Soon Yu | |
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| Born | August 5, 1965 Taiwan |
| Education | University of California, Davis (BS) Stanford University (MBA) |
| Organization(s) | Writer, public speaker, consultant |
| Website | www |
Soon Yu (born August 5, 1965) is a Taiwanese-American speaker, writer and former adjunct professor at The New School's Parsons School of Design. [1] Yu is the founder of Gazoontite, the author of the book Iconic Advantage [2] and Friction [3] , and host of Aconic Podcast. [4]
Yu was born in Taiwan and moved at age 3 to Davis, California, where his father was an agricultural geneticist. [5] Soon received his BS in electrical engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1988 and his MBA from Stanford University in 1993. [6]
Soon served as the global VP of innovation and as a corporate officer for VF Corporation from 2010 to 2016. [7] [8] [9] Prior to working at VF Corporation, he has also worked at The Clorox Company [10] He left his management position at Clorox to pursue a sales associate position at Crate & Barrel, taking an 85% pay cut and earning $5/hour to gain retail experience. [11] He has also held positions as an engineer with Advanced Micro Devices, an associate consultant with Bain & Company, [12] general manager at Chiquita Brands International, [13] and chief marketing officer at SafeWeb. [14]
In 1998, Yu founded Gazoontite, a retailer of allergy and asthma related products. [15] [16] [17] It was one of the first retail/eCommerce companies to promote and build its business model around the multi-channel shopping environment. [16] [18]
His book, Friction: Adding Value By Making People Work For It won the 2022 NYC Big Book Award in Sales & Marketing. [19] His book, Iconic Advantage, won the 2019 Axiom Business Book Award in Advertising / Marketing / PR / Event Planning. [20]
He is host of the Aconic Podcast, which won Gold in the Genre - Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [21] for it's episode with Sheila Lirio Marcelo, CEO of Ohai.ai and founder of Care.com.
Other guests that the podcast has featured are Kristi Yamaguchi, Jeremy Lin, Andrew Yang, Lisa Ling, Elaine Chao, Joe Bae (KKR), Manny Maceda, Abigail Hing Wen, Ashley Liao, Dan Tani, Janet Yang, Tiffany Chang, Bing Chen, Guy Kawasaki, Mayor Aftab Pureval, Charles Yu, Jenny Ming, and Deb Liu. [22]
Books