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Written by Nina Huang
Northwest Asia Weekly Magazine
Jane Park, founder and CEO of Seattle-based startup Tokki, could have lived a very different life if, out of a random act of kindness, she had been allowed to take the SAT test in high school. maybe.
Park went to take the SAT exam, but she didn’t have money because she didn’t know she had to pay.
“This life was almost impossible for me. The parents behind me were surprised and paid for my SAT and said, ‘Hey, this is our address, send us a check.’ “I said,” Park said.
In the end, Park’s parents mailed a check to a kind stranger. She wishes she had saved the address because she wanted to let them know that her random act of kindness ended up being so important.
jane park
impressive career journey
Park didn’t know what she wanted to be.
She left Toronto to attend Princeton University and graduated from the School of Public Policy and International Affairs and Yale Law School.
“After graduation, I was planning to work for a women’s cooperative in India. My parents would be shocked if I went to India, so I applied to law school as a ploy to tell them I was coming back and attending law school. They cried, and I had never seen them cry like that before. They talked about how important it was for me to finish my education, and before I knew it, they were enrolled. , I said I could do whatever I wanted after that. The ruse suddenly became a plan,” Park said.
From working as a lawyer doing public sector work, to working at Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks, to starting two of his own businesses focused on social missions, Park has had quite a career journey. I’ve been doing this.
Mr. Park moved to Seattle in 2002 after being hired for a position at Starbucks.
Her first startup, Julep, wanted to create a better workplace for women with a non-toxic environment that creates a clean, green social space experience for people to hang out and also provides medical benefits. I realized this and was born.
The idea came about when she wanted to take her best friend from law school to a spa for their upcoming wedding celebration. But when they got to one, it was crowded, they couldn’t even sit together, and they were also told to be quiet and to use Spa Voice.
Similarly, when Park was at Starbucks, he often brought in female colleagues visiting from other cities to create a bonding business experience.
The idea of wearing a robe and going to a spa with my colleagues was uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, men had venues like golf courses and sporting events, and Park wanted women to have similar social experiences to discuss work and celebrate special occasions.
“That’s when I realized, where can women go to hang out socially?” Park said.
They expanded into an online beauty company with a subscription model. While growing Julep, Park raised more than $50 million for the cosmetics company from notable investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Madrona Venture Group, and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. Park then sold it in 2016 as part of a $120 million deal.
Latest venture “Tokki”
Park’s current company, Tokki, shares a social mission.
In 2019, when the Seattle metropolitan area was battling the aftermath of wildfires, it was dangerous to go outside. That Christmas, Park and her family collected nine bags of trash. She had to dispose of the trash slowly over several weeks.
She was inspired to research what kinds of wrapping paper could be recycled instead of being thrown away in the garbage. She had often heard about how harmful recycling incorrectly can be due to contamination.
Most of the recycled paper in her house could not be recycled. Basically, items that are shiny, fuzzy, too thin, or dark in color cannot be recycled. She said her best recycled paper is cardboard, and the further you get from it, the less recyclable it becomes.
“It reminded me of my grandmother who would wrap precious gifts in square silk bojagi, many of which are made from scraps of clothing so they can be reused over and over again,” Park explained.
That was the inspiration for the Tokki bag. Tokki means rabbit in Korean and symbolizes the gift bag’s ability to jump from person to person. The gift bags are made from recyclable water bottles. Park said it was sold in Target stores last holiday season and is looking for partners to continue expanding distribution and enhancing the gift experience.
One of our top products last year was gift card holders. Every product has its own QR code, which makes it more special.
Overcoming challenges as an Asian woman
Park said the biggest challenge he faced in his career was raising money for his startup. But she was able to raise a record amount of money for a woman of color.
“The idea is that you can go out and raise money and grow it, but in reality it’s very difficult for women to find out how they can secure capital to support women-run businesses. I think it’s going to be a multi-decade challenge. Sometimes we go backwards instead of moving forward. When the economy catches a cold, financing women-owned businesses causes pneumonia. It’s more than usual. It’s serious. No matter how much progress you make, you end up losing out. In difficult times and tight times, people fall back into familiar territory,” Park said.
According to the Harvard Kennedy School research report “Advancing Gender Equality in Venture Capital”, data and research proves that “there is a significant gender disparity in venture capital funding.” Despite women being underrepresented as entrepreneurs to begin with, women receive a disproportionately lower share of VC funding: 2.3% for all-female founding teams and 10% for mixed-gender founding teams. %.4. These numbers have stagnated over the past 30 years, as the 30-year average for the proportion of all-female founders in VC funding is 2.4%.
Typically, female founders receive about a quarter of the funding they seek, while male founders receive half on average. Additionally, women are underrepresented as participants in VC deals, with only 5.9% of US deals involving all-female founding teams or solo female founders, and only 5.9% of deals involving mixed-gender founding teams. Only 15.2% of transactions involved Despite all these disadvantages, women-founded ventures perform as well as men-founded ventures, controlling for relevant variables such as sector, market, experience, and working hours. I am. ”
Giving back to the community
Ms. Park is most proud of the mentoring of the young women she has had the privilege of working with.
One of Park’s biggest beliefs is the exact opposite of what she learned from her family. Great emphasis was placed on performance and perfection.
“If I came home with 99 percent, my mom would say, ‘What happened to that 1 percent?'” she said.
“I love giving people who work for me goals to fail. I think this is a really important way, especially for Asian women, to break the idea that they have to be perfect. ,” Park said.
One year, Ms. Park gave her interns an assignment that required them to come back if they failed or failed three times by the end of the summer.
“That’s what I needed to do to get them to be more bold. One of them asked the Smithsonian to carry our products, and the other was a huge social influencer. We asked them to partner with us, and they weren’t worried about being perfect or checking off the boxes, so they had the courage to do that,” she said.
Park said it can be difficult to tell people that perfectionism isn’t harmful, but that you can give them something else to replace it. It gives them a mental framework for how they can be bold and make mistakes.
“I was privileged to see Jane and her impact on the community through the eyes of other local entrepreneurs. She is dedicated to local women and minority entrepreneurs. As a mentor, she has generously provided advice and encouraged them as they tackle the hard work of building and growing their businesses. At several of her regular meetings, business owners have benefited from Jane’s wisdom, generosity, and support. , expressed their gratitude for her approachability. She is there for everyone seeking counseling, making weekly appointments and phone calls a priority to help them overcome obstacles. With few resources readily available to transfer knowledge to local women entrepreneurs, Jane shines as an impactful community entrepreneur deeply committed to lifting up other women business owners.” Tokki President Angie Snyder wrote in an email.
Park also knows the importance of education. She is the director of Washington State Opportunity Scholarships (WSOS). WSOS helps Washington state’s low- and moderate-income students earn degrees, certificates, or apprenticeships in in-demand trades, health care, and STEM fields and start careers in Washington state.
Park’s mother attended Seoul’s prestigious Ewha Womans University.
“She had to take two years off to save up for one semester of college. WSOS It means a lot to me and is one of my biggest commitments,” Park said.
Thank you to the Pacific Northwest
Now that both of her children are in college, Park has become more into hiking.
“We live in a great place in the world for that reason. It’s interesting that we found our way back there, and it’s such a big part of Korean culture that we explored in new ways here in the Pacific Northwest.” I love the fact that there are,” Park said.
After Park started Julep, she asked her parents to move from Toronto to Seattle. They are also into hiking, seaweed foraging, and crab hunting.
“My mom goes out in her waders foraging for oysters, shellfish, and seaweed. I didn’t know they knew how to do all that,” Park laughed.
Contact Nina at info@nwasianweekly.com.
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