From Corporate C Suite To Caregiving Champion

Stephanie Leung: 0:00

There's 10.6 million people who are all family caregivers like 7.7 million of us are working and 10% of that workforce, by the way, burn out every year from caregiver burnout. So I thought, right, apply every single business skill you possibly have collected over the years and just attack it. And so I started sort of trying to figure out like, well, I kind of learned some skills over the years, so if I now apply those skills to my own problem, how would I try and solve for it systemically? And that's basically what became Kare Hero. My dream is any family member who goes through a healthcare crisis for someone they love in their own home never has to feel alone.

‍Amardeep Parmar: 0:38

Today on the podcast, we have Stephanie Leung, who's the co-founder and CEO of Kare Hero. They're all about supporting working professionals with their caring needs so that they don't have to leave their jobs, and to support them in the best way possible. Stephanie's got a really interesting career and comes from a background where her dad was a truck driver. She had to fight right at the beginning of her life, experience lots of different issues there and she then climbed up and was able to achieve so much through different careers and ended up being on the C-suite at Havi, which is one of the biggest global logistics firms in the world. She was then original director at Uber and was doing these different roles which she was taking on, where she was also having to manage the caring needs of people within her family. She became a venture partner at Local Globe, we did see one venture capital firm and there she found this idea that she's like I need to make a change here, and this is her story.

Amardeep Parmar: 1:29

We're the BAE HQ and I'm Amar, and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. So, Stephanie, you're doing amazing things. You've done so many incredible things at places like Uber and so on. But when you're a little kid, what are your dreams? What are your ambitions? What did you hope to be?

Stephanie Leung: 1:45

So when I was a little kid, I wanted to be anywhere, but at home. So I think the first thing I wanted to do was become an air hostess, because I thought there's nothing more glamorous than going around the whole world living vicariously through other people and cities. And then, when I grew up I can't remember when, I think it was when I was about 14, 15, I realized I had a propensity for languages. So then I wanted to become a UN interpreter actually. So I learned French, I did German, I studied Japanese at night school, I was pretty good at Latin at the school I was at and I spoke Chinese at home. So I was like, okay, you know, I can travel and do something like sounds important. So I wanted to become an interpreter. I never made it because I realized I needed to learn Spanish or Russian at some point and then realized I don't qualify anymore. So I gave up that dream about 18 years old.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:29

Obviously you then went into, like so many other things later on. But did you have that belief at that early stage that you'd be where you are today? Oh God, no.

Stephanie Leung: 2:36

Yeah, like if I. I think when you look back on any career and I've been working 20 plus years now, a lot of stuff happens by chance and when you look back you kind of see the thread that dots out all the you know strings all the dots together. But the time, if you told me where I'd be sitting here today, having done what I've done, there was no way in hell I would have thought I'd be where I am. I imagined living out, you know, sort of going, traveling, but that was it.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:57

So obviously you had their dream to go and live out and travel the world. But as far as I know, you didn't become a UN interpreter.

Stephanie Leung: 3:03

No, I didn't, they probably wouldn't even let me through the front door these days. No, I didn't. So you know, basically I, you know, I grew up my dad was an immigrant here and I think a lot of my ambition probably comes from him. So he arrived here in the 60s with nothing more than a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and he was homeless for a while actually, and I think someone finally gave him a break and said you can sleep on the floor of our restaurant and you get one meal a day in, you know, and you don't get paid but you can be a waiter here. And he sort of really bootstrapped, like basically from the ground up. He went back, found my mom and it's because my parents from Hong Kong and they basically started a life here and still to this day his English is not great, I have to say.

Stephanie Leung: 3:44

But growing up in, you know, pretty difficult circumstances, you sort of learn. You either choose to accept that that's your reality or you choose something else. And so I was incredibly curious as a child, you know, looking out the window, looking at everything and everybody's going. Why does it work that way and why you know how come somebody's doing this and they're doing that. So I think it's really my curiosity that took me to where I am today, because every job and everything I've ever explored I put my whole heart and soul in trying to understand it and it feels like a literary just started yesterday actually, in terms of like trying to figure out what to do with my life.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:23

When you had that idea about languages. Right? Did you study languages at university or did you change path?

Stephanie Leung: 4:29

So I did Japanese and so I did Japanese, Chinese and Economics, Chinese. So actually this is one thing I'm very grateful to my parents for. So, growing up, my parents wouldn't let me speak English at home. They forced me to go to Sunday school to learn Chinese, and I hated it 'cause, you know, chinese is quite difficult. But then, you know, later on in my career I actually ended up in China, ended up being CEO of, you know, one of the largest logistics businesses there.

Stephanie Leung: 4:49

I was the only non-native and they were giving me Chinese contracts to sign and I was like, okay, thank God I could read these, but for someone who was born and brought up here, it was actually quite rare. However, I'm really glad because the more, I don't know what the research numbers say, but something around if you're exposed to more languages when you're younger, your propensity to pick up new ones is much higher as you grow up. So when I went to university, all I remember was I want to travel, and that's when I sort of learned Japanese properly and I literally remember getting the globe out and saying where can I go as far away from home and explore? And I couldn't do Australia because they speak English and I couldn't do China because they speak Chinese and I already spoke Chinese. So I was like, okay, Japan sounds really good and the economy is good there. So that's literally how I picked the language. It's quite, quite by chance.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:32

And did you ever go out there for work?

Stephanie Leung: 5:33

I did yeah, and this is sort of actually led to my first job. So in my Japanese class my classmate had just done an internship at Goldman Sachs and she invited me to dinner one day and it turned out to be a recruiting dinner. So I didn't know I was being recruited, but I ended up doing a summer internship in Tokyo for Goldman Sachs and then out of that came a job offer and I actually went to Tokyo because I thought, oh, I get to spend the summer in Tokyo. This is really cool, not knowing that you work like 15, 18 hours a day, you don't actually see outside of the office. But I felt really really fortunate because people just accepted me for who I was and as long as you work hard you can get ahead.

Stephanie Leung: 6:14

And there's something about living in a country that the language is not your native language or even your native country. It forces you to always be learning and be on your toes. So I sort of learned that entire system from scratch and then, before I knew it, I was trading stocks in Japanese and all my clients were Japanese and it just felt very natural. You sort of fit it in and then you can and they hired me because they thought, right, you bring some Western perspectives to Japan and vice versa, and so you know it's a global company. But yeah, I really really enjoyed it. It was a big learning curve for me.

Amardeep Parmar: 6:47

There's obviously a big change from what you were learning as well, right? So thinking about going into interpretation to then trading stocks in Japan? I guess you never imagined that's where you're going to end up, right?

Stephanie Leung: 6:55

Yeah, but I met some great people there. They became my mentors and I remember eventually I ended up back in the UK where I worked on our Asia desk, and the reason why they hired me here is because they needed someone to speak to the settlement teams in Hong Kong in Cantonese, which I speak, and then Japanese for the Tokyo Stock Exchange. So they felt like they were getting a bargain. It's like a couple of things all in one and I doubt if it wasn't because of my languages, they would have given me a job. To be honest, I think they just said, right, well, could a break, she can do the languages, it's one less thing we have to worry about. But that's literally how I got my first break.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:26

Where did you go after Goldman?

Stephanie Leung: 7:27

So after Goldman I went to Boston, so I'd gone to school there and I remember there comes a point where I was probably I was spending a lot of time out with clients when I was working in banking. Very intensive sort of training.

Stephanie Leung: 7:39

Sometimes you're out. I remember I'd have to start work at 5am here because the Tokyo Stock Exchange closes at 6am here, so you've got to be ready to go and I was trading and then you finish at 6am and you're out with clients drinking for seven hours and I just remember my husband saying to me you will die by the time you get to 30 or that, or you'll pickle your liver if you don't take a slightly less hectic job. I applied online actually I think back in those days was really rar e. I applied online for a job in marketing strategy of all things, and I got invited to an interview and then I don't think they realized I wasn't American because I'd gone to school, I'd done some, you know, gone to school in the US at some point, and so they gave me the job offer and then only realized then that I had to apply for a visa.

Stephanie Leung: 8:27

So, they're okay, we're giving you off an hour. Now we have to go through this. So basically, yeah, I moved to Boston. I really enjoyed my time there. I started out in marketing strategy for a company called Monitor Group, which was, it was founded by a guy called Michael Porter and some of his research students. Yep, Five forces. So they started. It was basically a global consulting firm headquartered out Boston. One of the founders had done a couple of years at Bain and then started it, and then when I started, I was in the marketing strategy team and then actually this leads me to what I'm doing now.

Stephanie Leung: 8:55

So I remember my dad got really sick about five, six months into my job there and I left the country. I just packed everything up and I left and my boss was really nice to me. He basically said take all the time you need. When you're ready, come back. And I did go back. And what's brilliant about this? And I probably remember it for the rest of my life I went back twice as loyal and worked five times harder, because I thought, when I thought everything was coming to an end and I had to give up my career and give it my job, because to go back and look after my dad. You basically said the doors still open, come back.

Stephanie Leung: 9:32

When I went back, I think I spent about a week in marketing strategy and then I got a call and they said the chairman's looking for a young caddy who's willing to carry his bag. Are you willing to do the job? There's no job description, by the way. And so I actually met him in a coffee shop in a hotel area and I remember calling my boyfriend at the time he's now my husband and I said I just got this really weird job offer. There's no job description. He said take it, sounds like a journey of a lifetime. And I'm really glad I did because it changed my life. I ended up following him to really important board meetings. Monitor was advising governments, royalty, some really big major clients. They were opening up their Middle East practice. I was flying with him to Asia to meet with all the heads of their Asia partners and I also managed some of his senior advisory networks. I really got to understand this is what really senior people think about in very, very big picture and as a fly on the wall.

Stephanie Leung: 10:30

It's a really good learning curve for someone in your 20s and I think many like a couple of years later, apparently, Devil wears Prada came out and everyone said you got to watch. This reminds me of you, although you know my job was not as glamorous as that and my boss was not horrible, he was a good guy, but it was definitely a lot of like, there is no job description. You've got to go do whatever you got to do. To this day, a lot of what I learned then and that you know essentially you're working with someone who's the other side, who's like a chief of staff kind of guy. I learned how to not necessarily stick to a manual. You've got to figure out what's the problem you're trying to solve for and what you do. You practically need to get to the end goal. There is no such thing as no and then and don't come back until it's fixed. So it sort of forces you to really, you know, persist when you come up with difficult situations, and I think that grit was was something I learned on the job.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:15

It's amazing like you've already done some pretty incredible things already at this stage. I know there's so much more to come on your side. So I don't ask too many questions about that just I know there's so much more to come, but I know you then did were independent for a while right.

Stephanie Leung: 11:27

My husband wanted to get married and he said well, you work seven days a week till three every morning. That's not going to be very healthy when you want to start a family. So so we actually made the decision to leave the US and I came back here and did an MBA. It was a one year MBA, which was, in retrospect, a really foolish thing to do, because I started my MBA when my son was three months old as a full time student, and then my husband actually had a had a job somewhere else. So I was single mom with three months old, trying to do an MBA, and it's actually quite interesting. So when I when I graduated, I finished almost top of the class, but I realized it's not because I was, you know, harder working than anyone else is because I didn't go anywhere.

Stephanie Leung: 12:07

I was either at home, like you know, feeding my kid, or I was studying. People can go out, you know, like socializing, clubbing and having dinners. I didn't do any of that. I basically just said, right, it's either school or it's the kid. It's the school or the kid. So I did that in a year and then I went straight to Asia. So I followed my husband when he was already in Shanghai and we spent almost a decade out there. But yeah, so when I was there as a new mom really trying to get my head around stuff, I basically started my own consulting firm for education and I'd done those.

Stephanie Leung: 12:34

I had quite a few friends who really trusted, trusted that I wasn't going to misuse their brand and so I kind of became an ambassador for them to try and knit together different programs in between schools and high schools and universities. So I kind of helped. There was one person who wanted to open a chain of kindergartens, for example. So I ended up talking to people on the ground, helping them figure out where to even build their school, what the health and safety looks like, what kind of curriculum, how do you hire teachers. So it was education was something I was very like, very passionate about. My dad finished school at the age of 11. The growing up I was like, okay, you know, I'm just going to make up for all the years that he missed. So I was very passionate about what education can do for people. So, yeah, I did that for a couple of years.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:15

I think people listen to me. I'm pretty amazed by just the breadth of what you've done so far already in your career.

Stephanie Leung: 13:19

Very random.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:21

It's also what builds the founder right and I think some people forget that is that those different skills, that when you're a founder and you're doing the scrappy stuff now, all of these different skills that will fit into the, it's joining the dots. In hindsight, right, it really does make a difference. And you said you then moved out to Shanghai, and I know you also had an incredible journey there as well. What was it so? Can you tell us about? What did you do there?

Stephanie Leung: 13:43

Yeah, so there's a bit of history here. So I grew, I, my dad was a truck driver and I grew up in sitting inside a truck and he delivered food for people, so I remember. It all comes back now. So I worked for the chairman of monitor group and we went to a conference in Asia and I ended up sitting next to a guy who's now a really good friend, is a lifelong friend of mine and knows my you know, he knows my family very well. He was the chairman of Asia Pacific for one of the largest food logistics businesses in the world, and we sat next to each of the dinner and it was crazy. It was like Jack Ma from Alibaba was there, like Bill Gates was at the next table some major, you know, movers and shakers and, and we started talking and I shared within my childhood experience essentially and, and he's an American guy. He'd lived in Beijing, his he did.

Stephanie Leung: 14:34

I think he did Chinese history at Beijing University with some really really bright guy and he kept my number and then one day he called me and he said hey, I'm looking for someone to help me do some consulting. You speak Chinese and you speak English, can you come and help me? And so I ended up being a consultant to this company called Havi, which was a little did I know? They're the largest like food supply chain company in the world and one of their biggest clients is McDonald's. So I joined the company as a consultant for three months and then, three months, three months into the job, they said would you like to be the CEO of our China business? And I thought, oh my God, they're a bit crazy. And I said I've never done this before. And they said no, no, you, you've done it before, like for your, for your family, for your, your dad and your, your smart kid, you can figure this out. But what was interesting is that they said they ended up.

Stephanie Leung: 15:17

I asked them years later why they made that bet and they said because you don't give up on the first try and apparently for years they'd been trying to like turn the Chinese business around and there was a bit of like miscommunication across the table. So essentially, what I, what they really did, was they put me in that role to be a diplomat, like really try to figure out what do the clients need, what does the, what did the internal team need and what does the global head office need? And I, we had about 1400 employees, we had distribution centers all across China. I was dealing with government officials to buy land. Like you know you're, you're dealing all the way from the top, all the way to the bottom.

Stephanie Leung: 15:50

And then halfway through that, one of our clients had a really big food crisis. It was all over the newspapers, all over the press. It was pretty ugly because I grew up in a, in a family business with lots of crises that happened on a daily basis. I was pretty calm about it and I and I didn't realize this at the time, but I'm really good at crisis management. So if you want to calm head in the room with the rest of the buildings on fire, I go very still.

Stephanie Leung: 16:14

So, quite quickly, I worked with a head of comms from McDonald's who was going through some stuff and we sort of very quickly figured out like what's the crisis plan, what's the condition, how do you tell employees, how do you lock everything down? We even at one point had a live report. To try and wander in one to one of our distribution centers was mad. I was literally live on camera on TV. We didn't know at the time. So, anyway, we got through all of that and the client did a read, you know, they rebounded. We did a we. They sort of really bounced back. Everything worked out really well and then, through sort of serendipity almost, I ended up on the global board and they said right, you know, now you've done that, can you manage the client for Asia Pacific? Oh, actually, we're merging at Europe and Asia, can you now manage like all of it? And so I ended up becoming joining their board as their chief strategy I think was it chief business development and strategy officer.

Stephanie Leung: 17:03

Amardeep parmar: Yeah, that's Assistant in LinkedIn. Stephanie Leung: Yeah, and it was a very long title and I just remember as I approach everything, I basically said I don't know anything. So I'm going to come in here, I'm going to tell you I don't know anything but I'm going to learn. And I think it's a bit like learning languages is no foreign country when you assume you know nothing and you assume that you're working in a completely different Infrastructure and different ecosystem. You pay attention to everything and you learn. You understand what, you learn what the rules are, but you also learn how how to navigate through that. So I was really lucky.

Stephanie Leung: 17:35

When I joined the board, everyone was about 20 years older than me, a lot of people, I think, some of my colleagues, sort of like what, how did that happen? Kind of thing. But and you know, when I first got the role, I thought, whoa, like I've landed. You know, this is the Forbes top 20 private company. How did I do this?

Stephanie Leung: 17:50

But when I got there realized okay, I do know nothing, I need to learn. But I'm really lucky because if you talk to people and you can, I, you can identify with them as people. They're very willing to teach you. So you know, it wasn't always like that. When I first went in, I thought I must know something, and then I quickly realized actually I need to learn everything. So I was really lucky because all my colleagues were willing to work with me and it's a lot of. You know, sometimes you have to negotiate that you.

Stephanie Leung: 18:13

But what I think I really if I had. If there's one thing I learned from that experience, was every stakeholder around the board has extremely positive intentions and brings a lot of expertise of what they're trying to do, the challenges, trying to align those, those passions or those, you know, those end goals that they want. And oftentimes when you get into board situations where people aren't aligned, that's when friction arrives. And so I spent a lot of time saying, right, we may be different on these three things, but these are seven things that all of us are aligned on, and so that's how we ended up, like bringing in more business, expanding the business and, yeah, like I think I came into my own and I felt a lot more confident about what I was doing.

Amardeep Parmar: 18:55

I felt like we could do an episode just on that part of the story and I felt so much more we can dive into and why we love there's humility. It's the beginners mindset, right of the idea.

Stephanie Leung: 19:03

Every job I have is beginners mindset, like if you assume you can know everything coming in your view already lost.

Amardeep Parmar: 19:08

Yeah, but it's also the fact you've got beginners mindset. You also do know things right and you've also got the experience behind you. You've got a scrappiness from your childhood and understanding like it's one thing to say you don't know anything, but it's not tick as a defeatist mentality, as this means I get to learn a lot, right yeah.

Stephanie Leung: 19:23

So I look at everything as a my, my mom is like this, by the way, so she's still she's 85 and still learning English. She takes English and she takes it really seriously. I was like, okay, mom, you've probably been doing this for quite some time now. It's not going anywhere. But I treat everything as a learning opportunity. Like and I don't mean this in the cliche way it's literally like, oh, if I had to take a degree in food safety tomorrow. Like where do I go and learn? Oh, my god, I'm in a perfect place to learn this.

Stephanie Leung: 19:46

So I learned everything about European food safety laws. Right, and actually it turns out really well because I, when I ended up getting caught a call from Uber to say do you want to join us? The reason why they were interested in me is because I dealt with government, because I'd been talking about food safety laws, and they were like, okay, you know it. Like so, for example, uber UK was going through some difficults with TFL. They said, oh, it'd be really good if someone understands safety is some distance, understands what the, you know the line of the, the law is and how to go through audits and stuff like this. You know that sort of one job leads to the other.

Stephanie Leung: 20:17

So when I joined Uber you know I was I ended up running operations for 20 countries across Europe, but my prime focus was the UK. And I remember when I joined they had literally just lost their TFL license. And inside the company, with all these people who were working so hard and really passionate about the brand and but they were also really young and it never dealt with. You know the complex. Obviously there's there's some great lawyers there as well, but I remember when they hired me they said, oh, we need a few adults in the room.

Stephanie Leung: 20:45

And what they really said what, what they really meant I think one person actually said to me with you're the oldest person we've ever hired. But actually in retrospect I realized this because there there were lots of really hungry, really smart, really hardworking people, but many of them are in their 20s and it never dealt with the government official before, or or maybe one or two of them had, but the, the broader team was needed to get up to speed. So so when I came in, it was again like crisis management turnaround, a lot about stakeholder management, figuring out who are all the players in the market, both inside and outside. What can you control, what can you not. And I probably had the time of my life there.

Stephanie Leung: 21:19

Actually, I felt young, I felt very young actually joining, because I thought, okay, even I'm you know, though I'm kind of old, you know all of you are like really young. So I actually felt I really rejuvenated me, and what I loved about it is that we were moving so fast. There was very little room for politics and and all the things that you worry about. It was more like, okay, let's focus on the problem, how do we solve it? And so every single day we were reiterating, and every three months, the business look completely different and I just I just felt like every challenge we had, you, we were all working together, going what going to water together and coming out really strong. So so when I joined, you know, morale wasn't great, but by the time I left we had the highest people scores across Europe. I had the highest people scores for the duration.

Stephanie Leung: 22:03

I was there actually for Europe and I felt very proud of that, but a lot of it wasn't me actually. It was just giving people room to just enjoy themselves and do stuff and really try and make stuff happen, and we always knew nothing, by the way, which is, I think, a great place to start from, because then you keep trying, right?

Amardeep Parmar: 22:20

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to headline partners HSBC Innovation banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use additional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You just talking to an AI assistant or talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what is you've been trying to do. HSBC have got the team they built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got a deep sector expertise and they can help connect you the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbci nnovation banking. com. It was incredible. Now so you said the company worked for in China is one of the biggest companies in the world private companies. Then obviously pretty much everybody thinks gonna know Uber. Yeah, they've worked these giant companies. But then you decided to go down the startup route. What was that transition there? Because some people think you're now made right.

Amardeep Parmar: 23:14

go into a scrappy stage again? What was attracted you?

Stephanie Leung: 23:17

Yes, I have to say, when I left Uber, people were quite shocked that I decided to leave. I I I'm still extremely fond of that company, have a lot of friends there and a lot of my friends who've since left there have gone on to great careers. We keep in touch and I still have a big, big piece of my heart is still with that company. I remember when I left Uber it was quite far into COVID actually, and of course everything stops when COVID happened in the UK and we had gone through a few rounds of restructuring and I just thought, right, I can't see, and we'd also through that time, we'd also IPO'd, we'd gone through quite a few changes and I realized that what I was looking for was something a bit more scrappy. And so I met this company. They reached out to me and they said and it was three men who were trying to start a childcare business, a marketplace, and they were looking for someone who understood safety. So I remember meeting them, thinking, oh, this is really interesting, like these three guys are really passionate about this space, and so I thought I could provide some value to them. Also, I knew that I wanted to potentially start my own gig one day, but I wasn't well, I knew I was interested in the start of space, but I didn't know whether it would be as an investor or as something else. And so I thought, well, I'm gonna try and give this a go. And actually I remember there was one person who called me. I get calls from headhunters a lot but there was this one particular headhunter who said so can I just check? You've never started anything right. And I think something in me was always sort of said well, no, I haven't, like why haven't I started? It's just really got me. So I thought, right, let's go and try, like start at will and see what it looks like. And I'm really grateful for that experience, because I joined them at a time where things were still quite up in the air and then by the time left we'd found product market fit. They were scaling really quickly. We'd like 10X over a year. It was quite a great experience to be part of, and as their first COO as well. It was like okay, what bits of Uber can I bring into this and structure in a way where we can really scale? Well, it taught me how scrappy you have to be in a startup.

Stephanie Leung: 25:19

And then, quite serendipitously, so then my dad got quite sick. I think there's a common roaming theme here, of course, but I remember spending a Christmas visiting hospitals. So my husband had gotten sick as well at that time. And I just remember crisscrossing the nation, coming in and out of hospitals and during COVID.

Stephanie Leung: 25:39

It was all quite stressful and I just I think I had a bit of a midlife crisis. I basically said this is going to be the rest of my life. Like I don't want to spend the rest of my life coming in and out of hospitals. It's horrendous, it's really scary and no one's there and my mom's freaking out like what do I do? So I kind of I just quit. I basically said I need to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, like it has to be something that is going to be, is going to change my life, like forget about everyone else, like how do I get myself out of jail, kind of thing. So I just started really trying to find my own feet again and I met with lots of people I interviewed at some really amazing companies and something in me just stopped me from saying yes. And then, finally, I was like an orphan. I got picked up by a VC who had invested in Tiney, where I had gone to work as a in the startup, and they said, well, while you're trying to figure it out, come and figure it out here. And so that's how I ended up inside a VC. And they're wonderful people, I think they've got big hearts and trying to do a lot of social impact, and they basically gave me the room to just figure out what to do with my life.

Stephanie Leung: 26:46

So for the next like eight months eight, nine months I was looking at different industries, trying to figure out what to do. I helped them out with various things. They were looking at some areas I knew I was useful in, like you know, marketplaces for food I'm very good at that. Logistics, very good at that. And then I kind of sort of said, right, I need to pick a lane.

Stephanie Leung: 27:05

And so I started sort of trying to figure out like, well, I kind of learned some skills over the years. So if I now apply those skills to my own problem, how would I try and solve for it systemically? And that's basically what became Kare Hero, which is, for every single employee who doesn't, who contemplates quitting their job, what are the other options out there? What kind of help do they need? If you're trying to juggle a job and you're literally then trying to care for someone on the side or your whistle, stop touring every hospital. What are the things that this person would need and how would you try and solve that on a scaled basis? So then I hounded everyone who would talk to me in this space and I figured out where things had gone right, where things had gone wrong, what does scale look like and where all the bumps and bruises of hard earned lessons from other founders. And that's sort of how I ended up coming with the business model we have today.

Stephanie Leung: 27:54

And then again, completely by luck, I ended up one day sitting at a health tech dinner next to Lord Prior, who's the chairman of NHS, former chairman of NHS England and I didn't know he was an investor, but I chewed his ear off for a good hour about all the things that were wrong with the NHS and how it leaves families like me like completely high and dry.

Stephanie Leung: 28:12

And he you know, to cut the long story short he was incredible because, like within a week, he basically said I'll like go and do this, I'll write you a check. And it floored me because I thought A, I didn't know you're an investor B. I didn't know my thoughts have now formed into something that's useful. So he was the first person to literally write me a check. And then he said, go and raise the rest. And so I, you know, I finally went to talk to my friends on the VC and obviously local global was that and they said, if you're going to do this, we'll write you a check. Just go do it. So it's quite nerve wrecking. But then we went through that raise a bunch of money.

Stephanie Leung: 28:41

And then I thought okay right, this is a lot of pressure, taking on somebody else's money. It forces a lot of focus because now you're carrying the responsibility of people's funding and their belief in you, but also they've given you an opportunity to really try and solve this on a systemic and scalable way. So I thought, right, there's 10.6 million people who are all family caregivers, like 7.7 million of us, are working. We're all trying to juggle this. This is a daily human experience that all of us have to go through. It is completely harrowing and 10% of that workforce, by the way, burnout every year from caregiver burnout. So I thought, right, apply every single business skill you possibly have collected over the years and I did know nothing, so I assume you know nothing. That's always the philosophy and just attack it. Attack it with all your might and see if you can do something with it. So that's kind of where we are right now, trying to figure it all out.

Stephanie Leung: 29:29

But we started operating last April. We also bought a brand to help us get started and, yeah, the rest is history. We're now a team of 15 plus people. We've done quite well. We've managed to take on quite a few corporate clients. We're now our employee benefit for one of our largest insurance companies in the country and we get people calling us in tears and by the time they finished and we've helped them through their process, they are in control. They feel empowered to be able to go back to work the next day and also handle everything that's coming through their family. And we recently helped a guy whose mother had a stroke. She was basically paralyzed on one side of her body and we helped her through back to being able to walk essentially and eat again. So that to me feels like if you can solve it just for one person, you've already done something useful in your life. So, yeah, so now I just that's all I do every day. As I get up here every day, you know, walk around feels like I'm trying to do something useful for society.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:24

It's incredible to see like that journey from leaving Uber to now where you are today. There's so much that's happened in that period, but you can see how all of the things you've done in the past connect to that. But if we look to the future now let's say 10 years time or what's the dream for care? What do you hope to achieve?

Stephanie Leung: 30:41

My dream is any family member who goes through a healthcare crisis for someone they love in their own home never has to feel alone. And there's a simple solution. One stop shop is it's on your phone and you can. We can break down what feels like a very complex journey into something incredibly simple and we are the de facto place you go to. So it doesn't matter if you're 3AM sitting in a hospital corridor in a bucket of tears. You call us. We've got you covered, we are your safety net and we think that where NHS, local authorities and the GP can't support because obviously they've all got opening hours, we are there with that continuous thread, as opposed to the visits that you make to all these medical kind of locations and things like that.

Stephanie Leung: 31:21

So that's my and my. You know my goal is to try and take this as far as it will go. There's, you know, as I mentioned, there's 10.6 million care family care gives in this country looking after an adult with chronic illness. There's 55 million in the US. You know, one in three people in Japan are now over 65. That's even bigger issue there. It's a massive global problem and that's what I want to solve, for we become the de facto place you go to to solve for it.

Amardeep Parmar: 31:41

So, with my own family, like I can see completely that sit into this situation with myself, with my dad and my grandma before that. So it's something that I wish we had at that time as well. So we're going to have to move on to quick fire questions now because of time, and it's amazing to hear your story so far and I feel like I could get you on again, and there's so much more we could cover. But for quick fire, who are three British Asians that you think are doing incredible work that you love to spotlight so that the audience can check out.

Stephanie Leung: 32:09

There's a lady called Mai Le. She just started a company called SAPI and she basically does loan programs as a service, almost, to small businesses. So small businesses are often run by immigrants or founded by immigrants. So I think it's really great. I think she's originally from her, Heritage is from Vietnam, but when I met her I just thought she's got an even more, you know, fearless attitude than I do to starting businesses. So I think she's going to go on to do great stuff.

Stephanie Leung: 32:38

The other person is Michelle You, who runs a company called Supercritical. They do a lot to do with carbon footprints and carbon offsetting, and she started the business because she became a mom and said I want to leave a better future for my kids and we're spending ourselves into oblivion with all this pollution what have you? So I think she's starting something that's really, really exciting. I also took advice from before I started this company. She's like this is what it's like to be a founder. You know, figure, you know. Here's all the bumps and bruises you need to be aware of. And then the third person you've already met, which is Tim Chong from Yonder. I'm a massive fan of his because he's just very, very creative and when the way he's found product market fit is very centered on the customer experience and I just love the stuff that comes out of his company. It's like really out there, slightly different, and it gets people's attention and I just think it's going to go on to be a really successful company.

Amardeep Parmar: 33:31

Awesome. So if people want to learn more about your story or learn more about Kare Hero, where should they go to?

Stephanie Leung: 33:36

So my email, what they can either email me or LinkedIn. Linkedin is a good place. Come and contact me on LinkedIn. I'm very responsive on LinkedIn, actually, so if anyone wants to, you know, grab a coffee, please do.

Stephanie Leung: 33:47

You know we are working a lot with employers now. What we want to do is make it a de facto. So it just one small fact. There are now more people in the workforce looking after someone over 65 than they are someone under 15. So child, child dependence is a given and is included in most benefits and most policies. Adult dependence is still a relatively new thing in this country. We want to work with employers who basically say well, you know, as part of the human spectrum of going through life, you're not just all new moms and dads, you're also going to be looking after. I'm a sandwich generation. I've got all the parents and the kid we want to look after someone who's going through those life stages. So, yeah, anyone who's interested to talk to us, please do like, get in touch and is there anything that the orders could help you for right now?

Amardeep Parmar: 34:26

So somebody listening right now? What can you reach out about?

Stephanie Leung: 34:29

Me personally or the company? So me personally but it wants to give me, like founder, advice.

Stephanie Leung: 34:34

Again, I know nothing, so we're still learning it every day. And then the second thing is whether you're working in the care industry or you're a care provider, or you think there's, or you care about your employees. Frankly, just get in touch. We are happy to work with you to get things off the ground. Sometimes it's really new for people. There's a carers leave act coming out on the 6th of April, so every employee now needs to know who their carers are in their organization and what support they need. We're basically here to support them. So, yeah, just get in touch if you're interested.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:01

So thank you so much for coming in today. It's been really amazing to have you on Have you got any final words?

Stephanie Leung: 35:06

Yeah, I would just like to say it's really encouraging to see more and more Asian founders now. I think when I was growing up, I was the only non-white person in my town and it feels really nice to even have something like this exist. We didn't have a voice growing up, so I already you know I'm quite old as an entrepreneur, like there's lots of entrepreneurs coming out here in their 20s and I just think it's really great and I'd encourage anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur just go do it. Like, don't wait, I waited too long, they should have done. You know, I should have done this earlier. And, yeah, anyone who just wants to do something, do it.

Amardeep Parmar:
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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