Next City isn’t just a news website, we are a nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire social, economic and environmental change in cities. Part of how we do that is by connecting our readers to urban changemakers and holding an annual Vanguard conference bringing together 40 top young urban leaders. Emily Tsiang is a member of the 2009 Vanguard class.

Name: Emily Tsiang
Current Occupation: Co-Founder, Culture LabX
Hometown: San Diego
Current City: San Francisco
Twitter Tag: @emsworld, @culturelabx

I drink: Hot water with lemon
I am an: Extrovert
I get to work by: Walk/Bike/Subway
The area I grew up is: Suburbs

What was your first job? My first job after college was with the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City where we advised cities on urban economic development strategies. I was there for three years and got to work with the cities of New York, London, Providence and Newark. It was kind of like job nirvana.

What is your favorite city and why? Copenhagen in the summer. New York in the fall. San Francisco in the winter. Amsterdam in the spring.

What do you do when you are not working? I go on factory tours. Not the behemoth Hershey ones, but you know the neighborhood ones that are run by immigrant entrepreneurs and employ local residents. Those. Love them. I’m fascinated by how things are made and factory tours are the best kind of visual storytelling. My recent outing was to the Hodo Soy Beanery, a tofu factory in West Oakland. Turns out that area used to be the world’s largest food-processing center. You end up learning so much about the evolution of neighborhoods on these tours.

Did you always want to be an urban planner? I grew up in the suburbs, where we drove around everywhere and everyone lived in planned gated communities. So it never occurred to me that urban planning was a thing, much less a job. It wasn’t until my freshman year, when I interned at the LA Mayor’s Office of Economic Development and commuted to downtown on the regional rail, that I was exposed to the concept of urbanism. This awesome world of system-oriented design built around density opened up and I’ve been inspired ever since.

What career advice would you give an emerging urban leader? Prototype. As an experiential learner and designer, I really connect with this approach to trying out different careers, interests and work environments. When I was interested with how cities combat climate change, I spent three months in Copenhagen learning about how they were reducing their carbon emission. While it was an amazing experience, it helped me to quickly realize sustainability wasn’t where I wanted to pursue a career. We are incredibly lucky to be in a living in a time when we aren’t defined by a single job.