Episodes

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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, yo...

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 and i...

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...

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...

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...

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. In ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...