We are very excited to host a unique event this coming Wednesday which brings together women from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences.

We have asked them to share their experiences, insights and most“teachable moments” with the IPWS community so that we may appreciate how the women living and working here have shaped (and have been shaped by) the China we know today.

This event is extra special because IPWS has partnered with live storytelling platform, Unravel. The Unravel team has helped our panel of women to deliver their story in a unique, and impactful manner.

While Wednesday will be a live event with three of the women, we’re bringing you a special sneak peek, as we caught up with Sarah Köchling, Managing Principal of Shanghai Blossom Innovation and Co-founder & Co-chair of AmCham and WEN.

Sarah spoke to us about arriving in Shanghai as a student, her first jobs as a young women working in a large factory with predominately men, the challenges she faced as a young female entrepreneur on the tech scene trying to get funding, and how she has turned her experiences into teachings for women today. 

Click on the image below to watch the full video

My first formal job here was in fact in Guangzhou, as an Assistant Brand Manager for Head & Shoulders Shampoo and later I launched and became the Brand Manager for one of America’s most iconic laundry brands, Tide. Not exactly glamorous, but certainly interesting. I spent my days understanding cultural differences and trying to figure out how to solve for them. I remember the market research report saying that Chinese were not concerned by dandruff because everyone had it. Interesting… My job was to make it into a problem that H&S could solve.

Sarah Köchling is the Managing Principal of Blossom, a strategic insights, innovation and design consultancy that supports clients to get to breakthrough consumer, market and industry insights and collaboratively transform them into impact at all levels of their organizations.

With over 25 years of experience in China and Asia, including brand management roles at Procter & Gamble China and J&J International, leading innovation practices at agencies What If and Dragon Rouge and advising several China startups, Sarah is an experienced consultant who offers her clients an optimal balance of best-practice experience and entrepreneurial savvy. Over the years she and her team have applied their considerable skills across a broad range of consumer and business to business categories for both Fortune 100 firms and local companies.

A frequent speaker on innovation and market trends, Sarah is a very active community volunteer: she is co-founder and co-chair of the Women’s Executive Network (WEN) for Amcham Shanghai and was elected to the Amcham’s Board of Governors for the 2017-2019 term. Sarah is a board member of Safe Haven Shanghai (an anti domestic abuse project that will be launched later this year) and on the gala board of Chunhui Children’s Foundation, one of China’s oldest and largest NGOs. She serves as a board advisor and mentor for several local SMEs and Chinaccelerator startups, as well as several entrepreneurship programs.

Sarah has been a member of the steering committee for TEDxShanghai Women for the past several years, supporting sponsorship, curation and speaker coaching. After co-founding and leading the Wellesley Club of Shanghai, she now serves as a board advisor. Sarah is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wellesley College, with a BA in Political Science and Mandarin and completed additional coursework at MIT. She was a Rotary Fellow in Chinese and Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and holds advanced language certifications from Harbin Institute of Technology and Beijing Foreign Languages Normal College.

Don’t miss out on our event this Wednesday, more details and tickets here.

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