Business & Entrepreneurship

Featured Speakers

Phillip Chang

Founder & CEO
Yogurtland

Thirty years ago, Phillip Chang immigrated to the U.S. He began working in IT and later started his own IT consulting business, igniting his entrepreneurial interest. In 2001, he opened his first retail business specializing in teas and boba. Later Chang expanded the concept to include frozen yogurt and added a topping bar allowing guests to customize their own dessert. He renamed the shop Yogurtland, and it has reshaped the frozen yogurt trend. Now celebrating 10 years in business, Yogurtland is the front-runner in the revitalized frozen yogurt segment, operating or franchising more than 300 locations across the United States and in Australia, Singapore, Dubai, Venezuela, Guam and Thailand.

Chang has long desired to build a company culture that focuses on providing growth and happiness opportunities for employees. His faith has guided him to take a servant leadership approach, bringing a new dimension to how the business is shaped and people are served - as employees, franchise partners, vendors and guests. Chang considers his business as a pathway to help others and has been involved in many charity projects.

Eugene Choi

Founder & President
United Exchange Corporation

Eugene Choi is the CEO & President of United Exchange Corporation, a leading consumer packaged goods manufacturer and distributer. As a business executive, he has grown the organization from a startup to a mid-sized company within ten years. He established functional teams in sales, marketing, operations, accounting, purchasing, IT, customer service, and warehousing, while expanding the company’s customer base to Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, Target, CVS, Walgreens, Safeway, Supervalue, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Cardinal Health, and Amerisource Bergen. He developed multiple consumer brands for the retail market and executed private label programs for food, drug and mass retailers.

Choi earned his BS from UC Irvine, MS Computer Engineering from USC, and completed his MBA at UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business.

Chuck Hong

Chairman & CEO
Netlist, Inc.

Chun K. (Chuck) Hong is chairman and chief executive officer of Netlist, Inc., a NASDAQ–listed (NLST) semiconductor company which he co-founded in 2000, and took public in 2006. Netlist is a leading provider of high performance semiconductor technology for servers and storage systems, with operations in Irvine, California and Suzhou, China. The company supplies its cutting-edge hardware and software solutions to world-class IT customers such as IBM, HP and Dell, and has amassed the industry’s largest portfolio of intellectual property in “Load-reduced Memory” and “Hybrid Memory,” technologies critical to the growing big data and cloud computing infrastructures.

Prior to founding Netlist, Mr. Hong served as president of Infinilink Corp., a communications software company and as executive vice president of Viking Components, Inc., a memory products manufacturer, both based in Orange County, California. He began his career with LG Electronics in Seoul, Korea and over a 15-year period, held various management positions at LG Electronics and LG Semicon, both in Korea and in the U.S.

Mr. Hong received his BS in economics from Virginia Commonwealth University, which he attended on a NCAA Div. 1 athletic scholarship. He received an MS in Technology Management from Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business, and studied at the George Washington University Graduate School of Business. Mr. Hong’s experiences outside of technology include directorship at BBCN Bank, advisory work for past Irvine mayors and the Irvine Chamber of Commerce and participation in the University of California Irvine’s CEO Roundtable.

Kenneth Kim

Chief Medical Officer
WWCT Global, LLC

Kenneth Kim evolved from a practicing physician to a serial entrepreneur. He has founded and transitioned several companies to private equity groups in the clinical trials arena. He is currently a strategic biotech investor and advisor.

Mr. Kim graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University. He completed his MD at Harvard, a health policy and management fellowship at the Sloan School at MIT, and his internal medicine and allergy/immunology fellowship at UCLA. He has served on the clinical faculty both at UCLA and UC Irvine Schools of Medicine for over 15 years and currently maintains an allergy practice in southern California. He has been serving on the board of the Council of Korean Americans since 2015 and is the Co-Chair of CKA's Leadership and Mentorship committee.

Michael Yang

Founder
MySimon

Michael Yang is the Founder & CEO of Michael Yang Capital Management, LLC, an asset management company focused on technology investments. He has over 30 years of experience in the technology industry in Silicon Valley. He currently serves as a director on the board of Hanmi Bank (NASDAQ: HAFC). Mr. Yang was a Co-Founder and CEO of three Silicon Valley technology start-ups that were sold to larger enterprises, including mySimon.com, which raised $30 million in venture capital and was subsequently acquired by CNET for $700 million.

Mr. Yang received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, an MS degree in Computer Science from Columbia University, and an MBA degree from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He has served on the advisory board of the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) at Stanford University as well as on the IT Advisory Council for President George W. Bush. Mr. Yang is a Co-Founder & Founding Chairman of the Council of Korean Americans (CKA), and also serves as a Director and as the Treasurer of La Cañada Flintridge Education Foundation.