Aconic host Soon Yu sits down with Jane Marie Chen, entrepreneur, bestselling author of Like a Wave We Break, leadership coach, and co-founder of Embrace Innovations. Embrace created a life-saving infant warming blanket that has helped save over one million babies worldwide.

Despite extraordinary success, Jane shares the truth few leaders talk about: even after saving a million babies, she still felt like a failure.

In this powerful conversation, Jane opens up about resilience, leadership, mental health, and the hidden emotional toll of high achievement. She explores how cultural expectations, generational trauma, and self-criticism shaped her leadership—and why outward success alone cannot heal what’s broken inside.

Soon and Jane dive into:

-The difference between grit, endurance, and true resilience

-Why psychological safety in teams starts with inner psychological safety

-The pressure many Asian and AAPI leaders face around achievement and identity

-How Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy helped Jane heal

-Why self-respect must come before filial respect

-Letting go of beta blockers and fear around public speaking

This episode offers a deeply human perspective on resilience, authentic leadership, psychological safety, and self-acceptance. If you’re a founder, leader, creator, or anyone navigating personal growth, this conversation will change how you think about success.

In her most recent role as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the organization behind the Oscars), Janet Yang helped move AAPI stories from the margins to the mainstream, reshaping how Hollywood sees and celebrates Asian voices.

A quiet insider turned cultural trailblazer, Janet reflects on her journey from being the only Asian kid in her Long Island neighborhood to producing The Joy Luck Club and Empire of the Sun, and on helping make the Oscars more inclusive than ever.

She shares how moments of exclusion fueled her lifelong mission to bridge East and West, the lessons she learned from mentors like Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone, and how a painful incident at the 2016 Oscars ignited a movement for representation that led to Gold House and beyond.

This episode offers a powerful look at how one woman’s persistence turned isolation into influence and changed Hollywood forever.