JAHIN Tanvir has spoken alongside a prime minister, represented Australia as an ambassador for UNICEF and been awarded ACT’s Young Citizen of the Year, and that’s all before his 22nd birthday.

Now, the Canberra optometry student has been made CEO of the Australian School of Entrepreneurship (ASE), a role where he’ll be teaching essential employment skills to young people who he believes aren’t having their voices heard.

The government’s recent Jobs and Skills Summit, says Jahin, was clear evidence of the underrepresentation of young and marginalised people.

“I think there was a massive missed opportunity there,” he says.

“When we look at the demographics of the summit, the youngest person was 23-year-old Yasmin Poole, who’s obviously a fantastic spokesperson for young people, but one person isn’t a representation of all young people. It feels very tokenistic.

“It’s not representative of culturally and linguistically and neurodiverse backgrounds, regional and rural backgrounds.”

Jahin, who also serves as board director of the Adolescent Health Association of Australia, believes this gap in youth representation is part of what’s driving the country’s skills shortage.

“When we talk about jobs and skills we’re talking about the future generations,” he says.

“The young people nowadays will be getting those jobs in the future so how do we support them? We need to have that conversation, we need to involve them in the decision making process.”

A first-generation migrant from Bangladesh, Jahin’s volunteering and advocacy have seen him deliver three Ted talks which together have been viewed by more than 120,000 people.

But while his abilities have seen him represent Australia on the international stage, he confesses that confidence didn’t always come naturally.

“Moving to Australia from Bangladesh in 2003 and growing up I had severe social anxiety,” says Jahin.

“It wasn’t because I didn’t have things to say, I had a lot of things to say as a young person, but because I look dark-skinned and I looked like a very first-generation migrant, I experienced a lot of racism. It was a massive identity crisis.

“I still remember the names I got called on the bus to and from school. Facing that racism at an early wage was horrific. There was this feeling that I don’t belong here but I don’t belong overseas either because I speak a different language.”

Describing that time of his life as one of “deep sadness”, Jahin decided to start studying public speaking as a way to find his voice.

“I realised I’m not happy being so quiet and reserved. I have more to say. I can do more, offer more and being quiet and afraid of myself wasn’t going to achieve anything,” he says.

By the end of high school Jahin was putting his new-found skills to work with multiple charity organisations and eventually on the boards of major organisations.

“I came to this philosophy that you can’t be what you can’t see and growing up I definitely didn’t see anyone that looked like me in mainstream media or leadership roles,” he says.

“I think times have changed and I want to be a part of that change to show, yes, you can do and be more.”

Jahin’s volunteering for Headspace and the Multicultural Youth Affairs Network of Australia would see him selected as 2021’s ACT Young Citizen of the Year as well as a finalist for Young Australian of the Year at the national awards this year.

Amidst the covid pandemic, his passions would culminate with Breathe, an enterprise he created that aimed to teach the same public-speaking skills he’d learnt to others similarly struggling to find their voice.

His bedroom start-up was not only acquired by the ASE earlier this year, but the organisation would soon after ask him to lead it.

“We know communication is the number one, most employable skill in any work you go into,” says Jahin.

“It’s so fundamental, but we don’t put emphasis on it. I think it needs to be part of the curriculum, parallel to science, maths and English.”

As CEO of the ASE, Jahin says workshops, education programs and conferences that teach fundamental communication skills to those in need of them will be his priority.

“There is no ‘adulting 101’ class in high school that can prepare young people for the big, wide world,” says Jahin.

“How do you pay your taxes? How do you start a business? There were just so many skills I should have learned in school but didn’t.

“We want to be the place young people come to where they can learn about the real world.”