Today’s episode is with a founding director of a non-profit from Sri Lanka, Debbie Edirisinghe. Debbie is with Child Action Lanka. Child Action Lanka began in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka in 2006. She started it with her husband, Dilshan, when she was asked to take over from a woman teaching 8 street children. (Listen to her story in the episode.) Some 16 years later, her organization has grown to reach over 1,500 children in 8 districts in Sri Lanka. Her organization offers housing and food, sc...
Nov 25, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 5Ep. 12
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Bangalore, India, Farah Ismail. She is the founder of Interact Consulting and calls herself a courage catalyst, coach, facilitator, and speaker. Farah has more than 25 years of experience in the field of leadership and cross-cultural competence from her years abroad and working across countries and cultures. She began her career in the aviation industry in the Middle East, returning to India during the IT and services boom to work in the business and ...
Nov 18, 2022•44 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Malaysia, Sharifah Sarah. She started the business with her cousin when she was a university student studying medicine. Today, she is the co-founder of By Sarah, a business she started with her cousin based on their love for each other and their love for the exquisite songket, a type of woven fabric in the brocade family of textiles unique to Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. By Sarah uses songket in crafting all of its bespoke accessories an...
Nov 11, 2022•57 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Do you have to know how to code in order to start an education technology business? Or what if you’re female and not as young as some of the tech startup founders you see around you? Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Indonesia who lives in Singapore, Nino Mouton. Nino is the founder of the education tech startup, Playbook. She’s the ex-editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Indonesia and content strategist turned education tech warrior who wants to reinvent education for the young people of ...
Nov 04, 2022•50 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from India, Upasna Dash who is the Founder & CEO of Jajabor Brand Consultancy. Upasna took her love for storytelling to start her PR agency at 26 years old. She started with 10,000 rupees in 2017 which is barely RM600 or about US120 with a laptop, and her grandfather’s well-worn couch in her family home and has since grown it to a 50-person company with 40+ clients in a few short years! Yet her motivation isn’t just about building a great PR business. ...
Oct 27, 2022•58 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Would you take the easy path or would you strive for something bigger than yourself even if you didn’t have to? My guest today didn’t want to regret that she didn’t do something for herself when she could. Her friends said she could just sit back and enjoy her life - after all she had the means to do so. Having had her own career when she was younger and being inspired by the mavens of the Malaysian beauty industry, she felt it would be tragic if she didn’t try something on her own and that’s ho...
Oct 21, 2022•42 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Getting out of your comfort zone. Having the courage to go against norms and what’s expected of you. Becoming a mother at 41. Cultural explorations and coming full circle. My guest today is Emilie Chung who co-founded Sinellia Tea with her husband in Guangdong, China. She left France (where she had grown up, born to a Chinese dad and British mum) for China when she was 30 years old and has never looked back since. She didn't speak Mandarin when she arrived and yet felt completely at home! In thi...
Oct 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur, author and book publisher from Singapore, Pearlin Siow who calls herself the Book Mama at Boss Of Me. Her journey is a little unusual in that she started writing her bestseller book first and her business came after when more and more entrepreneurs started asking her to write their books. Pearlin started as a journalist at Singapore Press Holdings upon graduation. In 2000, she left to found an online barter site (which she talks about in this episode) and...
Oct 07, 2022•50 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur, sustainability consultant, mother and former lawyer, Jay Desan. She is the co-founder of BoomGrow, an agritech company that is growing clean greens in Malaysia. This mother of two never expected she would be in the tech space but she did know a lot about sustainability. Jay said that she spent many years in the UK studying and understanding corporate responsibility in human rights which she later expanded to re-imagining the corporation. (ESG refers to En...
Sep 29, 2022•51 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Is it a must for businesses to keep growing? Is it peculiar if someone doesn’t want to grow her business? Well in today’s episode, I speak to a guest who is at a crossroads of her business because she asked herself, “Do we want to keep growing and growing? Is it an inevitable path for all businesses?” What if she doesn’t want to do that and just wants to maintain what she’s doing now? Deepa is the founder & Innovation Director for J Gordhan & Co Ltd. in Hong Kong. She manages a business ...
Sep 23, 2022•1 hr•Season 5Ep. 3
Have you ever felt that you were meant to do something more? That your life is going well but there was a feeling you couldn’t shake off? Today’s episode is with Jenny Toh. Jenny is a Certifed Life Coach and Founder of River Life Coaching in Singapore. Jenny felt this strongly at one point in her life. At that juncture in her life, she was a mother of three with a legal career. Yet this former lawyer knew in her heart that she was meant to do something more. And that something more was to help i...
Sep 16, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Malaysia, Teh Wuan Xin. She is the Founder & CEO of AI Talent, a business that develops child entrepreneurs. At its core, it is an e-learning platform that provides a conducive environment for children to start their business journeys where they learn from entrepreneurs and corporate leaders through projects. According to their website, they have partnered with more than 70 corporations and trained more than 200 coaches and 150 education centres. ...
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Welcome to Season 5 of Womenpreneur Asia and I am your host, Krista Goon. I started this podcast during the pandemic lockdown in 2020 and it's been a journey indeed! In this trailer, I talk about some exciting news and some of what I've learnt in the past 18 months. If you are a returning listener, thank you! It means a lot to me. If you've just found my podcast, thank you! I hope you enjoy this season (and if it intrigues you, listen to the rest of the other seasons as well). The podcast proper...
Sep 02, 2022•15 min
Today’s episode is with a social enterprise entrepreneur from Malaysia, Yap Sook Yee. Sook Yee is the co-founder of Frienden Arts and WeCareJourney. WeCareJourney is an association that helps parents and caregivers with children who are born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). She started her social enterprise, FriendenArts, to sell the art and art merchandise that her two sons, Jaden and Branden, create. Treatments for the two boys are expensive and Sook Yee and her husband wanted to use their ...
Jun 09, 2022•56 min•Season 4Ep. 14
In today’s episode, I am speaking to Olivia Quah who is the co-founder of Asian Integrated Medical Sdn Bhd in Malaysia. Her business specialises in elderly care products and interestingly she began her business because of her own ageing parents. Her business also complements her husband’s as he is a medical doctor and a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner. Olivia is also expanding her business although her main focus is on her ecommerce website. She has many plans in store for her elderly ...
Jun 03, 2022•47 min•Season 4Ep. 13
In today’s episode, I am speaking to Uyanga Batzogs who is the Founder and Executive Director of Quality Life from Mongolia. Uyanga started the NGO when she discovered a 2015 survey of over 500 elderly citizens in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia revealing the need for senior social and medical care. Through Proliance LLC (the medical equipment distribution business that she runs), she founded one of Mongolia’s first senior recreation providers, Quality Life. Quality Life Club is a social-based daycare tha...
May 27, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 12
Today’s episode is with an entrepreneur from Thailand, Kanyachat Lerttanapaiboon who is fondly known as Elle. She is the co-founder & CEO of Her Hyness, a skincare brand that focuses on ingredients that are safe and good for your skin. Elle had worked for well-known cosmetic and skincare brands in Singapore and China and despite being one of the rising stars in the corporate world, she left corporate to start her clean beauty skincare company in Thailand. If you’re a marketing person like me...
May 20, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Season 4Ep. 11
Today’s episode is with Jocelyn Pantastico who is the Co-founder & CEO of Olivia Technology Group based in The Phillippines. Jocs as she is more fondly known has spent most of her life in the corporate world, with many of those years as an expat in Indonesia. In 2018, she returned to The Philippines to start her tech startup, Olivia, a milestone she is most proud of. Her software frees companies from tedious manual data capture so that they can focus on real work. Olivia processes receipts a...
May 13, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 10
Today’s episode is with Evi Mariani, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Project Multatuli based in Indonesia. Evi was the former managing editor at The Jakarta Post. Her collaborative projects won the 2020 Public Service Journalism Award from the Society of Publishers in Asia and the 2020 Tasrif Award from the AJI. Evi and 3 other fellow journalists started Project Multatuli, a media organisation dedicated to carrying out the ideals of public journalism by giving a voice to the voiceless, sp...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Today’s episode is with Michelle Hon who is the founder of MomBoss Academy based in Singapore. Most of my podcast guests are fun but Michelle is another level of fun. We talked about the concept of false beliefs about working hard and how income is tied to effort or is it? We spoke about being paid for results, not the 100 things that we do. It’s about the 80 20 principle. Michelle learnt this when she had to recover from dengue. At the same time, she was also pregnant. She worked fewer hours th...
Apr 29, 2022•59 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Today’s episode is with May Sresthaporn who is the founder of MSHAPPYDIET and PLANTOGENIC in Thailand. One is about the community while the other is about products but both are about health, wellness and balanced living. She said she enjoyed the food a bit too much when she studied in the US but realized that the sugary foods and carbs took a terrible toll on her health! When she came home to Thailand, May started blogging about herself and her own stories of regaining good health through health...
Apr 22, 2022•49 min•Season 4Ep. 7
In today’s episode, I am speaking to Evon Heng who is the Principal & Chief Operating Officer of PropNex Malaysia, a real estate agency with 1,000 negotiators. It wasn’t always this way and in the early days when she started the business, she found it a struggle to grow after a certain point. Evon grew up in Klang, Selangor and she had always wanted to become a businesswoman because of her parents. After getting her real estate negotiator licence, she began her career in selling real estate....
Apr 15, 2022•52 min•Season 4Ep. 6
This week I speak with Lalita Raman who is the CEO and founder of Transitions Intl Ltd based out of Hong Kong where she facilitates and coaches in the areas of leadership and communications. This Mumbai native started her business in 2012 after spending 20+ years working in various investment banking organisations in Hong Kong. She talks about how she had to adapt to different roles and build new skills as she made that shift from employment to entrepreneurship. In her coaching work, she helps e...
Apr 07, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 4Ep. 5
Today’s episode is with Dr Wendy Liew who is the founder of The Image Creator, a corporate training business based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She was a delight to interview - we had so much fun and laughter and even tears - as she was open enough to talk about her shortcomings, the fear of losing face and being a failure. Success means a lot to her because she grew up in a small town and in an era and an environment where boys were favoured over girls. Her mother was her biggest supporter even b...
Apr 01, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 4
Linda Lo is this week's guest and she is the founder and director of Ambon Boenda, a food business involved in baking and retailing Indonesian layer cakes in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Linda was born in Indonesia and currently lives in Malaysia. Known as spekkeok or kue lapis in Indonesian, the layer cake originally was a Dutch cake. Spekkoek was made by the wives of Dutch administrators in Batavia during the colonial period and later, the Indonesians put their own unique twist to the cake by addin...
Mar 25, 2022•46 min•Season 4Ep. 3
From disaster risk management to closet consultant and now founder of a fashion tech startup, Eri Kobayashi wants us to rethink how we wear our clothes and at the same time, wants to give women convenient access to other image and styling consultants. Eri’s story starts in the most unlikely of places - Singapore. That’s where she was living for 10 years before she returned to Japan to start her fashion app business. She was already a stylist and closet consultant but she wanted to build a platfo...
Mar 17, 2022•56 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Episode 1 of Season 4 is about Jomie Casas from The Philippines who helps other entrepreneurs manage their companies remotely. As the founder of Just Rent a COO, Jomie and her team help clients run their businesses on autopilot so that they can fall in love with their life (and business!) again. Jomie decided to live the life that she wanted because she started questioning assumptions about life, family, travel and more. She didn’t start out running a remote business - in fact, she ran an e-comm...
Mar 10, 2022•51 min•Season 4Ep. 1
Here's a birthday gift to myself and to you too, yes, today is my birthday - I created a short trailer for Season 4 because I felt that this season is going to be super exciting. If you're new to my podcast, please subscribe or check out the website too. If you're a returning listener, thank you for always being with me as I uncover more Asian women entrepreneurs in Asia and their stories. I am continually humbled by everyone who has been on my podcast and it seemed apt that I launch my new seas...
Mar 06, 2022•8 min
In this bonus episode that caps Season 3, I am speaking to Dianne Lee , a Malaysian-born woman who lives and works in Los Angeles, USA. Dianne is an executive director with Kitchell Corporation, a construction engineering company. During the global lockdown last year, she decided to write a book that described her own journey as an Asian woman and how she believes Asian women would do well to leverage stereotypes to their advantage! Dianne writes about embracing challenges through what she calls...
Dec 30, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Season 3Ep. 14
In this episode, I am speaking to Debbie Choa, co-founder and chief operating officer of Projek57, a social enterprise in Malaysia that focuses on unity and youth. Projek57 began when its founders were dismayed that racial polarisation and religious tension kept rising in Malaysia and believed they needed to do something and enable Malaysians to stand together as one. Debbie and her husband, Collin started Projek57 with Collin’s long-time friend, Syed Sadiq Albar with the hope of bringing unity ...
Dec 24, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Season 3Ep. 13
