Joanna Hotung's career has revolved around children and education. In 1996, she set up the Kids' Gallery, an arts learning centre that has since expanded to become a franchise company with businesses operating in Guangzhou, Macau, Bangkok, Seoul and, soon, New Delhi.
'My business has grown up with my children. When I started Kids Gallery, my daughters were four and two, and now they are 19 and 16. They are my focus group,' says Hotung.
She is now the managing director of the KG Group, the parent of Kids' Gallery, which has grown to include the Star English language centres and Face Productions, a production company that puts on shows for and by kids.
Hotung decided to go into an education-related business when her daughters were in kindergarten. She says she felt the need to teach children the ability to think for themselves rather than telling them what to think.
She now has a total of 70 staff at Kids Gallery. With an MBA degree and a background in management consultancy - she was a management trainee at Marks & Spencer and a management consultant at Coopers & Lybrand (which merged with another firm to form PricewaterhouseCoopers) - Hotung has made Kids Gallery a very structured and systematic place to work in. 'We are quite informal with our policies and we do a lot of training and peer reviews,' she says.
'Because I was in consultancy, I was able to work on projects with senior people from other companies and I got to see how other companies worked. It was a huge learning experience,' she explains. 'And then I had my first MBA. In fact, my final dissertation for my MBA was my business plan for Kids Gallery.'
Hotung was trained to look at companies and identify their strengths and weaknesses, something she does with her own business. 'I am always reviewing, thinking if I can be more efficient, more organised and provide better services,' she says.