Career Podcast Featuring Winnie Wong an accomplished and ambitious member of the prestigious Women's Forum Rising Talents Class of 2022

In episode #69 of the 2B Bolder Podcast, Winnie Wong, Professor at the SP Jain School of Global Management in Singapore, joins the show. She teaches master's courses in Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Sales Strategy. Winnie is a frequent keynote speaker, researcher, and storyteller. As a thought leader, she is writing her first book titled: "East Asian Women in Entrepreneurship," available this coming Spring, 2023. 

Winnie's book "East Asian Women in Entrepreneurship" explores:

1. Why do East Asian women turn to entrepreneurship & what barriers do they face?

2. What are the factors to their success as entrepreneurs?

3. How our communities can better support them?

Winnie's industry experience spans big tech, consulting, and scale-up. Within big tech, Winnie led the operations of one of Meta's largest sales divisions across a suite of leading advertising products, including Facebook & Instagram. As a Consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, she partnered with clients to monetize their businesses, sharpen their product offerings, and improve their customer experience 10x better than their competitors. Within tech scale-up, Winnie managed worldwide operational developments across APAC, LATAM, and EMEA markets for a Rocket Internet e-Commerce unicorn that went public in 2019. She is a data-driven problem solver skilled in growth strategy, change management & operations across multinational organizations. 

Winnie has lived in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Singapore. In her spare time, Winnie enjoys the outdoors, French cooking, and mentoring early-stage entrepreneurs. As an amateur athlete, she earned her yoga teaching certification in India, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, and was part of the world's first team to stand-up paddleboard through Bhutan. Winnie holds an MBA from INSEAD, where she was named a Forte Fellow. In 2022, she was named a Rising Talent at the Women's Forum in Paris, France.

Tune in to hear Winnie share her insights about her journey, the motivation for writing her new book, and her love of supporting entrepreneurs. Winnie is a brilliant woman who's open and honest about her challenges throughout her career and how they led to meaningful self-discovery. Hearing her tell her story will move you and inspire you to believe anything is possible.

Connect with Winnie Wong on LinkedIn

Read about Rising Talents

Pre-order Winnie's Book on East Asian Women in Entrepreneurship

Winnie's book is available today: You Don't Have to Look the Part: How East Asian Women Thrive as Entrepreneurs

The 2B Bolder Podcast provides first-hand access to some amazing women. Guests will include women from leading enterprise companies to startups, women execs, coders, account execs, engineers, doctors, and innovators.

Listen to 2B Bolder for more career insights from women in tech and business. 

Learn more about AnitaB.org 

Transcript

Episode 71 - Winnie Wong

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

life, people, bit, winnie, singapore, book, east asian, world, women, canada, realized, company, feel, part, downs, job, entrepreneurs, scaling, learned, called

SPEAKERS

Winnie Wong, Mary Killelea

Winnie Wong  00:01

Hi there, my name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the 2B Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. 2B Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you; Encouraging you guys to show up, but to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation. 

Mary Killelea  00:31

Thank you for tuning in. I'm thrilled to have on the show today Winnie Wong.Winnie is in high achieving authentic, successful, career minded woman who has had a fascinating life. She is passionate about technology, women and entrepreneurship. Winnie is a professor at the SP Jain School of Global Management in Singapore, teaching master/s courses in technology, entrepreneurship, and sales strategy. As a thought leader, she is writing her first book called "East Asian Women in Entrepreneurship." And that is due out early May. Winnie's  industry experience spans big tech consulting and scale-up. Winnie has lived in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, China and Singapore, which has given her a global perspective to life. In her spare time Winnie enjoys the outdoors, French cooking, and mentoring early stage entrepreneurs. As an amateur athlete, she earned her yoga teaching certificate in India, and was part of the world's first team to stand up paddleboard through Bhutan. Winnie holds an MBA from INSEAD ad where she has been named a Forte Fellow. And in 2022, she was named a rising talent at the Women's Forum in Paris, France. Winnie thank you so much for being here, I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Winnie Wong  01:43

Thank you so much for having me, Mary. I've heard so much about your show and I'm really excited to be here.

Mary Killelea  01:49

Wonderful, thank you. I appreciate it. Um, okay. So that bio! Your introduction, you have so many accomplishments! What drives you?

Winnie Wong  02:00

Oh, this is a tough question. But, I think I've gone through a lot of ups and downs in my life. And what I realized was looking back, when I talk to people who are a lot older than me, ahead of me, or when I read a lot of books, I realized that all- a lot of things just don't matter. All those like, a lot of there's ups and downs that we have. So I think what drives me is really looking at my tombstone, looking at, you know, at the end of life, what would have been a meaningful life for me? And I remember there's a bit of a quotation that they say, where people won't remember what you said, or what you did, but they'll remember to how he made them feel. And that's something that I've carried with me, you know, over the last couple of years now, because I've realized what matters in life is really those meaningful relationships. And a lot of the things that I've done, they sound really cool. But honestly, who you surround yourself with, and the people you work with, those are the people that you see every day who support you, and help change how you think about the world. So I would say it's a bit of looking at my own tombstone, looking at the end of my life, and what would be a meaningful life for me.

Mary Killelea  03:15

I love that perspective. In your words, will you talk to us at a high level about your career path?

Winnie Wong  03:22

Yep, so I've taken a bit of a winded path. As a heads up I'm currently calling in from the other side of the world, in Singapore. It's a small island of only 5.5 million people. So I know it's quite different from the world that I grew up in, which was North America. And I understand that you're also based in the US. 

Mary Killelea  03:45

Yes. 

Winnie Wong  03:45

So for me, I grew up in Canada and I, I consider myself a bit of like, there's kind of three hats that I hold. One is an academia, another says an author, and a third one is as a full-time kind of corporate employee, would you say? So, I started my life in Canada. My parents are originally from Malaysia, and they immigrated to Canada, and I was born there. And I was very lucky when I was in my undergraduate school to get a lot of scholarship money. I think Canada is really great for making school affordable for people. So I had the opportunity to study in other parts of the world. One part was in French speaking Canada, another part was in Europe, so I studied in the countryside of England. And the third part was in China in Beijing, China, so completely vastly different experiences. Especially contrasting countryside English speaking, to China and fast moving, all within a span of about a year or two. And when I went to China, it really changed my perspective, and I learned a lot about myself. Of, oh, it's so normal to be Asian. There's so many things about Asian life that I really appreciate like the food is one of them. But I'm also a bit of an introvert and in college and I think a lot of American colleges are like this too, where there's a bit of a drinking culture. And I didn't really like that, you know, I wasn't really someone who liked to go out every single night or on the weekends, just, you know, pouring money into alcohol. I actually don't even drink alcohol right now. It's just something that I don't prioritize in my life. So, I prioritize a lot of health in my life. Yeah, so that's how I ended up thinking, wow, this is amazing, it really changed me and changed my identity, to think more about, you know, identifying as an East Asian woman, rather than just being a woman. 

Winnie Wong  05:47

And so when I came back to Canada, for my fourth year of university, I was just so much more confident myself just so much more at peace with a lot of things. And I had also traveled around when I was in Asia, to Southeast Asia. And when I landed in Singapore, at the time, I, it was the only place in the world that I've ever said, I could live here. And it was because there's, it's such an efficient society, like the metro is always on time, everything's working, it's so advanced too. So later on in my life, after I'd worked a couple of years, I decided, you know what, I'm in my mid-20s, I'm going to take a risk. It's a time in my life where I can, and I had tried recruiting for a job in Singapore from Canada, but with a 12 hour time difference, nobody takes you seriously. You know, coming from like the other side of the world. So I decided, you know what, I'm going to take a risk, I'm just going to move to Singapore without a job. I'm going to leave my job, I'm going to sell my belongings, I'm going to end my lease in my apartment. And I just took one suitcase with me, booked a flight to Singapore, and I landed in Singapore without a job, no place to live. And I realized most Canadians, like in most countries I have about - if I go to the US, I have six months that I can just stay in the country. But in Singapore, it's only 30 days, which is very unusual. 

Mary Killelea  07:17

Oh my goodness, yeah.

Winnie Wong  07:18

It's very unusual. So I had to just, you know, pump it on the ground, just network and meet people. I spent a lot of money on coffees. But in the end, it kind of worked out where I had three job offers. One, two of them were less interesting. They were more traditional, they weren't less interesting... They're just more traditional. And I felt like you know, these were something that I could do later on in life. But the third one was with Rocket Internet, which is an incubator company, based in Germany, where they have a bunch of ecommerce companies around the world. One of them was a conglomerate selling fashion. And my role was to support scaling this marketplace arm which is kind of like an Amazon at the time, which connects customers with sellers, but it's a platform in itself. And that was the most exciting job I had, so, job offer I had. So I decided, you know what, I'll go for it. I went through it and it was such an amazing experience just learning all these, you know, kind of managing eight to ten different dotted-line reports from acquisition, legal, finance, onboarding, operations, IT, account management, and going to all these markets like Brazil or Australia, like different corners of the world, scaling this ecommerce company that eventually IPOd in 2019. So that's kind of one part of my journey. The other part was when I kind of returned into the corporate world. So in the less scaling side of things, less startup feel. I did my MBA at INSEAD, which is an international business school that has campuses in France and Singapore. And I joined the Boston Consulting Group straight after, which is a major strategy consulting firm. So I worked on due diligences you know, for a lot of tech companies. I did one of the biggest deals or THE biggest deal in the digital banking license sphere here in Singapore, in building or in Southeast Asia, sorry, in building one of the largest digital banks in here. So it's- it was an amazing experience working at BCG, and I've learned a lot like it's a very fast paced world in the consulting world. And the network is amazing. And everyone's just so smart that I felt like a fish out of water like holy cow, like everyone's brains work so quickly at this company and they're also like personable human beings. So I felt like it was a bit of a- at times like a factory of like, oh my gosh, like they bring some of the smartest people in, you know, the region and people who, you know, you're able to connect with. So there's kind of two types of people that, well two kind of areas that you need to be very strong in. One is you have to be smart. But the second part is that you have to be likable to work there. So I was like, Okay, it's not easy to find that combination, because many people are super smart. Also, you know, like, they know that they're smart. So then they've got a bit of an ego, right? But then it's not always the most likeable. So after, you know, working in consulting for a couple of years, I also - and stop me if, by the way, this is taking too long, it's a long winded journey. *laughs*

Mary Killelea  10:37

No, I'm fascinated, I love it, keep going.

Winnie Wong  10:44

So then I joined, I think, you know, for consulting, a big reason why people leave is the lifestyle. Yeah, I was working at times, like only four, I was sleeping, like for four hours a night sometimes like, it really takes over a bit of your life. And I know people get divorced sometimes. And like, it really takes a toll on your relationships. So that's when I decided I needed to go into the corporate world and have a bit more stability in my life. So I joined a major technology company. And it was a bit of an interesting experience, I joined a major tech company for eight months. And it was intense. I, when I joined I, it was a bit of a chaotic experience, where when I joined my manager left, and then my director left, and there was a lot of turnover in the organization. And so typically, you know, in my role as a, you know, strategy and operations lead, I would have a one-to-one stakeholder relationship, like a major stakeholder who would be kind of like a client that I'd be serving. However, because of all this turnover and turmoil, I ended up having a three-to-one relationship where, you know, I was managing kind of the relationship for three different stakeholders. And I really picked up the pieces from, you know, after my manager and the director left to really kind of lead the helm, in the strategy and operations for this particular industry in Singapore, or in Southeast Asia, and APAC. But what I found was, you know, after all this turnover, they hired a new director, they hired a new manager. And after I onboarded by new manager, I was then asked to leave the company. And it was, it was a personally traumatic experience for me, because due to like, after you've kind of really picked up the pieces, and you've really fixed a lot of things. And you're really working and you've dedicated so much of your time and your energy towards building something new and just repairing a lot of things. Yeah, it was kind of like a thank you from them to say, like, thank you for all your hard work. But we will no longer require your services. That was a low time in my career. And I ended up you know, instead of kind of jumping into something, and a lot of people in Singapore will typically jump into something new because they don't want to gap in their CV, or curriculum vitae or resume. And for visa reasons, like kind of like, in the US as well. If you're a foreigner, you kind of need to get someone else to sponsor you very quickly. You only have 30 days to find someone else to sponsor you. Fortunately, by then, I already had permanent residency in Singapore. So I just decided, you know what, I just need to take time off. I'm not ready to do this corporate thing again. 

Winnie Wong  13:40

So I took a couple months off, I traveled, I hiked the Swiss Alps for like the second time in my life, which I love. I went around the US and went around Canada, I did the Vipassana silent meditation for a second time as well. And I thought about some of my retirement dreams, you know, like, why am I working so hard? Like what matters to me? And I've always kept this little kind of list of some of our retirement dreams. And one of them was to do a PhD. A second one was to teach adults and higher learning. A third one was to write a book. And so as I started talking to some of my professors from INSEAD, they were telling me you don't, like, don't go through this PhD route to become a professor. It's-it's-it's not worth it. The you know, it takes like, it's a seven year journey. Sorry, it's a five year journey to your PhD, then seven years as an assistant professor before you make tenure, so it's a 12 year journey altogether. And you don't know where you'll end up, which university will take you. And you have to be able to expect a middle of nowhere Germany, like in Germany universities to take you. And so it's like, okay, maybe not a PhD, but I learned that because I have a master's degree and I have corporate work experience that I was qualified to be a professor, like I was qualified to teach in university. So that's how I kind of just made it happen. You know, I just started talking to people, I got into a faculty review process at the SP Jain School of Global Management, very intense process, a lot of auditioning, and I got through and they said, Welcome to our faculty, we'd love to have you as a professor, and I teach a sales and channel management course, in their master's program now. So that was one dream of mine that I kind of have been ticking off. And I've continued to live on. 

Winnie Wong  15:39

A second dream was also writing a book. And so, you know, as I thought about some of the things that I care about, I had been trying to write a book about sales and channel management, because I was thinking, You know what, I'll become a subject matter expert in this field. But it was so dry, I couldn't write a book. And after I spoke to a bunch of different people, one of about self publishing who's done it before, that's how I came across this book creators program, which was very highly structured, and someone had gone through it themselves. And they had produced a real book, a physical book, and I thought, you know what, I feel like, this is the right program for me. So I signed up for it. I've been in the program for the last five months, writing at least 12 hours a week, it's definitely like, it's basically a part-time job. And, and writing about East Asian women. There's kind of three parts. One is about kind of the barriers that East Asian women face in the workforce that cause them to go into entrepreneurship, then as an entrepreneur, what they face, you know, as entrepreneurs, because only 2.3% of venture capital funding goes towards women and overall female led startups. And it's a small sliver of that that goes to us East Asian women. When we think of female entrepreneurs, we think of the founder of Spanx, Sara Blakely, right? Or we think of Virginia Wolfe Herd (transcriber's note: actually named Whitney Wolfe Herd) who founded Bumble, right? A lot of them are Caucasian women, and they have a deep sense of knowing and confidence in themselves, that they've been able to kind of really build up this profile. But there's not so much that we can think about for East Asian women, we haven't actually like a, they don't really have that much of a spotlight. So the second part of my book is really about that spotlight of: what are the seven different success factors that they go through, you know, to become entrepreneurs, who have successfully exited companies, many of them? And then the third part is, you know, how can investors and how can our communities better support them? So that's kind of what I'm doing up to now. I also work in the corporate world as well, in um a, another extremely private tech company. So I kind of wear three different hats at any given time, but it can be a bit of a hectic thing, a hectic life. But yeah, thanks so much for letting me share a bit more about my career path.

Mary Killelea  18:02

It's a fascinating path. And it's just so interesting to hear the different diverse experiences that you had. And kind of almost like three different seasons, if you will. And I just reference that because it seems like different parts of your life were in different roles for different companies that took on different structures. Whether it was you know, corporate, or whether it was, you know, that scale up. So what did you learn about yourself from an adaptability perspective, because I would think they're so different and unique.

Winnie Wong  18:39

So I think a big part of my story is the fact that I was laid off from a major tech company. And that layoff really affected how I felt about myself, and I allowed it to. It was me enabling myself to do that. And it's a bit of an inner critic. And what I realized is that everyone goes through these ups and downs. And they just don't talk about them, actually. And so, you know, I felt very self conscious sharing it for months on end. In fact, I, you know, like, I, I hear a lot of the time how people say, Oh, I'm only going to hire a stellar top notch performer. But honestly, like, everyone goes through ups and downs. And this is a really great quotation that I've heard of that says, 'the reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes footage with everyone else's highlight reel.' So in this world where we're on Instagram, live now, you know, we see all these amazing things people are doing, especially on LinkedIn. Right? And you mentioned, 'oh, you've done so many amazing things Winnie,' but honestly, like, I feel like the most amazing thing that I've done was really publicly sharing that I was laid off from a job. And it was a tough thing to kind of, when you actually address it. You know, when I was interviewing for my next role, I was very honest about what happened. And surprisingly, everyone's guards just went down immediately, everyone said, 'you know what, it's happened to me two to three times in my life,' and they just moved on as quickly as possible, faster than I could move on. Really. And I think that human connection, and the vulnerability is what we're missing sometimes in society, where you can feel if someone's being authentic to you sometimes, right? And I realized that was an important story for me to share. And I tell as many people as I can now because it just breaks down barriers when people can really empathize that, you know, our lives are not, you know, they're actually not straight lines going up, you know, they're not, they're not these like 45 degree angles. Instead, they're they go through ups and downs, and we go through turmoil in not just your careers, but our personal lives. It's really how much you share about them, and they'll, and nobody's perfect, you know. 

Winnie Wong  21:02

So I think that was, the biggest part about my life that I realized was, you know, I'm in the same boat as everyone else. Everyone else! It's normal to go through ups and downs, and I'm not the first person to be laid off from a job, I'm sure people have been laid off many, many times. I think that also helps me, like a second part was realizing that we can't plan life out very much. And, you know, while you have so much time on Earth, just explore the passions and see what happens. And so for me, I volunteered, I like very rigorously in my life, and my, you know, in with early stage startups, with, you know, mentoring, you know, foreign domestic helpers, you've been teaching courses on the weekends to them about entrepreneurship. And my first job in, in ever, when I was 13 years old, I taught at Kumon as a teacher for four years, you know, to people who are even older than me. And so this teaching thing that I've done, it's been a 20 plus year journey. And what I realized is, all of this has prepared me to become a better professor. To teach, you know, adults in higher learning. So really leaning into some of these passions that really energize me was, you know, really super important. 

Winnie Wong  22:23

And then the third part that I learned from all of this, you know, one is that, you know, everyone else is in the same boat, second is that we can't plan life, and the third part is chill out! Yeah, I think I, as you can kind of sense in me, I have always been a bit of a hustler. And I think honestly, hustler. mentality and culture is a bit overrated. Where I'm always thinking about what's next, what's next, what's next. But then, when you're always thinking about that you forget to enjoy the moment, you know, and right now, I'm in a bit of a high in my life where I was just recognized. And I'm going to Paris like in in the coming months, so I'll be in Paris in November, to for a women's forum, because I've been recognized as a rising talent by the Women's Forum of Economy and Society. And they only choose 19 women worldwide so it's a big, I didn't realize that it's a bit of a big deal. So I'm kind of savoring this moment as well, because knowing that I've had downs as well, you know, I'm trying to chill out a bit more, trying not to put as much on my plate, although I'm kind of working three different jobs. But I realized that I need to just chill out and and people really need to give themselves a bit more self compassion.

Mary Killelea  23:46

What you were sharing, oh gosh, it's just hit so home for me. You know, your vulnerability, your value based thinking, your honesty. I appreciate so much your transparency in sharing your story, because I know it will help so many listeners that are tuning in. When you think about your different roles that you've taken over the years, do you have like non-negotiables that a company has to meet or an opportunity has to meet for you to consider it?

Winnie Wong  24:23

Honestly, I'm not sure whether I do have non-negotiables, but I guess one of them; because I've gone through so much turmoil, you know, one of them is really the people I surround myself with. And so when I actually rejoined the corporate world, I you know, I had a couple of opportunities, but one of them like I really... yes, I do have non-negotiables. Where I knew what type of company I wanted to work for because it attracts a certain type of human being or person. So culture is extremely important to me and who you surround yourself with is who you become. And I've been in jobs where I was miserable. Where, and honestly, the sexiest jobs is like, you know, scaling companies or founding something. It can also be the worst jobs ever, too, because the people that you surround yourself with are, there's high ego factor. And so what I found is what's really important to me are people who are, you know, they have integrity, but they're also humanized, they're very humble in their approach. And I've been very lucky and blessed in my life now to have a couple of humble, kind, compassionate managers who have taught me a lot about people because you want to be led by someone who you believe in, but also who you trust and who's also willing to support you. And, and that's very important to me now, when I look for a boss or I look for people that I surround myself with, is how supportive they are of me, but also their humility and their ability to recognize faults in their life. Because it really breaks down barriers. And it's something that not a lot of people can do I realize. Especially in this day and age with Instagram, TikTok, all these like, you know, everyone- and I just, I care about authenticity, I guess is what matters to me.

Mary Killelea  26:27

That's so, so relevant and so important. I want to circle back around to your book, because I know it's, it's titled and targeting Asian women. But I think some of the components that you say, are a part of the book, and I'd love to dive a little bit more into it, seemed like, it's for everyone who wants to be an entrepreneur.

Winnie Wong  26:47

Exactly. Yeah. It's funny, because I speak to some of my friends, some of them who are female, they're like, oh, yeah, I'd love to distribute this book in my company, but maybe to only the East Asian women. And I'm like, oh, but you know, it's, it is applicable. And I think it's, you know, it's kind of like with the women, the gender conversation. It's not just about women, it's about men, too, actually. Men face a lot of pressures in life, like they need to be the breadwinner, they need to earn a lot, they also need to be big and take up space and all this pressure about aggression too, from a young age, like learning to fight. I think it's not healthy and that also contributes to why there can be a bit of that gender conversation. And so with this book, it doesn't just help, you know, entrepreneurs. It's for every woman, who has ever wanted to, like, consider what it's like to start a company or about success overall, too. 

Winnie Wong  27:48

So there's seven keys to success that I discussed. Well, the first part, which is the barriers. I think it's important for both men and women to understand about these barriers that people face: the glass ceiling, the bamboo ceiling, the double whammy of the glass and the bamboo ceiling. Because it's just about empathizing with human beings about what their experience can be. And this can actually be applied to other minority, other minorities as well. Like, LBGTQ. So that's kind of the first part is to really empathizing for, what is it like to be, you know, a woman in the workforce, and I think, you know, Sheryl Sandberg and Lean In. There's been a lot of work around that as well, which has been amazing. There's also a lot of work around like, different minority groups too, of what they face. And for East Asian women, in particular, they face a couple of aspects of a double, you know, glass ceiling. One is this model minority. So especially in the US, especially in the tech world, East Asians are really celebrated as Oh, they're great hard workers. And even on an per capita basis, I think, on average, East Asian people actually earn more than Caucasian people. And there's affirmative action in many of the universities. And a lot of Asians don't like affirmative action because they feel like because they're, you know, a lot of East Asian immigrants really prioritize education, they actually feel like they're hurt in the whole affirmative action, part of like a part of the university world. So it's not just being a model minority where they face barriers to promotion. So actually, I remember there's some stats that came out from McKinsey, where for 100 men, who white males who are promoted, only 87 women are promoted and only 82 East Asian women are promoted. So it's a bit of a difference. So there's a big difference between white male and white woman. And then there is also that difference between white women and East Asian women or women of other minorities. And some of these are because of things like 'forever foreigners' or accents. So I don't actually have an accent myself. But, it's fascinating to me that, when I went to- well, I have, I guess a Canadian accent because I was born and raised there. But I realized that I'm a forever foreigner in the world in this, like, the Western world where when they look at me, they see firstly, they ask, oh, where are you from? And sometimes you just say, oh, I'm from Canada. I was born and raised in Canada, but you're not considered one of the majority. And I actually, there's something about my undergraduate school, where there was a- there was a huge Instagram following. Very, in the last couple of years, called "Stolen by Smith." So my graduate school, sorry, my undergraduate school's school was named the Smith School of Business in in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. And there are so many stories about how people felt they were extremely marginalized in this predominantly Caucasian, predominantly private school. Like, you know, there's prep schools in the US, we call them private schools, in Canada. So there's, and a lot of them gravitate towards this school, this one particular school, it's an elite, like undergraduate business school, where only I think, like, 7% of people at the time that I went get accepted into, so it's quite elite. And I realized there's things like, oh, she's a cool Asian, you know, it's basically kind of, there's a bit of like microaggression behind that of, trying to remove yourself, be it from being Asian, because there's, you know, you're considered a model minority, and so forth. 

Winnie Wong  31:50

So my first part of the book kind of goes through a bit of these barriers. The second part then goes into, you know, the seven keys to success that I've seen in East Asian female entrepreneurs, many of whom have already exited their companies. Like, you know, taming, understanding the customer pain point, because a lot of venture capitalists, they're Caucasian males, so they don't actually quite understand, you know, women like the women problems that we face. And I remember I was watching Shark Tank, and Bethany Frankel, who is a Real Housewives of New York, she's a reality TV star, who built this multibillion dollar enterprise called Skinny Girl and she sold her Skinny Girl cocktail line of business to Beam for $100 million. So she's, you know, a magnate now, a business magnate. And so she was guest starring in Shark Tank. And she and it was funny because there was like, "No Mustache" that was on which was basically a wax, you know, a, an upper lip wax kit that you just it's very discreet, you keep it in your purse, and there were three male judges and two female judges. And the three male judges were just like, what is this? Like they, they just didn't understand that it was a problem that women face. And I remember, Mark Cuban said, why don't you guys just get like a razor and just shave? And Bethany Frankel was just like, she had to really explain it to everyone, all the men in the room of what problems one face. And these two entrepreneurs who started the company ended up going with Bethany Frankel and Lori Greiner. Oh sorry, Lori Steiner to invest in, because they felt like they knew the mission, they understood the customer pain point, they were very aligned. So so my book kind of talks a lot about the different kind of keys to success, like, taming the inner critic, which I've kind of shared a bit more through my life story, grit, you know, the influence of family, other key factors that really affect an entrepreneurs ability to succeed as well as how we can support them. As investors, how can we make these types of you know, investor panels be a bit more diverse, as well as our other communities? What kind of educational programs can we help support them with as well?

Mary Killelea  34:14

That's wonderful. And I'm gonna get your book because I used to be an entrepreneur before I went into corporate and you know, there's always different chapters in your life and I'm anxious to read it. What would you tell your 20 year old self?

Winnie Wong  34:28

I guess the big one that I kind of shared with you before, you know about the three areas that I've learned, you know, one is that everyone's in the same boat. You know, like, life is chaotic, we go through ups and downs, but everyone's going through ups and downs. So we are actually no different. The second part is about you know, your life. You might think that you can plan your life and that you know, by certain age, you're gonna get married, you're gonna have kids at by another age, you're going to be the CEO of a major Fortune 500 company, but life happens. And a lot of the times it's unexpected. So even though you might have, you know, a compass, you're gonna get lost in the woods and the woods will change themselves, you'll, you might just jump into the sea and end up having to learn how to swim. And then the third part is also just chilling out, you know, the hustler mentality, I think is a bit overrated. And I think it's important to take care of our mental health. So I actually started meditating, a couple years back, maybe back in 2015, or when I had gone through a yoga, I started, I did a yoga teacher training in India back in 2013. So we learned to meditate for like an hour, two hours a day, it was quite intense. And then I did the Vipassana meditation in 2015. And then I did it again, in 2020, and or 2021. And my meditation journey has completely transformed and changed how I think about life and, and how much I appreciate it, because I realized that meditation is a bit about holding presence, and being able to kind of control or manage our minds a bit so that we don't allow things to affect us so much. And I used to be someone who got easily affected, emotionally reactive to a lot of different things. But meditation and constant practice, it can be 10 min, like I used to meditate for like an hour a day. But I realized I was just so tired all the time. So I like you know, cut down my meditation a bit. But even just meditating for something like 10 minutes a day, or 10 minutes taking this time away to just be present and appreciate the moment. I think in the long run, it really pays dividends and reflection is super important. So I journal a lot now just to be able to share my emotions and identifying emotions is an extremely important life skill as well. So there's an amazing book by Brene Brown, it's called "Atlas of the Heart" where she talks about how, you know, a lot of people only understand that there's three, three emotions, mad sad, I forget what the last one is happy, you know, angry, sad and happy. But there's a whole slew of emotions. And I think she goes through something like 28 different emotions that people can feel. And there's a difference between something like envy and jealousy, for example, I'm like, Oh, wow, this is so fascinating. But yeah, being able to identify how you feel and have that self awareness is super important. So I think, you know, the third point I would tell myself is really about chilling out. And also going a bit more inward rather than thinking extra extrinsically outward.

Mary Killelea  37:48

Great advice. We're getting down to our last question, and I am sad, but you've got to start your day, and my day is coming to an end here. What does 2B Bolder mean to you?

Winnie Wong  38:03

I think 2B Bolder is really accepting life's ups and downs, and gaining meaning from them, I really thought about this question. And I know that I've repeated it multiple times throughout this podcast. But I realized everyone's in the same boat. And sometimes we just have to be a lot more compassionate to ourselves. And when we are, and we're able to be vulnerable, that feels of true human connection with others, that allows, you know, to open up conversations and, and allows us to lead a lot more of a meaningful life. People don't care that you went to like an Ivy League school or anything like that. What they care about is how you made them feel, right, and the connection that you have with them. And I realized, you know, after actually working for more than a decade now, is that your long term relationships are what matter most. So I actually got my most recent corporate job because the company that laid me off, one of my stakeholders thought I did an amazing job there. And they and then when they moved over to this other company, they called me and they asked me, hey, Winnie would you be willing to apply to this role? And that changed my inner narrative completely. So it really is how you make people feel and how, you know, how the relationships that you have that are super meaningful to you. Because, you know, everyone's gonna go through ups and downs, it doesn't matter all this like to, you know, the fact that you're the CEO of this company, or whatever. It's really, my mom is living an amazing life right now because she looks back and she's like, oh, I've got three kids who love me, and she's really poured her life into our relationships. So that's how I realized that you know, accept the ups and downs, realize that vulnerability builds connection, and that- and that it's the people who you surround yourself with and the relationships that you have that bring the most meaning in your life.

Mary Killelea  39:56

Winnie, thank you so much for sharing your insight. and just your your thoughts and really a good, good conversation. Thank you for being a guest today. How can people get in touch with you?

Winnie Wong  40:08

Thank you so much for having me, Mary, it's been the best experience being on this podcast and to share. This is actually the first podcast I've ever done. So it's been quite an experience.

Mary Killelea  40:19

Well, you've been fantastic.

Winnie Wong  40:20

Thank you. You know, how can people get in touch with me, you can get in touch with me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. And also if you add me as a friend, you can, you can add a little message like "Hi, I've heard from heard of you through Mary and Mary's podcast 2B Bolder." And my LinkedIn handle is Winnie Wong, and then digits 41. So, W-I-N-N-I-E W-O-N-G, four one. If you search that up on LinkedIn, or you use that handle on LinkedIn, that will take you to my profile. Thank you again, Mary. I've had the best time on this podcast just you know, hearing it from you as well. And it's been a reflective process for me just even speaking to you today.

Mary Killelea  41:04

Thank you so much Winnie!

Mary Killelea  41:10

Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to please go check out our website at 2Bbolder.com That's the number two, little B, bolder.com.