Episodes

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 an...

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, ...

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 ...

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 hea...

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. ...

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 help...

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...

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 addi...

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 plat...

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-c...

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 se...

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 cal...

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 unit...

In this week’s episode, I am speaking to Michelle and Melissa Sin of SKB Shutters Corporation Berhad from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The business had its roots in Penang but since Michelle and Melissa’s father took over, they relocated to Kuala Lumpur as urbanisation in the 80s saw a growing need for their steel products. Michelle and Melissa had worked for KPMG before joining their parents in the manufacturing business. At SKB, Melissa heads sales and marketing while Michelle manages the operati...

In this episode, I spoke to Tanya Rolfe and Christine Yu, two out of the three founders of Sophia. Sophia is a learning platform made for women who want to learn about money and investing and how to put their money towards venture capital funding and angel investment funding to support other women entrepreneurs. Sophia was born out of the founders' frustrations experienced in the world of investing towards female entrepreneurs. Tanya and Christine (and another co-founder, Nicole) want to crea...

This episode is all about Malaysian entrepreneur, Fiona Marcus Raja who is based in Kuching, Sarawak. She started five businesses in five years since she came back to Sarawak after being away with her family and caring for her son who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a type of cancer that happens to young children. She is the founder and managing director of Borneo International Exhibition Sdn Bhd, an events management business that helps other businesses organise large-scale events and expos...

Penny Choong of Malaysia is this week's guest. She is the founder of Penny Essentials, a business that helps people enjoy being healthy. Yet years ago, she was suffering from such severe migraine attacks that she couldn’t even get out of bed! Her story is quite unique in that she was focused on teaching financial education when she came back from the Middle East. Yet life sometimes throws us curve balls and she came to a realization that she herself needed to be well first. She couldn’t help ...

This episode is about Padmaja Vaswani from India who manages 3 businesses focusing on learning and development, organisational development in addition to diversity and inclusion. Padmaja is the Founder & CEO of Siksha Group, which offers learning and development for companies across India. She is also the CEO of NEWS Navigation that specializes in executive coaching and organizational transformation solutions. She is also the co-founder of WeMantra which enables individuals and organizations ...

This episode is about Thai entrepreneur, Chalita Hongsakul. Chalita is the Managing Director of Wakingbee Corporation based in Bangkok, Thailand. She doesn’t call herself a fitness freak but came to start a fitness and activewear clothing brand after quitting as a management consultant. It was a desire to get healthy that put her on the entrepreneurial track. While trying to get to the gym, she realised all the available brands she looked at didn’t quite fit her need for something fun, femini...

This episode of Season 3 is with Saliza Abdullah, the Managing Director & CEO, BG Capital Holdings Group of Companies in Malaysia. Saliza manages a 100% woman-owned security services business - one which belonged to her late mother. The original business offered physical guarding and security services. Since taking over, Saliza has expanded the scope of business to include training and surveillance. In this episode, we talk about: What it's like running a fully woman-owned business with her ...

Titaporn Tuchinda is this week's guest and she is an executive coach, entrepreneur and investor in Thailand with more than one business! She is the Managing Director of The Growth and Change Co., Ltd, Thailand and founder and board member of Brighton College International School just outside of Bangkok. She has also conceptualised and set up two boutique hotels in Chiangmai from scratch! Titaporn is also an executive coach with Aberkyn. These businesses seem unrelated on the surface but as w...

Jayce Tham co-founded CreativesAtWork with her sister, Fanny, in 2012 and the two sisters couldn’t be more different! Jayce spent years in the corporate world while Fanny was in the creative industry. The two Singaporean sisters created a pool and network of freelancers in Singapore and across the region to help corporate companies with everything media-related and creative-related such as photography to graphic design, from advertisements to short films. Unlike other platforms which offer fr...

This week I speak to Vietnamese startup founder, Laura Phan, the founder & CEO of iZi Community. iZi Community is an online gamification and AI-based education platform made for learners who need snack-sized learning. Interestingly, Laura is a non-tech founder where she leads her team of programmers in connecting learners and content creators in Vietnam. But this is not her first business. She started her first business at 21 with a team of 30 people because she wanted to prove a point. In t...

Following your dream. After working for a few years in London, Helen came home to Penang, Malaysia to work in the family business. Yet, her heart was always in the arts. She described how she would visit museums and art galleries in London and found that she was always joyful in these places. And that was how she realised she had to pursue her love for the arts and started her design firm, Blanc Designs. Helen loves to incorporate art as 3D forms for homes and offices rather than have art wi...