ShaoLan Hsueh

She is the founder and creator of Chineasy, an online language platform launched after her well-received TED Talk, which has received 3 million views worldwide. In just over two years, she has built Chineasy into one of the most popular methods of learning Chinese across the Internet with several hundred thousand fellow learners. Her first book Chineasy, The New Way to Read Chinese was launched in March 2014 and was translated into 15 languages. Her next book Chineasy Everyday is to be launched in spring 2016.

Chineasy was awarded Wallpaper* Magazine’s 2014 Design Award for “Life-Enhancer of the year” and “Best Designs of the Year 2014” by the Design Museum (Visitor Vote) in the UK. It also won D&AD 2015 awards in two categories. FastCompany has chosen Chineasy as the World’s Top 10 most Innovative Companies backed by Kickstarter in 2015 and Wired Japan chose Chineasy as one of the Top 25 Design Projects in the WXD 2015. Chineasy has become a showcase by many on how to use design and technology to solve large-scale problems. ShaoLan is listed by The Sunday Times Magazine as one of the twenty-one “Leading Ladies in Tech in 2015.”

ShaoLan is a tech entrepreneur with extensive business experience in both Asia and Europe. At the age of 22, while studying for her MBA, she wrote four best-selling books on software in Taiwan, which were awarded “book of the year” and her books were bundled by Microsoft. She co-founded pAsia, one of the major players on Internet in Asia in the 1990s. After a second masters degree at the University of Cambridge, she began Caravel Capital in 2005 to advise young technology companies.

Chineasy represents a return for ShaoLan to her artistic upbringing and in many ways, a design project. This project is the culmination of her life’s journey through the East and West. Her aim with Chineasy is to help people understand China, Chinese culture, its language and to bridge the gap between the East and West. Her next step is to help Chinese children enjoy and appreciate the beauty of their own language.