From film sets to founding teams
The through-line of my career is simple: find a story worth believing in, then do whatever role it takes to prove it true.
Trained to tell stories
I studied Film & Digital Media at Dongguk University, producing independent films and translating treatments for funding pitches. Film taught me the craft I still use every day: how to take an idea no one can see yet, give it structure, and convince people to bet on it — on a deadline, with never quite enough budget.
Fell for the startup ecosystem
My first role at a Korea–China travel startup showed me that early-stage companies are storytelling at its highest stakes — a narrative about the future that a team commits to making real. I built a bilingual community from scratch and ran two COVID-era pivot launches, and I was hooked: I didn't want to depict change on screen, I wanted to operate inside it.
Saw the vision in Southeast Asia
At Codebrick (Tokotalk, acquired by Shopee's parent SEA Limited) and then as a founding-team member at Plugo, I bet on one of the world's fastest-growing digital economies. The mission: give Indonesian and Thai sellers real ownership of their businesses through D2C commerce infrastructure.
Proving that mission meant refusing to stay in one lane. I owned product specs and sprint planning with engineering, cold-pitched HYBE's Weverse into its first official Indonesian market entry, closed 14 Korean brand partnerships, managed a 5,000+ creator network, ran field sales at offline bazaars, and handled import licensing and regulatory compliance. Whatever the mission needed, that was my job description.
The chapter break, spent deliberately
Plugo's pivot to K-beauty was right for the business, but it wasn't the problem I joined to solve — so I closed that chapter with the playbooks and scar tissue intact. Then I spent eight months going wide instead of rushing into the next role: traveling; trading crypto perpetuals with my own capital — where leverage and risk aren't theory, but your own money on the line; and serving as a PD on the Korea shoot of Tour Era, an American docu-follow series about the business of bringing K-pop to America. The film student came back to production — for a show about exactly the kind of cross-border business I've built my career on.
Looking for the next mission — in the AI era
AI is now rewriting how industries work and transact, the same way e-commerce rewrote Southeast Asian retail. I'm looking for the team building that change — and the partnerships and go-to-market problems that come with it.