Yu ZHANG
I study people. Then I make things happen.
Anthropologist by training. Coordinator by instinct. Researcher who spent three months living inside a brewery to understand why fermentation behaves the way it does, and came out with a theory, a thesis, and two new business partnerships.
Based in Amsterdam. Open to what's next.
[View My Work]
About Me
What
Watch First
I study people in places they least expect to be studied: factory floors, tasting rooms, competition arenas. Then I figure out what to do with what I find. The work has gone by different names — field researcher, project manager, communication coordinator, strategy intern — but the approach has always been the same: observe first, then act.
Who
Both, Actually
Technically, I am a social scientist with a research master's from Amsterdam and an undergraduate degree from Liverpool. Practically, I am the person in the room who notices what is not being said, keeps careful track of what actually needs to happen, and makes sure those two things find each other before the deadline does.
When
Never Linear
The path here was not at all straightforward. I managed a 30-person robotics team while studying abroad. I spent three months living inside a brewery for my master's research. I moved to the Netherlands and built a startup's partner network from scratch. These things happened in parallel, not in sequence, and somehow that made sense.
Why
In Between
The most interesting problems sit between categories: between research and execution, between cultures, between what people say they need and what they actually do. That gap is where I find the most useful work to be done. I ended up here not by accident but because that is precisely where I have always operated best.
My Experiences
Living inside the question
Universiteit van Amsterdam —
Field Researcher, 2025
For three months, I moved into a brewery in rural China and observed how humans and microorganisms negotiate space together. I designed the research as I went, adapted when my assumptions turned out to be wrong, and eventually identified a behavioral pattern that nobody had named before. I called it "competitive collaboration." The thesis scored well. The friendships led to a real business deal between two breweries.
Translating between two worlds
Yeast Sur Lie —
Operations & Partnership Coordinator, 2025-2026
A Chinese craft brewery trying to build partnerships in the Netherlands. A CEO who needed someone to hold things together while she crossed back and forth between countries. I built relationships with three Dutch partners, handled the negotiations, and somewhere along the way designed an expense reimbursement process that cut administrative back-and-forth by half.
Running the machine for a robot team
DJI RoboMaster —
Team Project Manager, 2021-2023
Thirty people, four technical subgroups, one €20,000 budget, and a competition season that never quite went according to plan. I kept the calendar, chaired the meetings, managed the paperwork, and made sure the robots showed up to the right city at the right time — consistently bringing the budget in €3,000 under. I also surveyed 200+ participants from competing university teams each season and presented the findings at an official DJI knowledge exchange. Someone had to think about the bigger picture, and I turned out to be decent at it.
Producing a documentary from fieldwork to public screening
Undergraduate Research Fellowship —
Executive Producer, 2022
A research fellowship gave us a question worth asking. My job was to turn it into something people could actually watch. I coordinated the shoot locations, reached out to interview subjects, and managed the back-and-forth with university administrators and local community contacts. When things went sideways three times over, I reassigned responsibilities and kept the timeline intact. We screened it in a campus cinema. The audience stayed for the Q&A.
At a Glance
*Ways of working:
Listening for what people don't say
Consensus before rollout
Cross-cultural & cross-functional coordination
*Visa Situation:
Dutch Orientation Year permit (graduated 2025), work-authorized now and eligible for reduced highly-skilled-migrant sponsorship.
Amsterdam-based, open to opportunities.
*Tools and Skills:
Project Management Tools (Notion, Lark), Microsoft Suite, Google Workspace, AI Tools for Workflow Automation (ChatGPT, Claude)
*Languages:
Mandarin Chinese (native)
English (fluent)
Dutch (A1-A2, actively improving)
Projects
There are some more
One More Thing...
A retired proud AIESECer!
I don't mind to be... an executive home chef 🧑🍳