Featured prominently in Tuổi Trẻ newspaper 10 years ago, Văn Đinh Hồng Vũ once shared her dream of becoming a Vietnamese ambassador. This ambition was entirely within reach for the talented Foreign Trade student proficient in 3 foreign languages. Barely into her 20s, Vũ confidently represented Vietnamese youth across 10 countries, attending summits on global education and career guidance.
Văn Đinh Hồng Vũ
Those trips gradually replaced Vũ’s dream of becoming an ambassador with a desire to improve education. After graduation, her life became a 10-year career-building journey from Denmark to the USA, through 2 master’s scholarships in Business Administration and Education at Stanford University. Now based in Silicon Valley, Vũ is a social entrepreneur in education. In early 2011, she founded Vietseeds to provide university scholarships for disadvantaged Vietnamese students. Most recently, in 2014, she co-founded the speech recognition app ELSA, helping language learners worldwide pronounce words as close as possible to native speech.
Few also know that, to pursue her passion, Văn Đinh Hồng Vũ gave up enviable roles at leading global corporations 2 times. During 3 years of professional development in Denmark, she became the first Asian assistant to the CEO of Maersk, a transport and energy group with branches in 136 countries and 89,000 employees. She later left her senior project leader role at Booz & Company, 1 of America’s 4 leading consulting groups. Without regret, Vũ said: “I have accumulated enough management knowledge and talented people over the past 10 years. It is time for me to begin doing what I want in technology and education.”
Teaching Speaking with Elsa Technology
ELSA (English Language Speech Assistant) is tied to Vũ's memory of first attending a student conference in Germany in 2002. Before arriving, Vũ had no doubts about her English ability. Strangely, no one in India understood what she said. “That very night, an American friend told me he would withdraw from the presentation the following morning. I was the only person representing Vietnam; it would have been terribly embarrassing if no one could understand me…”, Vũ recalled.
But her friend would not let Vũ give up. He sat with her all night, repeatedly reading every sentence of her presentation so she could imitate his emphasis and pronunciation. Vũ regained confidence, but from then on she kept thinking about the gap in pronunciation teaching.
“You do not realize how important pronunciation is until you live and work abroad,” Vũ explained. During nearly 10 years away from home, she saw many talented international students fail to rise to leadership positions in corporations simply because their pronunciation did not sound native. That seemingly minor issue became a major barrier to communication and career advancement, especially in fields requiring strong communication skills, such as consulting or law.
So from 2013, Vũ invited speech therapists to develop content for ELSA. Their lessons cost 200 USD per hour and reach very limited numbers of students, while the completed ELSA app will be affordably priced and accessible to many people in every country.
‘On the technology side, ELSA is programmed to emulate the teaching methods of America's leading speaking coaches,’ Vũ added. ELSA has a team of engineers and experts in the United States designing state-of-the-art speech-recognition technology. As a result, ELSA not only identifies a speaker's pronunciation errors accurately but also helps improve each sound through practice. Within just a few days of launching the product trial campaign, all 1,000 available trial places had been filled, with thousands more people waiting.
Invest deeply to change your life
Before venturing into entrepreneurship with ELSA, Văn Đinh Hồng Vũ was a very active social campaigner. Although her Vietseeds Fund began operating in 2011, the idea appeared in 2008 in an essay for her MBA course at Stanford University. From earlier conference trips, she realized that money can help people briefly, but education can change a life. The essay therefore became a detailed plan combining money and education in philanthropy.
Essentially, Vietseeds raises money to help disadvantaged Vietnamese students attend university. Going beyond fundraising, Vũ has developed this model into an incubator for future leaders. “In addition to 1,000 USD/year for tuition and living expenses throughout 4 years of university, benefactors and volunteers organize additional training in soft skills such as document writing, teamwork, foreign languages, and career planning, helping students overcome feelings of inferiority and confidently take the lead when working in the city,” she said.
To date, Vietseeds has raised a substantial amount from 100 domestic and international sponsors. However, the scholarship amount remains unchanged from the beginning at USD 1,000/year. Thus, in 2014, only 100 students received support. Speaking candidly and firmly, Vũ explained: “Yes, I could divide USD 1,000 among 5 students instead of 1. But although smaller amounts help more students, they do so only briefly. I commit to investing deeply to transform each student’s life completely.”
After 5 years of operation, the first 10 students to graduate from university with Vietseeds’ support had secured their dream jobs, and one had completed a master’s degree in the USA. All donations go to students; operating expenses and skills training classes are largely funded by the 2 founders, Văn Đinh Hồng Vũ and Vũ Duy Thức, who holds a PhD in Information Technology from Stanford University.
From ‘Ambassador’ to ‘Social Activist –entrepreneurship” initially seem like 2 entirely different paths. For Vũ, however, both 2 belong to one continuous journey. “Both then and now, I have wanted to do something for my homeland. To contribute more than the voice of my youth, I moved into the economic and social dimensions of education. This way, I can contribute more practical value to education,” she said.
Collected
>> Great Articles on Entrepreneurship
>> Business Consulting Program
Chương trình liên quan tại YUP Education: X-Startup – khóa học khởi nghiệp «Khởi Chánh Nghiệp» · The Journey – lộ trình phát triển doanh nhân
