Sookmyung Women's University, on a hill above the Yongsan district, runs a fellowship every summer that is one of the more difficult educations available to a young Asian businesswoman.
Twelve countries, one room
There were eighteen of us, from twelve countries. The Vietnamese banker, the Filipino civil-society organiser, two Indonesian entrepreneurs, the Cambodian who had never given a presentation in English longer than four minutes. The first month was humbling. The second was clarifying. The third was a reminder that the difference between an internationally fluent leader and a regionally fluent one is, mostly, the willingness to keep saying yes to discomfort.
The most useful kind of difficult — that is the phrase I have for Sookmyung.
— Fellowship notebook, 2022
The alumni question
I have stayed in touch with the alumni network ever since. Every incoming cohort gets a Cambodian alumna to write to — me, for now — and the rule is that I respond within forty-eight hours regardless of what else I am doing.
Sookmyung gave me a kind of access I had no other route to. Keeping the door open for whoever follows is the smallest decent return.