Victor Ko is majoring in Economics at the University of Chicago. From 2006 to 2008, he served as a member of the Coalition Force in Iraq where he was a squad leader of the Intelligence and Operation team. He is looking forward to beginning his career as an investment banking analyst at Societe Generale in New York in July 2010.

Victor moved to the United States in 2004 to pursue further education and saw that many Korean people demonstrated strong leadership within the American society. He also realized, however, that there were not many organizations that could provide a chance to establish and expand a social network among the leaders in the business sector. Victor has decided to participate in the TEDxHanRiver because he strongly believes that the TEDxHanRiver has the potential to create a strong bond among the Korean professionals in the United States.

Jinkoo Chang is a senior at University of Minnesota Twin Cities majoring in Economics. He is preparing to attend law school after his graduation in Spring 2011. He has served as a finance intern in Alcatel-Lucent Korea from May 2008 to August 2008.

Jinkoo has decided to join the TEDxHanRiver as the founding team member because he firmly believes that this organization will be the stepping stone for exploding his potential ability to be a successful business man in the near future. He is also looking forward to meeting multitude of new people at the conference to enlighten and broaden his perspective.

Vanessa came to Minnesota with her parents in 1995 and lived there since. She is currently majoring in Biology at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She is preparing for dental school admission and hoping to begin in Fall 2011. She was a part of the Korean Student Association at the U of M and served as the president for a year and a half. She plays violin and is a huge animal lover.

Vanessa joined the TEDxHanRiver because she thinks it will be an opportunity for her to meet other professional around the country who share the same values and goals for the future. This networking is a great idea to bring people to inspire and to be inspired. She believes that everyone has something valuable to contribute, and she looks forward to all that she can share and learn from this experience.

Jiho has been working and living in New York City upon receiving his Bachelor’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2008.

When Ju approached him to join the TEDxHanRiver’s founding team, Jiho was very excited as he had always been interested in learning and sharing ideas, and said ‘yes’ in a flash. Jiho hopes that a strong Korean and Global community will continue to be shaped through the TEDxHanRiver.

Hannah Chung is a senior mechanical engineering major at Northwestern, focusing in human-centered design, entrepreneurship, and innovation for social impact. Hannah sees design as a creative outlet to combine her analytical and artistic skills with the user research to see the bigger system and the overarching problem. As a co-founder of Design for America, a national educational initiative in which students work on design projects for local/social impact, she has worked on design projects such as a hand sanitation project that is currently patent pending; a coloring book to encourage creativity for the children in need; a children’s book illustration to address the water crisis in India; a used book buying website to help students save money and reduce paper waste on campus; and an interactive teddy bear that educates children with diabetes. Hannah has won multiple awards including the Most Creative Award in DiabetesMine, Semi-finalist in Dell Social Innovation Challenge, InNuvation Entrepreneurship Award, and SocialDesigner. Her works were published in Design & Emotion and ACM Creativity and Cognition. Hannah is currently an engineering intern at Radius PD in Chicago for this summer.

Hannah is very excited to join the TEDxHanRiver team. She hopes to get to connected to the change makers in the world with the Korean heritage and be inspired by their works!