Hyojeong, CEO and founder of NomadHer, graduated Master in International Developement, PSIA
What is your role and main responsabilities?
Currently we are incubated at StationF, the world’s largest startup incubator in Paris, France and NomadHer has grown into a community of women from 100 different nationalities. Yes I dove into the startup life journey and this is pretty much different from what many other PSIA graduates are currently working on. Everyday is so dynamic. My main role as CEO includes managing the team, working on the product and talking to our NomadHer users and gathering feedbacks, reaching out to investors and pitching, getting rejected sometimes and negotiating on investment etc.
How did you secure this role?
I madein responsibilities? a company and environment which I aspired to work for. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and thought of starting a startup with more social impact. During the 3rd semester of PSIA, I applied for SciencesPo Incubator where I could work on NomadHer to test the idea and to figure out whether female travellers actually feel the problem during their solo travelling. We are in Paris, the center of the city with endless travellers so I started talking to over 1,000 female travellers from different corners of the world.
What is the most fascinating and/or surprising aspect at your role?
Fail, Fail, Fail and Learn and Re Do it. Through doing a startup, I learned that I should fail as quickly as possible. This is the attitude that I didn’t have before. There is no definite or accurate answer and NomadHer members are from over 100 countries and this is so exciting to get feedback from all women with exciting stories to share. The team has grown from 1 (myself) to 7 within 2 years and requires a lot of responsibility and also patience.