Image: One of the William S.D. Louey Educational Foundation’s scholars, Shield Dun Xiao (centre left) with William Louey (centre right) and Shield’s parents. (Photo by Shield Dun Xiao).
As the 2024-25 academic year begins, the William SD Louey Educational Foundation is preparing to mark thirty years of funding world class education for gifted students. The Foundation was started by William Louey in 1995, and aims to provide some of China’s top scholars an opportunity to pursue higher education abroad. Scholars of the foundation are provided with full funding by William Louey for their higher education with just one condition attached: that one day, they must pay if forward.
It was an opportunity that didn’t exist when William Louey first launched the Foundation in 1995, according to one of the foundation’s first batch of scholars, Qi Yan, who studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
“We grew up in a world where, number one, there was very little exposure to the outside world. That was even before the Internet. Number two, people’s choices, whether it’s education or career choices, didn’t exist.” Qi Yan said. He now works at Guggenheim Partners in the US.
The first batch of scholars in 1995 consisted of five students that William Louey had personally interviewed and chosen, all of them hailing from Beijing. William Louey helped the students by not only paying for their school fees in the UK. He also helped them with their passports, supplied them with suitable clothing for their private education, monitored their studies and mentored them to qualify for top universities in Oxford and Cambridge.
One of the scholars was Albert Lei Shen, an academically gifted student from Beiling who studied engineering at Oxford University. “You get the tickets, you get emails from the school, you get your visa. You know this thing is going to go ahead, and the rest is just history,” Albert said.
He realised that the scholarship he received was very different from what other students had at university. “Other scholars from different charities, different scholarships, they don’t really get to know the donor. In our case, William Louey was at the airport the first time we arrived,” he said.
After working at firms such as JP Morgan, ANZ and BNP Paribas, Albert now lectures at the Peking Business School and also runs an education consultancy which helps Chinese students’ study in the UK. But more interestingly, Albert is also doing his own philanthropy, inspired by William Louey’s unique philosophy, which highlights that philanthropy is not only about giving money away, but also about giving personal care and attention to a cause.
In 2015, the first six scholars celebrated their 20-year reunion. Together with the other five scholars in the first batch that William S.D. Louey Educational Foundation sponsored. Albert set up The Pay It Forward scholarship to help other underprivileged Chinese students achieve world-class education in the UK.
It has always been William Louey’s intention to create a multiplier effect with his philanthropy. “I told the scholars right from the first day that they never have to pay me back. So you have to pay it forward. That’s the only condition,” William Louey explained.
One of the William S.D. Louey Educational Foundation’s scholars in 1997 was Anna Jin Xiang Zhao, a Cambridge engineering graduate who is now an experienced financier in Hong Kong.
Of the scholarship, Anna said: “That experience was very valuable. It completely changed my life and made it better. Not only did it help with my education and career, but William always taught us his own philosophy, he told us it’s very important to pay it forward. So I’ve been doing charity work for the past 20 years.”
Anna set up the Wang Family Foundation, which continues to help students from mainland China and Hong Kong study at Oxford University. “I hope we can carry on the same philosophy, you know, with my children,” she said, adding that her daughter is already determined to engage in philanthropic work like her parents.
Shield Dun Xiao, a serial entrepreneur in AI technologies and a philanthropist based in Palo Alto, met William Louey in 2000, when he was a 15-year old student in Beijing. Unlike other students, he received a full scholarship to study at both Cambridge and MIT after graduating from Millfield School.
At this point, Shield told William Louey that he didn’t need to be sponsored anymore by William S.D. Louey Educational Foundation. “William basically said, you know, if you don’t mind, you can take a little bit of the school’s scholarship as an honour, and I still want to pay for most of your tuition,” Shield revealed.
Shield went on to pursue his education at Trinity College in Cambridge and even lived in Sir Isaac Newton’s former dorm room for a year, with a view of the late physicist’s famous apple tree. “I almost cried,” Shield said, as his original name was a Mandarin translation of Isaac Newton.
Like many of William Louey’s scholars, Shield is also today a philanthropist who was inspired by the “Pay It Forward” movement. Shield founded a charity called Sea Star Children’s Foundation which helped more than 200 underprivileged children with congenital heart diseases from mainland China. But he believes charity isn’t only about giving money away.
“I could use the power of technology to pay it forward, to provide the best opportunities for everyone, and so I’ve been in education, working with young children for the past 17 years,” he said.
Shield is a successful app creator who has worked with the likes of Disney. He created a successful online education company in China called 17EdTech, which was once valued at $5 billion. “I definitely think that humanity would be better if everyone had this pay it forward mentality,” he said.
William Louey continues to sponsor Chinese students to study abroad, but he is today focusing on post-graduate education. He continues to believe that education is one of the most valuable areas he could deploy his wealth to help mould the next generation of visionaries who would then go on to create a better world.
“I decided to just help really bright scholars instead of helping a few thousand people,” William Louey said. His rationale was also that with a small number of people, he could also meaningfully invest his personal time and energy into each scholar.
William Louey, now 65, said “I can’t really explain to them how much I enjoy doing what I do. I have a big family, with all my scholars. I go to their graduation, I go to their weddings, I go to see their newborns. We become like families” he concluded.