Vince Jeong isn’t your typical edtech founder—and this isn’t your typical training conversation.After immigrating to Canada at 12 and learning English from scratch, Vince chased uncertainty across five continents and a dozen careers—from McKinsey to NGOs in Tanzania to Latin American startups. That winding path led him to one insight: real learning happens when real people engage together, not alone.Now as CEO of Sparkwise, he’s scaling live group learning in ways that mirror the best of Harvard and McKinsey—without the tuition price tag or talent filters. In this episode, we unpack how Vince is reimagining adult learning for corporations, creators, and communities alike. If you’re bored to tears by lifeless courses and stale corporate training, tune in for a vision that makes learning social again.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Immigrant Experience 101: Rebuilding Myself at Age 12“Moving from Korea to Canada without speaking English forced me to rediscover who I was.”Curiosity Beats Certainty: The Career Built by Exploration“I chased the unknown—Tanzania, Colombia, consulting—because experience is the only way to find what matters.”Why Group Learning Beats Solo Slides“Learning isn’t about dumping information. It’s about building shared understanding in real time.”From Stage to Startup: Live Group Dynamics Are in My DNA“I hosted live shows on Korean TV, emceed weddings, and ran workshops—I’ve always brought people together.”Scaling Harvard-Style Learning Without the Harvard Price“We’re making elite-level training experiences accessible to more people—without compromising quality.”Human Hashtag: Rebuilding Community That’s More Than Skin Deep“Social media gave us networks, not connection. We’re creating the space for meaningful group interaction again.”Partners in Impact: Who Sparkwise Was Built For“Our tools are for those who want richer learning—or want to scale what they offer without losing touch.”The Content Wake-Up Call: AI Can’t Replace Real Dialogue“Content’s getting commoditized. The future lies in how we apply, discuss, and activate it together.”__________________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Vince Jeong --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: How did Vince Jeong's immigrant experience shape his career?
Got it. Thank you. Yeah, so Today I'm an entrepreneur, but maybe I'll start from my origin. I was born in South Korea and I grew up there until I was 12. Then I immigrated to Canada and then I came to the US for college and then navigated to different parts of the world and came to where I am today. I would say there are a few things that have really marked my life.
The first thing is definitely the immigrant experience has been a really big component. Moving from South Korea to Canada when I didn't really speak much English at age 12, I think really forced me to really discover myself again at age 12 and really invest in learning and education as a way to adapt to a new environment.
The second thing that has really marked my experience is just post-education, going through a lot of different professional experience across consulting, international development in different countries, and just really learning what is it that I really care about, about the world, which for me, sort of the thread was people development, capability building, and talent development.
And so present day, I'm working on a startup that is an education technology company that helps people, so professionals learn together in group.
SparkWise, that's your baby. But before we dive into SparkWise and all the exciting new initiatives, let's talk about your journey. You mentioned moving from Asia to Canada and United States. which is somewhat similar to my own experience. I moved from Hong Kong to Canada and studied in the United States.
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Chapter 2: Why did Vince Jeong pursue diverse career paths?
While you studied engineering at Princeton, then you transitioned into public administration at Harvard, focusing on economic development and eventually moved to different parts of the world. What drove you to make those transitions? How did these experiences enrich your character? Or perhaps it was the other way around. Wasn't your character that drove all those moves?
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I would say the thing that comes to my mind is, so first of all, I've for a long time been on a quest to find what is it that truly motivates me intrinsically. And today I feel like I've found it, especially with the work I do in Sparkwise. But that journey was very long.
I think the part of the reason why it was a long journey is that growing up, I would characterize my young self as a people pleaser. Getting a lot of validation and enjoyment from things that others tell about me. And which means for a long time, I was very much driven by extrinsic things, whether it be compliments, like awards or prestige or things like that.
And I always felt like that wasn't the sort of the thing that really fulfilled me. And I was constantly looking for what is it, the thing that motivates me. So my winding sort of career path reflects that journey. Now, I would say There are maybe two things that guided my process. One of which actually comes from my background in engineering. So I studied in operations research.
And one of the things I learned in that discipline is that when you are trying to optimize a mathematical function under a lot of uncertainty, What you do is you actually double down on the areas of the function that you just have no data points on. So you actually gauge whether those parts of the functions are high value or not for you. So I apply that principle to my career, which means I...
When I first started undergrad, I went to McKinsey and that was honestly just me not knowing what I wanted to do at all. And McKinsey just sounded like a cool organization that everyone said was prestigious and good to work for. So I just went into it blind. But
Beyond that point, I was chasing things that I just hadn't experienced, where things were uncertain, so I can learn more about them and letting my intuition guide me. For instance, right after McKinsey, I went to Tanzania and worked at an NGO. I had an inkling that I cared about social impact, I had an inkling that maybe nonprofit could be a really interesting kind of organization to work for.
I obviously had no experience working in Africa. I had no experience really working as a project manager in an NGO. And it felt like an opportunity that was very far away from what I knew. And by going there, I would discover. After that, I went to a year in Tanzania. I realized I really like high impact work, but they didn't really like the
NGO model and the incentives around what that environment creates. And so I actually ended up going to Colombia in Latin America and working at a startup. My first time in Latin America and my first time in a startup, but it was a way for me to really discover, again, a very different environment where I can experience that setting. and see what I like.
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Chapter 3: How does Vince Jeong approach learning and career development?
I think a lot of times people spend a lot of time theorizing what might be good and then apply after theory. I think the other way around, I feel like you're better off
leading with experience and then distilling and creating mental models around yourself and defining your principles from actually putting yourself in situations where you feel the real constraints of realities and then you realize, okay, this is what I really care about versus this. I don't really care about this.
And for me, that's the reason why I was jumping into these very different environments. And from that, learn what is it that I really care about.
And as I mentioned earlier, briefly, through all these experiences, I learned the thing that I always thought about and found enjoyment in was doing things around people development, talent development, thinking about how do you unlock people's potential and so on. And once I got enough of those data points across settings,
I knew or felt that was the area I had to focus on if I were to dedicate a decade of my life building a venture. And hence, today I'm building an education technology business.
So as I was listening, it seems like you have a scientist's mindset. You're intrigued by things you don't fully understand, but you're drawn to them. Your way of finding out more is to dive deep, collect data points, and explore. You might start with a hypothesis, but as you gather more data, you either debunk or validate your initial theories.
continuously refining your understanding until you reach a point where you discover your true passion. Would you say that's a fair summary of your experience?
Yeah, I would say I would agree with like 80-90% of what you share. The only thing I would say is I think oftentimes when you think about the scientific mindset, the one caveat is people then often spend a lot of time like creating the underlying theory on which your hypothesis is formed. And then you go into the idea of validating in a very scientific way.
Whereas I think for me, especially when it comes to career, one, I think it's hard to be that scientific. And two, I think if you overthink about what is this theory underlying my preferences, I'm not sure if it's that helpful. So I agree with most of it, except I would say I'm a scientist that theorizes less when it comes to careers, I would say.
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Chapter 4: Why is Vince Jeong focused on live group learning?
Later, she taught entrepreneurship at the business school Chicago Booth, which made for a fascinating life experience. We discussed the balance between love and logic. As you shared your journey with me, I see a similar blend of art and science in your approach. I always believed that career development is a form of craftsmanship.
Some people overanalyze and calculate every step, while others are more free spirited and go with the flow. But ultimately, it's about finding that balance between art and science, feeling our way and figuring things out as we go.
Yeah, that resonates with me.
You mentioned agtech, education technology, as your focus. When I first got involved in the agtech space, and I still am, I was particularly active on the investment side. Every time I met an entrepreneur from any part of the world, my first question was always, why are you founding an ag tech company? The reason I ask is that when it comes to education technology, passion is crucial.
Of course, you need to be smart and have the business acumen, the head, but the heart has to be there too. I found that in education technology, that fire inside your heart is essential. Especially in those days, venture valuations for other types of tech like fintech or blockchain were much higher, while agtech was relatively lower. That's why I really care about the why behind the work.
What kind of impact do you want to make? And do you truly mean it when you say impact? So back to you, my question isn't just about why agtech, but also out of all the issues and opportunities in the learning space, why did you decide to focus specifically on live group learning?
A couple of things. So in terms of why group learning, which I guess for people's context, SparkWise is a platform that really scales live group learning where professionals come together. They'll be real time video solving problems. They are practicing judgment. They are giving each other feedback and they're really growing together and building skills together.
And there are two things that I would say that really underpin this approach. One is I mentioned I started my career at McKinsey, and then I spent my time in a lot of different organizations across all sectors, partly through work through McKinsey and then work through the international development stuff I did everywhere. And
One thing I really appreciate about McKinsey and consulting was that they invest a lot of resources into developing their people because people are truly their core asset. And it's a place where people fight to get onto training programs. And that's the first thing I experienced. So I just thought that was actually what training looked like in corporates. I thought, so they put you into teams.
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Chapter 5: What inspired Vince Jeong to start Sparkwise?
So part of the motivation is that's in my mind what really great looked like. And I wanted to build a way to really scale that approach. And then coincidentally, their pedagogy is quite similar to Harvard business school does case studies. And there's a lot of similar adult learning principle underpinnings. And also I think it's quite research path in the way that how people learn.
The second thing I would say that made me want to start this is I felt like there was a really strong founder market fit when it comes to like my unique abilities or what I thought are my unique abilities that could help. build this product. So throughout my life, I've just been involved in a lot of things that involve live groups.
So when I was in Korea, I used to be on TV and I hosted a lot of live TV shows. So I was often a show host where I had to facilitate conversations. Then I, throughout my life in school, would often play some sort of a role in class, whether it be class president or social chair. So I was often again facilitating a lot of experiences for people.
In work, I've facilitated a ton of really interactive workshops for clients where I also got insight into what it means to bring people together. And finally, I emcee weddings a lot. And so like a lot of the things that I do and I really enjoy are around bringing people together and somehow creating this dynamic that gets everyone to really engage.
And I felt like I had really strong intuition and insight around this so when i bring those two things together it felt like there was an opportunity for me to create a new product that could really change what the default of online learning looks like with what i'm really good at yeah speaking of online learning
I've been pretty involved in upskilling myself in recent months, taking courses on platforms like Coursera. While Coursera offers on-demand online learning, there's little interaction and is not very engaging, unless the topic really grabs my interest. On the other hand, I'm also taking some coaching classes, which involve synchronized group learning with breakout sessions.
That's a different experience altogether. And over the years, I've also had a lot of in-person experiences at business schools where I engaged in group dynamics and case studies. debating in large classrooms, or discussing cases in small teams. So when you mentioned designing your product to be similar to McKinsey or the Harvard Business School case method, it really resonates with me.
So my question for you is, for regular learners, for everyday people who don't have the privilege of attending Harvard Business School or any other elite institution, how does your solution stand out? How does it differentiate itself from other learning scenarios I've mentioned, particularly in terms of the learning experience and outcomes?
Yeah, so I think, so the way I think about it is, so maybe the context here is... Adult learning principles and science are pretty clear, and there's a lot of evidence around how adults learn, right? I think actually the issue for most, and it's not like different people, like learning styles is not a thing, right? It's like a myth that's already been debunked.
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