With your time in Standard Chartered & Korea University, you have plenty of experience in both the industry & academic fields. Please briefly tell us about your experiences in both industries.

I was fortunate to work at Standard Chartered as a securities professional, during which I was sent to various training programs at J.Henry Schoder Bank and Trust Co. (based in New York), Nomura Securities Tokyo Headquarters, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies English Program, Korea Banking Institute Securities Professional Certificate, and Korea Banking Institute Risk management Professional Certificate. I spent approximately 2.5 years just on training programs, after which I worked on a Equity & Bond related desk in the securities division.

After these experiences, I worked at the Osaka office for 4 years and the Tokyo office for 4 years, spending a total of 8 years in the Japan region. I specialized in financing operations during which I was a dealer of spot and future products of Japanese Government bonds. As I primarily handled government bonds, I felt the necessity to further study the macroeconomics and completed the Economics master program at Hosei Unversity in Tokyo.

Then I came back to Korea to work in areas such as product structuring, business management, risk management and asset & liability management. Risk management was my professional area of knowledge, which led me to be promoted as Risk Director.

After that, I was appointed as ALCO’s(Asset-Liability Committee) Secretary, where I managed the bank’s ALM(Asset-Liability management), interest rate & liquidity risk, and market risk. I spent a total of 32 years at Standard Chartered.

During my time in Korea, I earned a Business(Finance) PhD at Kyunghee University’s Business School, which helped my transition to a new career in teaching. This has allowed me to learn how important it is to prepare for the future, as obtaining the PhD has helped me greatly.

You have spent another 13 years in academia, how was it like?

After I finished my career at the banking industry, I taught at both Yonsei Business school and Hanyang Business school as adjunct professor in Risk Management. At that time there was an opening for professor at Korea University, and I was selected as Full-time professor at Korea University Division of Industrial Management Engineering.

I mainly worked in the Engineering department, Management of Technology department, and Finance MBA department at Korea University, during which I taught financial management, technology valuation, financial institution business management, and financial risk management. After I retired from Korea University, I did guest lectures at Sookmyung Women’s University, Kyunghee University, Chung-Ang University, University of Seoul, Catholic University of Korea, and Deokseong Women’s University.

I have also wrote textbooks namely “Financial Risk 5th Edition” as main author and “Longevity Risk Management” as participating author.

How did you come to join BASIC?

I was initially an advisor to BASIC, and as I studied Blockchain & Crypto Assets, I became interested with the industry. I wanted to utilize my experience in traditional banks as well as risk management research to apply them to the new field of Blockchain & Crypto Assets. Hence, I joined the team as Chief-Risk-Officer.