Geoffrey See

After spending 2 years working on North Korean issues outside of North Korea, See visited the country in 2007 and was surprised that young North Koreans were deeply interested in business and entrepreneurship. He was deeply impacted when a North Korean university student told him that she wanted to go into business to prove that females can be business leaders in a patriarchal society. He spent two years trying to find a way to educate this emerging generation inside the country. In 2009, he founded Choson Exchange.[15]

Geoffrey founded Choson Exchange and developed it into the largest business network in North Korea and the most active organization training Koreans in business, economics and entrepreneurship. By 2018, Choson Exchange has trained over 2000 North Koreans, brought over 100 volunteers to North Korea and over 100 Koreans to Singapore.[16][17] Hedge funds, governments, businesses and the media also regularly consult Choson Exchange for insights into North Korea.[18] Choson Exchange is cited over 50 times a year by international media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.[19][20][21]

In July 2018, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon visited Singapore and held a meeting with Geoffrey See and Choson Exchange to express appreciation for their work introducing economic policy, business and entrepreneurship knowledge to DPR Koreans.[22] After the meeting, Mayor Park told South Korean media that Seoul should initiate startup exchanges with North Korea, with the work of Choson Exchange as a reference for what is possible and should be done.[23] Later in July, Geoffrey represented Choson Exchange at the State Dinner between President Halimah Yacob and President Moon Jae-in during a State Visit to Singapore by the South Korean President.[24]

Geoffrey co-teaches a class on Global Capitalism at Harvard Business School to 2nd year MBA students.[25] See is a member of the Class of 21 of the Kauffman Fellows Program.[26] See was a Research Fellow at MIT, advises startups as a Catalyst (advisor) at the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research & Technology, was a board member of HB Oil, a listed Mongolian energy company and is the CEO and founder of a North Korea-based incubator program. He was a Board Member of Enovision, a company affiliated to the Pyongyang University of Science & Technology and tasked with commercializing innovation. See previously worked at strategy consultancy Bain & Co. in the United States and South Korea, and in the Singapore Armed Forces.[27]

He graduated summa cum laude in 2 years from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor in Science in Economics, and received a Masters from Yale University. See also spent a semester at Tsinghua University and researched with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.[28]