My COO Shinae Lee Demonstrates “Women are the Future”
By: Elaine Tung
Tags: Women In Tech, Insurtech, Founder Stories, Women In Business, Startup

In justInCase, indeed foreign hires are the minority, to which Shinae and I belong. I am grateful for having her being supportive all the time, telling me I can achieve more, achieve higher. It’s just a matter of time and effort. The most important thing is to believe in yourself.

She might raise demanding requests to test your limit. It’s because she has faith in your ability. That’s her way to show her appreciation and respect.

Connect her: linkedin.com/in/shinae-lee-02

Here’s her story…

“If anyone wants to be proactive rather than being reactive, they should apply to work for justInCase, because this company gives a voice to everyone. Also, they should work here because I am here.”

Onion Haseo, a Korean girl who knows about Japan more than Japanese

Shinae, born and raised in Korea, speaks fluent Japanese. Having learned Japanese during her high school years, I’m shocked how fast she learnt and perfected the language. Being intelligent she is, she had studied at The University of Tokyo for Economics, and has been constantly learning new languages. She is fluent in Korean, Japanese, and English while learning Mandarin-Chinese and Spanish. During our daily conversation, I was very impressive how she could understand and use a lot of slangs of different languages. When asked how she picked up languages so quickly, she said that it was because her hobby is watching her favorite movies e.g. Harry Potter and TV shows in different languages.

Her first time to join the panel discussion and share about her experience of moving from working in a big corporation to a startup company, justInCase

A true girl crush personality

Shinae is the pillar of everywhere she goes. She has strong determination to make things happen. I feel that it is one of her greatest traits. For example, she is the only person in justInCase that successfully initiated and executed a spontaneous company trip! This was started from looking at a Facebook video about uni and BAM! a plan to go to Hokkaido had blossomed into action. Not only does she show determination, but she also shows women power and proves that women are also capable of making significant achievements and being successful.

Stop, Drop, and ROLE

Shinae has joined justInCase since May 2019, only six months to now. She has to handle a lot of responsibilities, from recruitments, business development to operation and sales. She works closely with our CEO, Kazy. One could see her as CEO’s right-hand woman. Her job is rigorous. Her schedule is always packed with meetings with venture capitalists and strategic partners, networking events and interviews.

My role made me learn a lot on how to run a company and constantly interact with all the team members in the company, particularly engineers.

Everyone’s opinion matters

Shinae emphasizes that the unique aspect of justInCase is the fact that everyone is their own entity. Our flat hierarchy also creates an environment of wonderful chaos. Just the fact that I was writing this article in the midst of a burpee competition, which is already quite self-explanatory about our work culture. While it is assumed that CEO is the ultimate decision maker in most cases,due to the company being open for discussion, it usually leads to a decision that is made by the consensus.

The unique aspect of justInCase is the fact that everyone is their own entity.

To my future self

Shinae has expressed that it is her dream to either retire early or start her own company in the future. With her passion including traveling, she wants to retire to a place with a beachfront. Contrary to her retirement plans, she also thought about starting her own startup that becomes an innovator rather than following trends. With this, she had also stated that she wants justInCase to grow bigger and successfully disrupt the insurance industry.

*CLAP MY ARTICLE (UP TO 50 TIMES) TO ENCOURAGE ME TO KEEP WRITING*

Co-written by our intern, Issac Yoo