Hana Yang: "Lean in to what makes you different"

Hana Yang is the co-founder and chief client experience officer (CXO) of Allocate a digital private markets enablement engine that provides investors with a more efficient way to build and manage their private investments portfolio. Previously, Hana worked at First Republic helping to foster the growing venture and startup practice within the bank. Prior to that, she had stints working at a Hispanic-focused accelerator, a venture-backed startup, the United Nations, management consulting, and several media internships. Hana was born in South Korea, moved to Argentina at the age of 1 and grew up in Puerto Iguazu until her mid teens, when she moved to the US. She graduated with a BA from Berkeley and an MS in Fundraising Management from Columbia University.

Hana was born in South Korea to Korean parents, who during the Korean dictatorship, decided to leave the country in search of a better life. Hana’s parents had relatives in both the US and Argentina, but since it was difficult to get to the US, Hana’s dad left Korea first on his own to try his luck in Argentina. In order to pay for the trip to Argentina, Hana’s mom had to sell her wedding ring. Although college-educated, when Hana’s dad arrived in Argentina he wasn’t able to secure a professional job, but rather got a security guard position for a small retail store that paid him 1 meal a day. In order to make ends meet, Hana’s dad knew he not only needed a different solution, but also the support of his family. So Hana’s mom packed the rest of their life in South Korea and made the move to Argentina to join her husband.?

Hana’s parents first settled in Buenos Aires, and they started re-selling clothing. In the early days, their business barely provided them with enough to live. On a trip to visit Iguazu, several locals wanted to buy the clothes off of Hana’s mom’s back, demonstrating to her parents that there was less competition in the interior of Argentina. So on a weekly basis, they would work their normal Monday to Friday hours in Buenos Aires, then on the weekends starting Friday evening, they would pack up their car with the merchandise, drive to Iguazu to sell the clothing to the locals. Eventually, they decided to move and settle in Iguazu after a few months of this tedious schedule.?

Hana’s parents thrived as small business owners in Iguazu - they ended up opening?a store, they set up a small hotel and started other small businesses. They were living the immigrant dream in Argentina. And while the town was fairly provincial, because it was a tourist destination, the locals were familiar with seeing people who didn’t fit the “Argentinean mold.”?

Hana’s upbringing wasn’t too dissimilar to other immigrant families who settle in towns where often times they’re the only minority. Growing up, people would call her “china,” which Hana found amusing since she was of Korean descent, spoke Spanish before any other language and felt Argentinean through and through. Hana learned to focus on things and people that mattered and persevered through her immigrant hardships while creating a community of friends who embraced her and her family for who they were. When Hana was in High School, she learned about a study abroad program in the US. Her parents couldn’t afford to send her as part of the program, but by tapping their familial network in the US, they were able to piece together something similar where Hana would be able to study in Kansas.?

She was very focused on learning English - her goal was to “speak like an American” without a foreign accent. Looking back, she realizes that it was probably annoying how she relentlessly asked her friends to correct her accent and English every minute of the day. She was amazed by the resources that were available to her in Kansas. So when it came time for her to return to Argentina, she decided to stay. She moved to Southern California to live with relatives. It wasn’t until her move to? southern California that the real cultural shock happened – there were people who looked like her and people who spoke like her, but none of them felt like her people. In the beginning, she tried to make friends with the Latinos, then the Asians and Asian-Americans, but she would just not fit in! Also, while she had excelled in school in Argentina, in Southern California, the stereotype and reality of the overachieving Asian students made it very difficult to compete.

Hana did not do well in her SATs but had good grades and was a well-rounded student who took on many extra-curricular activities. But, she was concerned that it would still be difficult to get into a top-tier University. That is, until one of her good friends told her that she needed to lean into what made her different – her multi-cultural background. She got accepted into Cal Berkeley, and majored in Spanish & Portuguese Literature with dreams to pursue journalism and broadcasting in Spanish. While trying to figure out her media path, during the Summers she would intern in financial services institutions. Her real passion and dream was to break down the barriers and teach the broader public how complex and intricate the LatinX tapestry can be. After graduation, she pursued a few media projects, but she was unable to get any real traction - so she went into management consulting.?

During her consulting years, the projects were focused on cost-reduction given the global financial crisis of 2008/2009. As a mission-oriented person and with the desire to change the world, Hana went to Columbia to get a Masters in Fundraising Management for nonprofits. She had an opportunity to work at the United Nations and during the Haiti earthquake learned that the nonprofit sector needed to adopt more innovation. Looking to be back at the mecca of innovation, she moved back to Silicon Valley, where she ended up joining Adobe for a brief stint, then an early-stage venture-backed crowdfunding startup, and then an accelerator that was helping underrepresented founders get their startups off the ground. That's when she realized that what these founders also needed was capital. So, she decided to launch an educational bootcamp workshop to train new angel investors as well as an angel network to support these underrepresented entrepreneurs.?

In order to continue to move capital into the underrepresented ecosystem, Hana decided to join the prestigious Kauffman Fellows venture program. At Kauffman, Hana met her Allocate co-founder who at the time ended up hiring her to join First Republic Bank. Her focus was on working with founders, startup companies and venture firms with the goal of getting them to bank with First Republic. Working directly with her clients gave her first-hand experience on how much room for improvement there was in the world of venture capital.

Now 3.5+ years after launching Allocate, the mission is front and center for the world–to bring better transparency and responsible participation to the private markets.

Hana’s parents and Hana herself are 2x immigrants–seeing how her parents’s immigrant journey in Argentina, then restarting again in the US as entrepreneurs has been deeply inspirational and has showed Hana that anything is possible. And while she now embraces her tri-cultural heritage - Argentina is in her heart and core to who she is today.