Dr. Jenny Woo, MBA 09 - Living Her Next Thing in the Present

Mar 9 2023 • 32 mins

Today's guest is Dr. Jenny Woo, Founder and CEO of Mind Brain Emotion, a company that creates cleverly simple and immediately actionable skills-building games and tools to help people become happier, calmer, and wiser.

As a former president of the Women in Leadership Club at Haas, Jenny shares her journey from a little girl moving to the US to be reunited with her parents, to a female consultant working with global companies, to a mother entrepreneur-student juggling family, PhD, and startup.

Jenny is passionate about helping people reach their potential - from classrooms to boardrooms. She has worked as a human capital consultant at Deloitte, a Talent & Strategy Manager at Cisco, a Montessori school director, a cognitive science researcher, and a lecturer in Emotional Intelligence.

Having taught in grade schools and colleges, she saw a lack of resources and opportunities to help students develop what we call "soft skills" in the real world. This is how she started her company which was incubated out of Harvard Innovation Labs. She developed and launched the 52 Essential card series which is used in 50+ countries in homes, schools, and workplaces.

Episode Quotes:

Advice for people who want to pursue an MBA

You have to be crystal clear in terms of what you want to get out of it and what are your purposes. What are your passions?

On why she decided to go into a Ph.D. program

Sometimes the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. And I wanted to really become an expert, in this case, in emotional intelligence, helping kids, and even adults, develop what we call soft skills in the real world.

The biggest barrier she sees in undergraduate and graduate students and how to overcome it

I see this need to feel prepared and somehow never feeling quite prepared enough and needing to be doing other things in order to pursue what ultimately we are interested in. I think that also is related to the imposter syndrome, why should I do this? Who am I to do this? What would people say? And would I fail? Those little negative voices in our head. Honestly, just do it. Just start. We can start baby steps. You don't have to get it all right. But even one little habit you implement, one little hour you spend will make a difference.

In order to live your next thing or the thing that you've been putting off and on your wish list, is to not go into this all-or-nothing mentality.