April 8, 2022 - The Asia Foundation trained three women entrepreneurs in Gyeonggi province as Personal Initiative Trainers. Through the training that started in September 2021, Ms. Park Jiwoo (CEO of InGoodCompany Education Center providing tailor-made trainings for organizations, the senior, and women), Ms. Yoon Jihye (CEO of Endless producing Kids Binder to improve children’s writing habits), and Ms. Lim Hayul (CEO of Solemaman, a home living brand of home & lifestyle products) officially became certified PI trainers.

The three PI trainers had opportunities to discover what should be done and changed to make their businesses more sustainable by continuously looking back on their business management and attitude as entrepreneurs during the training. Through the process, Ms. Lim came up with an idea to develop a bathroom mat for one-person households and successfully raised fund for production  through wadiz, a crowdfunding platform. Ms. Yoon secured several sources of feedback on new products and leveraged PI questions with her staff to discover new ways to improve their business routines. Ms. Park started actively looking for various funding sources, which enabled her to develop specific plans for her new projects. The three new trainers also founded the Personal Initiative Women Entrepreneur Association to vitalize PI culture among women entrepreneurs.

Based on the experience and training, the three PI trainers will lead PI trainings for women entrepreneurs in Gyeonggi province. The Asia Foundation office held a meeting to prepare for the training.

The three PI trainers said:

“I will provide various exercises based on case studies that can occur in any business management situations and do my best to help them practice the learnt PI traits in their business.”

“I would like to help the participants realize that barriers against business and the solutions are actually all come their minds and that PI mind is the thing they would need.”

“I will share lessons learned from the PI training with the participants hoping that there will be more self-starting women entrepreneurs that exchange feedbacks with each other as sisterhood.”

The six weeks training will be conducted twice in April to May and June to July 2022, targeting 60 women entrepreneurs.