In partnership with the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), The Korea Society co-hosted the K-Startup NY Mentoring Day on June 15, 2023.
The event provided a unique opportunity for the Korean startup community to foster connections and share relevant experiences with like-minded individuals. The evening started with a panel discussion and Q&A sessions featuring established mentors, followed by a networking reception.
For those who missed our live event, a video of the full discussion and Q&A is now available.
The Korea Society is excited to present this Young Professionals’ Network in partnership with the Korea International Trade Association (KITA).
Young Professionals’ Network
K-Startup NY Mentoring Day
Thursday, June 15, 2023 | 6 PM (EDT)
The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Dr. David S. Ahn
Professor and Deputy Chair
Department of Computer Information Systems, CUNY Medgar Evers College
Dr. David Ahn is a tenured CIS professor at CUNY Medgar Evers College with over 25 years of teaching experience, a seasoned C-level Banking IT executive, mentor, and serial entrepreneur with strong business acumen and leadership skills. As the former VP of KITEE and Tech Advisor for various VCs, Dr. Ahn has played a crucial role in fostering various startup companies. He is currently a startup mentor for KOSME and CUNY and has served as the Head Judge of the Congressional App Challenge, hosted by esteemed officials including Office of Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke, NYC Council Member Rita Joseph, and New York State Assemblymember Brian Cunningham. With his extensive background and co-founding experience with startups, Dr. Ahn brings a wealth of knowledge and practical insights to guide and inspire aspiring entrepreneurs. He has frequently been invited to speak at professional associations and organizations, often winning best presenter awards. His current research interest is AI’s applications in fintech and data science. Dr. Ahn earned his Ph.D. at CUNY, M.S., and P.E., at Columbia University, and B.S., at SUNY at Stony Brook.
Grace Kim
Operations Director, MOMENTI
Grace Kim is the Director of Business Strategy at Momenti. She is acting as the bridge across Momenti’s business, product and technical teams and leading initiatives essential for the company’s overall success. Momenti is the next revolutionary immersive media platform that breaks the gap between the physical and digital world. They are the creators of the new interactive media format called .GIV that presents users a sense of reality through digital content.
Grace specializes in “organizing chaos”, managing and linking strategy and requirements between business and technical stakeholders. Prior to Momenti, Grace was a consultant at Amazon AWS where she was responsible for leading and setting the framework for whitespace discovery engagements for the highest spending global media and entertainment accounts. Prior to that, Grace was a project manager at Sony where she was responsible for consolidating Sony’s cross company data to the cloud and rebuilding Sony’s US MarTech infrastructure, incorporating innovative data analytics and data science capabilities to enable strategic data-driven marketing.
Ryan Kim
Founder & CEO, Kim’C Market
Ryan Kim is the founder and CEO at Kim’C Market (www.kimcmarket.com). The wholesome, natural Asian online grocer is known for its high quality Korean food that it directly imports from farmers and artisans in Korea. The startup is also famous for single-origin, freshly milled Korean rice that customers can customize their own rice by the rice crop, milling rate, and weight.
KKim’C Market has grown more than 50x since its inception in 2019 organically without ads or big marketing budget. Building its reputation as the premium food purveyor, the market sees its B2B business also growing to supply Michelin-starred restaurants, gourmet food stores, and amusement parks.
Prior to launching Kim’C Market in New York City, Ryan followed his passion to work in diverse industries including banking, government, politics, tech, and business consultancy.
Ryan received M.A. in Politics from NYU, and dual bachelor’s degrees in Statistics and Economics from UC Berkeley.
Jun Yoon
Co-Founder, Culinary Agents
Vice President, Korean Startups and Entrepreneurs (KSE)
Jun Yoon is currently a Vice President at Korean Startups and Entrepreneurs, empowering new entrepreneurship and learning amongst the Korean/Korean-American and a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of venture-backed Culinary Agents, the leading trusted professional networking community for the food, beverage & hospitality industry.
Prior to Culinary Agents, Yoon Co-Founded Image Space Media in 2008, an In-Image advertising company based in New York City. The VC-backed company was successfully acquired by Vibrant Media, the leaders in alternative contextual ad products, in 2012. With the acquisition, he became VP of Engineering for Vibrant Media and managed global (US and UK) engineering team.
Earlier on in his career, Yoon was a Lead Engineer at Inform Technologies, a venture-backed start-up where he led product development of semantic technology for premium content brands such as CNN and Washington Post.
Yoon has also been an active angel investor, investing in several start-ups including healthcare, fashion, machine learning and software & technology sectors. Yoon studied Computer Science (M.S.) at Stony Brook University in the area of Natural Language Process and earned his B.S. degree at ChungAng University, Seoul, Korea. Yoon won 40 under 40 awards from Stony Brook University.
