Phoebe Yang

I'm going to go the business route because I want to build things and I want to bring people together and I want to align interests and then see output that isn't a zero sum game.

And so that really, if my father had continued to live, I'm not sure I would have come to that point.

But it really kind of changed the trajectory and how I thought about the rest of my life

Yeah, well, you know, first I went to a law firm, and then I went, and while I was at the law firm, which was a great firm, I really actually enjoyed practicing law, but I really detested billing hours, which is the way the legal profession is built.

That's going to change, by the way.

AI is going to change the economics of law firms, and it's sooner than people realize.

I had worked for a law firm in Asia once,

and during the summer of one of my law school years and very exciting things were happening in China where I had spent a little bit of time.

China was looking to accede to the WTO and I was asked to go into the government to work on a presidential initiative to help bring China into what we would consider global standards around rule of law.

to prepare them for WTO accession.

That initiative was really successful on a number of fronts, but most importantly, beyond the initiative, China was successful in acceding to the WTO and a lot of multinationals were looking to go to China

at the time to start, you know, to launch businesses there.

But notably they were not interested in hiring local Chinese because they were nervous about acquiring talent that may or may not have the cultural alignment or the practices and the disciplines

of Western business.

And so even though I came from Arkansas, I was being very heavily recruited to go to China because I spoke some Chinese and I have a face that looks Chinese.

Anyway, I end up going and with the blessing of my law firm intending to go back to my law firm, my law firm said, this is an incredible opportunity.

You know, coming out of government, you should go take this.

So I ended up going and helping AOL Time Warner to start a China office.

At the time, they had a lot of divisional representatives representing, you know, Turner Broadcasting, Warner Music, a number of businesses, AOL, after the merger of AOL Time Warner.

but they didn't have any corporate presence and they were running up against each other and contradicting each other in front of the Chinese government.