Careers
Helen Thomas has worked all over the world and is now vice-president of Livescribe,
www.livescribe. com, a business that has created a breakthrough mobile computing platform. She lives in America with her husband and two children.
built the fi rst LeapFrog learning centre in Korea with Daekyo, one of the biggest tutoring companies in the world. At LeapFrog, an inventor there went on to found Livescribe, so he called me and asked me to spearhead the global growth of the company. I couldn’t say no – to create a new product and platform was too exciting a challenge for me. At Livescribe I built all the international business from nothing and my role is now focused on the front-end business development, sales, marketing and operations. My team is spread across the globe, I have customers and partners in over 40 countries and we are setting up our European subsidiary this year. Another aspect of my job in the past two years was to support
I
fundraising. For the fi rst half of 2010, our international business exceeded our plans by 14%, which really helped the process. Through a very challenging economic period in a touchy fi nancial market, we managed to raise the funding. We have doubled our total sales year over year and will aim to at least double sales again next year. We will sell about 1 billion smartpens worldwide by 2020. Managing the global growth at an American start-up and being a mum of two kids under the age of eight, I’ve learned to be effi cient and effective. My quality of life at Livescribe has been great because of the four c’s: connectivity, communication, collaboration and creativity across departments, territories and personal relationships. We have a great team and I enjoy working with our partners all over the world. They are passionate about what we are doing, which makes it worthwhile and successful.
One of the best things about working at Livescribe is the product. It is an effective communication tool for my work and helps me to . It is an e fe e c n t l f r my w k a d h s me t
take notes and learn languages. I can go back to an important note that I took two years ago in China and play it back to the partner in seconds. It’s also great to work on things that your family enjoy, I often use the Smartpen with my children and we have a great time doing pencasts. I love the fact that in my job I can meet so many interesting and great people all over the world – at the beginning of the year I visited 10 countries in 20 days. Visiting these countries was one of the most important factors for our success in the fi rst half of the year. It is so important that you visit the marketplace. In order for people to take the business seriously, you have to be at the store, meet the consumers and spend time with your business partners. I never expected my career to turn out like this, I didn’t set expectations for myself but other people did. At my 30th birthday party, one of my colleagues gave a toast and said I would be a vice-president before I was 40. He was right. There are certainly sacrifi ces I make because of my travel and long working hours, but I have a very supportive and loving husband who is a wonderful father, and we have a big family spread between the US and China who support us unconditionally. I make sure I connect with my children wherever I am. Besides that, I try my best to maintain a good consistent routine; children need a good sense of stability and security when they’re growing up. In the future, I’ll continue to work and build new businesses. I would also like to write more. I had this idea of writing a book about what I have learned to be successful as someone from China who works outside of the country, but I’ll see how it goes.
went to university in China, then to business school in San Francisco, before starting my career in America at S&W Fine Foods as a sales and marketing apprentice. I then worked at LeapFrog, which makes educational toys for children. My career speciality is to create something; I build new businesses and markets from scratch. I founded LeapFrog China as the general manager and
TODAY’S BUSINESS WOMAN 47
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