Ms. Hwang is a venture capital investor who has collected experiences as an innovator and inventor, founder and entrepreneur, social entrepreneur, educator, and ecosystem builder. Most recently, she co-founded Kalei Ventures, which invests in early-stage technology startups from Latin America. Prior to Kalei, she was co-founder and Managing Director at Rivet Ventures, which focuses on companies targeting women-led markets where female usage, decision-making, and purchasing are crucial to company growth. Ms. Hwang is also co-founder of the San Francisco-based startup YouNoodle, which helps companies and governments engage with communities of entrepreneurs for open innovation and co-creation of products and services. Ms. Hwang has been very active in creating and scaling ecosystems for innovators and entrepreneurs in several countries. Rebeca co-founded Cleantech Open, Startup Malaysia and Startup Nations Summit. She also serves on the Global Board of Kauffman's GEN, Imagine H2O, TEDx Rio de la Plata Accelerator (the largest TEDx event in the world), and was a member of the WEF's Global Council on the Future of Migrations, as well as co-lead the Access to Capital Committee of the Mexico-U.S. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Council. Rebeca has worked closely several national startup programs, including initiatives in Malaysia, South Korea, Spain, Iceland, Chile, Peru, and Mexico. Ms. Hwang was born in Seoul, raised in Argentina and educated at MIT and Stanford, and has been recognized as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and as one of the top 35 under 35 Global Innovators by MIT Tech Review and was a TED speaker in Vancouver, in TED en Espanol in NYC, as well as TEDx Cordoba in 2018.
鈥淚 do think Facebook is in a very vulnerable place right now. Both seen from the perspective of the consumer reaction 鈥 but also from the perspective of the deal flow that I see and the types of companies that are trying to become the disruptors of a Facebook,鈥 Hwang said during a CNBC-hosted panel at the Davos Sanctuary.
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鈥淲hat's debatable,鈥 says Rebeca Hwang, a venture capitalist and lecturer of technology entrepreneurship at Stanford University, 鈥渋s how we can improve diversity and create more inviting environments for women to strive at tech companies, not whether diversity is a good thing for business, nor whether women are biologically equipped to hold highly stressful technical jobs.鈥
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鈥 We seem to have these mental models, that is either freedom or privacy. And it's not quite the case, because we have the technology. And there are ways in which you can ensure some level of privacy and protection while also keeping safety and freedom.鈥
- China rising in global business, politics, and foreign policy
鈥淚 would bet my money in the US because it's hard to change the paradigms and the culture and the mindsets of people who are so focused on fighting with each other that they can鈥檛 see the winter. But the good news is that if you look at 20-year old鈥檚, teenagers, young people that already got it, they see the winter and they want to do something about it. They're more collaborative. They just need more influence, more platforms, more visibility鈥.
- China rising in global business, politics, and foreign policy