible to ignore. I could calculate a school’s emissions, show students the numbers, and run a workshop that everyone seemed to enjoy, then watch the same habits return the next day. Running taught me the same lesson more physically: more effort is not always better effort, especially when I use half my energy in the first three kilometres.

Those misses became more useful than easy wins. They made me curious about what happens between understanding something and acting on it, and that question now connects the research I pursue, the tools I build, the people I teach, and the way I train.

Growing up between two cities

Most of my earliest environmental questions did not arrive as questions. They looked like Hanoi streets filling with water after a hard rain, lakes that seemed peaceful until I learned what was flowing into them, and early-morning runs where the city changed block by block before traffic took over.

At fifteen, I moved to Singapore. Living between two cities with very different infrastructure, density, and environmental habits made me notice how much “individual choice” is shaped by the system around it. Running through both places became my favourite way of reading them slowly.

What shapes me

Marathoner and trail runner: Running teaches me to pace ambition and adjust when the original plan has clearly stopped working.

Nature: Nature gives me the questions I keep returning to, from polluted rivers to forest streams and disappearing mangroves.

Debate: Debate forces me to test an idea against people who see the same problem differently.

Teaching: Teaching reminds me that clarity begins with listening, not simply explaining something louder.

Research: Research gives me a way to replace hunches with evidence without pretending that evidence answers everything.

Snapshot

Predicted IB: 44/45

Scholarship: Full-ride Foreign Scholarship, SGD 197,500

Environmental reach: 10,000+ students and educators through SchoolFootprint Vietnam

Research: Independent researcher & assistant at Hanoi University of Natural Resources and Environment

Academic focus: Environmental science, economics, and quantitative systems

Writing: Published author and climate essay finalist