Karen Yung

Change Agent, Connector, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Investor, Life mentor, Marketer, Parent, World traveler

In 1997, a move to Shanghai saw Karen Yung working first with the American Chamber of Commerce as the US Consulate Liaison and then as the Executive Director for the British Chamber of Commerce. However, a lack of good international schools was the opportunity to create an option for her three children. With her husband, Fraser White, Karen embarked upon a partnership with Dulwich College London – the beginning of the journey that has today grown into Education in Motion - an education group with schools throughout China, Indonesia, Korea, and Singapore serving over 11,000 students under the brands Dulwich College, Dehong International, Dulwich High School and Green School. A graduate of Santa Clara University in California with a BSc. in Economics, Karen went into investment banking and worked with Schroders and Standard Chartered Bank. For her, she was seeking an environment where she could feel that what she was doing mattered. Karen always struggled at school and didn’t enjoy the experience. She decided she didn’t want her children to slog through the system the same way. The start of this journey was to understand how children learn. She earned her Montessori Teaching Diploma and opened the Rainbow International Pre-school in Hanoi. The biggest take away was that it’s all about the relationship between the teacher and the student. In 2003, Dulwich College Shanghai Pudong was opened. Karen was involved in all aspects of the opening from working with contractors and architects to hiring teachers and eventually heading up the admissions, marketing and communications department. Karen personally counselled 450 students and their families in that first cohort to ensure the values of the families were aligned with the school’s. After opening Dulwich College Shanghai and then Suzhou, Ms Yung went on to establish a successful independent university counselling business, helping students in the US, Myanmar, Singapore and Costa Rica before joining the Dulwich College International Education Team in 2017, where she was the Director of Student Journey for the group. Over the last 5 years, she was integral to evolving the group strategy to a house of brands enabling diversification in the offering. She is currently Chief Collaboration Officer and a member of the Group Executive Board.

Dot joining. Data. Creating systems for sustainable impact. How else can we change behaviour and save the planet?

Students are a captive audience and their teacher is their leader. So why isn’t leadership training embedded in teacher training? Teachers need support and training to be coaches and facilitators - a skill set that is essential to bringing out the best in every student. We need our teachers!

Making the impossible possible