The Science of Resilience: How En-chia Tsai Balances Biotech Innovation and Social Impact. A Conversation with En-chia Tsai, Executive Director of Bened Biomedical & Chairwoman of Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation

In this episode of Taiwanese Change Makers, host Adrian de Courcey sits down with En-chia Tsai, an award-winning entrepreneur, co-founder of Bened Biomedical (a pioneering neurobiotics company), and chairwoman of the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation.

En-chia shares her journey from studying abroad in Ireland and the UK to leading groundbreaking research in psychobiotics—probiotics that improve neurological health for conditions such as, autism, Parkinson’s, and depression. She discusses how Bened Biomedical is revolutionising the gut-brain axis, and her vision for making Bened and Taiwan global brands in biotech.

Beyond business, En-chia opens up about her impactful role at the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, combating human trafficking, domestic violence, and digital sexual abuse. She sheds light on the dark reality of scam operations in Southeast Asia and how the foundation rescues victims while advocating for policy change.

Finally, En-chia reflects on work-life balance as a working mom, her favourite spots in Taiwan (including Tainan’s street food!), and why Din Tai Fung remains her top restaurant pick.

Tune in for an inspiring conversation on innovation, social impact, and resilience with one of Taiwan’s leading Change Makers!

Transcript

Welcome to Taiwanese Change Makers, a podcast highlighting the stories of individuals driving positive change and transformation in Taiwan. I'm your host, Adrian de Courcey. In this episode, I'm delighted to welcome En-chia Tsai. En-chia has a professional background in marketing. She is an award-winning entrepreneur and accomplished business leader. En-chia is currently a co-founder
and executive director of Bened Biomedical, a pioneering neurobiotics company and Chairwoman of the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation. En-chia, welcome to Taiwanese Change Makers.

Hello Adrian, thank you for having me here.

Great, so let's start at the beginning. Can you share what it was like growing up in Taiwan, your experience studying in Ireland and the UK and your early work experiences?

Okay, I grew up in Taipei and I think like most kids here, a big part of my childhood revolved around studying and taking exams. But I'm really grateful to my parents because they didn't put too many restrictions on me. So, unlike a lot of Asian parents, as long as I have my grades fine, they pretty much let me do whatever I wanted to do. apart from studying, when I was a kid, I spent a lot time watching TV, playing with friends, swimming, etc. And in high school, I spent a lot of time in the debate tournaments. I was leader in the debate team. So I basically spent every winter and summer vacation in the debate club activities. So that's pretty much my childhood. And when I go to university, I go to National Taiwan University. 

So for my final year, I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do next, so I applied for the exchange program to Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. And that year was incredible because, to be honest, I had already completed most of my courses because that was the last year of my uni. So I didn't have to spend too much time in class. So instead, I spent a lot of time traveling around Europe. So thanks to Ryanair, those very cheap flights, I managed to keep every trip to 200 euros, including flights and everything. Pretty impressive, right? Yeah, so that's my time in Ireland. I didn't really spend a lot of time in Ireland itself. I spent time traveling around Europe, going to every place as I could. 

So it was a great introductory year to a sort of European study and vacation.

Yes, exactly. And that's exactly why when I wanted to do a master degree, I chose London because it was close to where I was familiar with. So I went to study in the UK after working several years in Taiwan. So I did a master in social psychology in the London School of Economics. 

Since the tuition fee and living costs was really high, that's probably one of the year in my life that I was truly serious about studying and fully immersed myself in academic life because I spent so much there, but I enjoyed it. And then I decided to move back to Taiwan after working in London for nearly, I think, two years. So I started with a marketing project. I worked with the Professor who is our founder in Bened Biomedical. 

He invited me to continue creating a business, is Bened Biomedical here. So he was looking for chances to commercialise his innovation, which is what we are doing now. I didn't think too much. When I look back now, I think I was a bit naive. I just say, yes, why not? It was an exciting challenge. It's a fascinating topic. yeah, I just joined them.

I thought we will work hard for two to three years, maybe five at most. And I will wrap up everything and move back to UK for easy life there. But then here I am 10 years later still here. Yeah, that's pretty much my journey.

But it's exciting moving into a pioneering neurobiotic company. And as I understand, Bened Biomedical are doing some very experimental and groundbreaking work in the gut brain axis. Can you tell me a little bit more about the company and the research they're doing?

Yes, definitely. At Bened Medical, we focus on pioneering medical-grade probiotic that target the gut-brain axis. It's a fascinating area of research showing how gut microbiota, it's the bacteria in your gut, influence mental and neurological health. So we have several flagship products that probiotic strains, they're called psychobiotic, PS128 and PS23, those are the strain names.

They are breakthrough probiotic aimed at improving neurological health, such as Parkinson's, autism, Alzheimer's, depression, etc. It's been clinically tested to support individuals with those conditions. And those are approved in several clinical studies.

Yeah, that's pretty much what we do. And apart from the R &D, we also commercialise those technologies rather fast because a lot of those academic institutions, they tend to do R &D for like 10 years and spend another 10 years to plan their business strategy. But we move fast. We are on a more agile system that we try to commercialise our technology first and then we will continue to do R&D,
to improve it and continue and so on. we are already in more than 60 countries. So our finished products are sold in more than 60 countries and we have helped more than one million families across the world.

That's truly outstanding. Do you sell your products direct to consumers or are they supplements in medical drinks or so on? Can you tell us a little bit about the commercial pathway?

Sure, sure, yeah, I should go into more detail. So I guess everyone knows what probiotic is, right? So it's the good bacteria. So mostly we sell those in the sachet powder or capsule form. They are supplements. And for the first five years of our business, we focus on doing OEM, which is that we provide the raw material and we manufacture for big brands, for big farmers to have their brand attached to our product.

But for the recent three to four, five years, we have started to create our own brand. So we have our own brand in Taiwan and in the United States, we have a subsidiary there. And we started to sell direct to consumer on our website through e-commerce. And that's a big change because that's when we can actually interact with our end users and that we can improve our product. We can continue doing R&D through those feedbacks.

You get direct customer feedback as well because you're not working through the intermediary of a big pharma. So tell me, I'm just curious. So basically somebody listening to this in the US, they can go into your website and they can order directly.

Yes, that's how easy it is. That's the beauty of a supplement business. You can sell since day one. You don't need a lot of approval regulation-wise.

There's no FDA approval there's no there's not the years of regulatory challenges

No, well I should say we don't need that, but we are on that route because we want our product to be evidence-based. So we try to pass everything we could, but that's not necessary.

And then obviously the gut brain axis is a very large topic and it can deal the research that your company is doing is dealing with everything from Alzheimer's, dementia, depression, other conditions as well. The supplements on sale, which conditions are they actually targeted at?

For the product in the US, we are targeting autism. That's because it's a huge population and it's really unmet medical need. We don't have a lot of solutions for the autistic kids. And we have a lot of clinical study already there. But in Taiwan, we target everything because this is our home country, We can basically say everything we want.

We are more popular here, so we can target a wider audience. So a lot of patients come to us because they want to treat their Parkinson's or improve cognitive function or even just sleep quality.

Okay, so for conditions such as insomnia and so on.

And then obviously it's been a fascinating journey so far, but what are your ambitions for being at biomedical over the next 10 years? Would you like to expand into other markets geographically or other conditions and so on?

Over the next decade, I think we want Bonnet Bell Medical to remain at the forefront of this so-called neurobiotic research and innovation, continuing to push the boundaries of what's possible in this area in mental health and neurological health. On the research front, we will be dedicating even more research to clinical studies on Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. Those are the neurodegenerative conditions.

Those are the conditions where gut-brain access plays a crucial role. So we are also exploring innovative research methodologies tailored especially to the needs of a neurodiversity community. Neurodiversity community means like ADHD or autism, anxiety, et cetera. So we want to ensure our studies are designed with inclusivity and real-world impact.

That's huge. We don't want to do the traditional route of those. Like what we've been developing pharma, we want to make it more tailored to these groups. So we are creating more qualitative research methods. This is very new. I can't talk too much detail, but we want to focus more on the individuals. We want to look at those patients on the individual levels instead of thinking they're all identical.

And another major goal is to unlock deeper insights into the mechanism through which probiotic can alleviate neurological symptoms. Because it's currently still a lot of unknown parts why a probiotic in the gut could actually make such huge change. So we want to do more fundamental studies to unlock those mechanisms.

That's the research part. And the market expansion part, we are committed to strengthening our own brand, as I said, which is particularly significant for Taiwan because for years, I think Taiwan has been recognized for its cutting edge technology, but mostly in the OEM and manufacturing sectors. Few have seen in a place where a famous Taiwanese brand internationally reckoned.

So that's one thing we want to build. We want to build a strong Taiwanese originated brand. We already have two brands, one in the United States, as I said, it's called New Rally. And there's a one in Taiwan called Inseed. They're already famous in United States and Asia, but we want to just expand it globally. Yeah, that's pretty much our goal.

There's lots of opportunities, opportunities expanding into Australia or expanding to Asia or more European countries and so on. And I think it's a very interesting story because as you say, when people think of Taiwan, they often think of Taiwan Semiconductor. They think of the more high tech AI advanced manufacturing, but they don't necessarily think of biomedical research. So you are really a leading light in that area.

Yes, actually we do have a lot of very good pharmaceutical companies in Taiwan. Just we always focus on only the technology, never efforts on branding and, you know, creating our own names. Yeah. So that's what we want.

I really applaud your efforts there because actually you are a really leading light in moving in that direction. For any listeners who are interested in the gut brain access or want to delve further and understand the research, do you have any research papers published in medical journals which they can access or read?

Yes, of course, we have already published I think more than a hundred scientific papers. So just Google PS128, that's our strain name, or psychobiotic, you will see tons of research from us or from other incredible studies.

Wow, very impressive. Now, in addition to your work in the biomedical space, you've also have exposure to Taiwan's entrepreneurial ecosystem and you've been a business mentor with Taipei's Entrepreneurs Hub. Tell our listeners what in your view makes Taiwan a great location for entrepreneurs and what type of support is available for startups in Taiwan.

Well, I do serve as a mentor. So my role was mainly through individual coaching sessions at the invitation of the Taipei City government for those overseas startups that are trying to enter the Taiwan market. I'll help them to navigate marketing and business challenges. But I wouldn't say I have a full picture of what the Taiwan's entire startup policy, landscape and ecosystem looks like. But that said, from my perspective, I think Taiwan occupies a unique geographic and economic cultural positions, which makes us an excellent base for entrepreneurs startups to start with, because we are a small yet highly developed market which is ideal for international startups looking to test and validate their business ideas in Asia before scaling up. Taiwan is a good start. And culturally, yeah, it's a nice starting point. And I think culturally, Taiwan is in between Chinese and Japanese influence and also a little bit of westernisation.

It's a great test bed.

Well, not as much as Singapore and Hong Kong, but still enough to serve as a bridge between Eastern and Western markets. So yes, it's also a strategic entry point if a foreign company wants to enter Asia and you want to know more about Chinese or the Japanese market or even to Southeast Asia. So I think that's what our benefits are.

So in location, in culture, and in the fact that with a population of 23 million, Taiwan is large enough to truly validate an idea, but small enough that a startup can still make changes and really go through the initial product and customer testing before going elsewhere to a larger market.

Yes, exactly. And Taipei is a for enough friendly cities to stay in. That's also one very good.

Yeah, it's an incredibly friendly and open city. It's truly, it's at this crossing point between the different cultures, keeping the Asian origins, but it's very much open to international business, international culture. It's a fascinating place.

In addition to your professional commitments, you're also the chairwoman of the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation, which provides counselling and protection to women affected by human trafficking and domestic violence. How did you become involved with the foundation?

Good question. The Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation is actually older than I am. It was founded in, I think, 1978. Yes, 1978. It's one of Taiwan's most important organisations in the fight for gender equality and has played a crucial role in advancing women's rights. I've been on the board for four years, but I just only recently stepped into the role of chairwoman recently this year.

So compared to those incredible senior figures who have shaped this organisation, I am really the newcomer here. And the way I got involved was quite unexpected. So about five years ago, our company sponsored one of the foundation's advocacy campaigns. And I attended a round table discussion as a sponsor, because we pay them, so they asked me to sit there.

And because my background is in political science, I did political science for my bachelor degree. So I already had some rough idea understanding about gender equality issues and et cetera. So I guess that caught the attention of the foundation's leadership. So after that event, Professor Ye De Lan from National Taiwan University, who was the chair at the time, invited me to join the board. I think at the time the foundation was looking to bring in someone with a business profession with awareness of gender equality. Maybe that would benefit their fundraising or whatever, but that's how I joined them. And then for four years later, I become the chair.

Congratulations on your appointment as chair. And can you give our listeners an insight into the work and achievements of the foundation?

Okay, yeah, sure, sure. So the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation has been at the forefront of women's rights and gender-based violence prevention in Taiwan since its founding, as I mentioned, it was 1978. And unlike many NGOs that focus solely either on providing service or advocacy, we do both. we...

provide direct support for those violent survivors while we still trying to push the systematic change through legal reforms and public educations. And at its core, the foundation works on three levels of prevention for gender-based violence. We support the victims of domestic violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking and digital sexual abuse.

We have a team of social workers, legal experts and psychologists to help those survivors to rebuild their lives. But at the same time, we still advocate for policy change and ensure some long-term solutions are in the pipeline. Yeah, that's pretty much what we do. and recently, there's another growing concern in human trafficking, particularly in cases where the Taiwanese citizens are tricked into taking a fake job offers abroad. don't know if you're aware that a lot of Taiwanese citizens are brought, are tricked to Cambodia or Myanmar to force to run scams under threats and violence and abuse. So there are a lot of victims of that kind. There's a large scale fraud operations running globally in Asia, in China, in Southeast Asia. So we help those victims to come out from those organisations and try to have their feedback to their life.

So you're very much involved both on the front line in changing people's lives and saving them from those forward scams and harassment, but also you with the foundation are in direct touch with government and policymakers influencing policy.

Can you give some numbers in terms of how large is the foundation in terms of staff and number of people that helps and the scale?

We have around 30, three zero, full time staff. We have a lot of, too many contracts, social workers and psychologists. We are helping more than a thousand victims every year. Directly help, but we do a lot of transferring, giving them resource and lot of things. I can't count, too many.

But it's sizable, I mean, helping a thousand people a year is very significant.

Yes, yes, it is. I'm proud of what the organisation is doing.

So you should be because it's from everything you said, it's an organisation which is incredibly important in actually protecting women and actually also advocating for policy change as well. So increasingly harassment and stalking gets women now a care online through, as you mentioned, social media, theft of personal photos, other means and online scams.

In the most extreme cases, online harassment has even led to suicide. Can you outline some measures women can take to help protect themselves online?

Yes, I think there are many things not just women, everyone can do to protect themselves online such as avoiding sharing personal information on social media, especially when you put it in a public mode. Don't do that. And always being mindful of the photos you put. Never share your real-time location on social media. Those are the basic things. 

Many organizations are already providing guidance for those self-protection methods. However, for our foundation, we want to highlight a different angle of message, is that if someone becomes a victim of a digital violence, sexual violence, they should never blame themselves. I think this is very important because a lot of time when we say, you should protect yourself, it's somehow saying that,

you made yourself the victim, but what we want to say is that we should never blame ourselves or the victims for being the victim. This applies especially to more complex cases, such as when someone's private photos are leaked or when they experience online sexual harassment. Unfortunately, a lot of times those victims are forced or under some know, circumstances that they become the victims. yeah, just don't, what we want to say is don't blame the victims. You know, we blame those who did it instead of the victims.

Exactly and that's very correct because I think that there's a lot of shame involved and the victim feels shame when actually they should not, they are the victim of theft or assault or online attacks and it's clarifying that in their mind but it's an incredibly difficult process. Tell me, a few moments ago you talked about the scam where Taiwanese women would be tricked and so on into going abroad and in fraud scams. This is maybe would be new to some of our listeners. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that and what is actually happening?

Okay, so we know there are a lot of scams on the internet. there are like, someone will tell you, you can invest in a good, very good opportunity, you are invited into an investing group, and then you're tricked step by step to giving a lot of money and got nothing back, or like there's a very handsome man.

in a picture and saying, okay, I'm in the military in Middle East and somehow I looked at your picture, I love you so much, but I'm trapped here, so can you send me some money? Those love traps, I don't know if you're aware of those. They're a little...

Yeah, yeah, we have, are, there's crazy ones where you'd have like a Nigerian prince claiming, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly, exactly those. So I don't know if you think about who's behind those accounts. Those are another group of victims behind those. Of course, have the scam victims who are tricked into giving away their money, right? But there's another group of victims who are the human trafficking victims. They were trapped in somewhere in Southeast Asia on the force to

handle those accounts to type with you, to chat with you, to do all the scan for you. And you will say, why are they there? They're often trapped there because they were invited by like a fake job invitation or like they were treated a free travel experience and then they were kidnapped into those places. So we have two groups of victims.

those who are handling the account are the victims and those who are actually the scam victims are the victims. There's this whole ecosystem of this in it.

So I think that's an interesting and relevant point because often when people think of the victims, they think of those who are being scammed through being asked to part with their money and so on. But also what you're saying is the people encouraging them to do that, the handlers, they're victims as well and they're often kidnapped or they are enticed.

Yeah, they were forced in violence to do that. They were trapped in some buildings and they were only giving like one meal a day. And if they don't obey, they'll be beaten even to death. So we've been rescuing those victims as well.

That's a truly horrific situation to be in. And when you say you've been rescuing them, how actually are you rescuing them?

Yes, yes, but so if you have families and friends who are victims of those human trafficking situations, you do know there's a foundation to go for.

So at a practical level, if for example, somebody's daughter or sister was enticed into human trafficking, they would go to the foundation and the foundation would help locate and extradite their family member basically.

Yes, we will do our best, but I would say it's very difficult.

Extremely challenging. So moving on to a lighter topic. As a busy executive director and co-founder of a biomedical company and a mum to a young family, what advice could you give our listeners to maintaining a healthy work-life balance?

Well, I will have to say the first step is to let go of the idea of trying to find work-life balance. And don't even expect to be healthily having work-life balance. It's impossible. So accepting the fact that you will never find balance is probably the healthiest mindset you can have. I'm still figuring this out myself, like how to, you know...

survive every day because my son is only one year old and he's a trouble sleeper. doesn't sleep much. He needs mommy all the time but also my work needs me so I'm struggling. I'm still struggling but I can share some of things that I'm trying to do so at work I'll try to maximise my efficiency which I know sounds like a cliche advice but as someone with ADHD, I am an ADHDer, I have to constantly remind myself to stay focused and work smart. So every morning, I usually wake up around 5 a.m. to feed my baby. And after he goes back to sleep, I will check my calendar, check emails, and I will mentally mat out my priorities of the day. So what's absolutely needed and what's not and what other works I can delegate to others. And I'm not talking about dumping work on others. What I'm saying is delegation. It's a skill every entrepreneur needs to develop. it's about, yes, it's about trusting your team, giving them the right resource and success, help them success and let go the urge to micromanage, et cetera. So I will squeeze out some time by doing that.

It's a crucial skill.

I will always tell myself that good enough is enough. So don't try to make everything perfect. Just survive the day. That's how I find balance.

It's also about having within a business context, ensuring you have a really good support team that you can delegate to because if they're highly competent, you can feel more confident in their ability to complete the task.

Yes, I'm lucky we have a very good team. We have like around 100 employees, so we have some good people in the team,

And then as we come to a close, there are final two questions we ask every guest. So as many of our listeners will not be from Taiwan and not necessarily know Taiwan, maybe you could help them in suggesting your favourite place or must see destination for them to go to in Taiwan.

That's the question I think for the longest time in this whole list of questions. I think if I have a couple days off myself, I will go to Tainan, which is a southern city of Taiwan. It used to be the capital of Taiwan back in 100 years ago. So I honestly think Tainan has the best street food in Taiwan. A lot of people might argue that because everyone has their favourite street food place. I think Tainan, the city as a whole, has the highest standard. So it's a paradise for food lovers. But beyond that, Tainan is also a city rich in history and culture. As I said, it was the capital of Taiwan 100 years ago. And it's with a fascinating mix of old and new influence. There are century old temples and historical sites. But at the same time, you will find thriving artists things seems so there are emerging artists choosing to base themselves there in Tainan because of its unique vibe there so I love Taiwan I love Tainan as a place to eat and to do some sightseeing even if it as a Taiwanese I love Tainan still but the only downside is that it it could get extremely hot in the summer so I will only recommend you visit visit Tainan in winter months

Okay, so I think that's a great tip and it has a great fusion of mixture of ancient history, culture, amazing street food, and also cultural diversity and artistic talent as well. And then the very final question, and as you mentioned, Taiwan has established itself very much as a foodie destination. Do you have a favourite restaurant in Taiwan you could recommend or a favourite street food outlet that you could recommend?

This one is even harder. I thought about this question for long time, but I will have to go with the most cliche answer. I will say Dín Tài Fung. It's not just about the xiaolongbao. It's that every single dish on the menu is consistently delicious. So you will never get disappointed there. The quality is always top. The flavors are perfectly balanced. Nice service. Everything is just good. I don't think you will think of anyone who will say no to Din Tai Fung. So my answer would be Din Tai Fung.

Perfect. Thank you so much, En-chia. And thank you for telling us about your fascinating career and research into the gut-brain access and the truly groundbreaking and incredibly important work you're doing with the foundation. Thank you.

Thank you, Adrian, thank you.