SNU Alumna YANG Hyun-mi is to be elevated to the highest executive post ever held by a woman at the state-run company.

She is appointed as the chief business strategist for the newly merged telecom giant of KT and KTF.

No woman has ever been appointed to this level in the history of KT, which has always been known for its conservative, male-dominated corporate culture.

Yang, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Seoul National University , once worked at the New York headquarters of American Express, helping devise the credit card giant’s consumer relations management marketing strategies.

Shinhan Bank lured her back to Seoul in April 2007 after Shin Sang-hoon, the bank’s chief executive, attended her seminar on CRM strategies and realized her talent. Yang has also been the only female executive at Shinhan, another firm well known for its conservative bent, not unusual in Korea’s financial industry.

There Yang says she helped the lender develop its marketing tactics around its customers rather than to accommodate the needs and conditions of the company.

“I tried hard to establish marketing strategies based on thorough analysis of customer data and to break this long-held mindset at the company to put top priority on the bank’s modus operandi when developing new products and services,” said Yang.

She also has long advocated the need to use marketing tactics based on data analysis, still a novelty in Korea, where few companies know how to make full use of a customer database in appealing to the public.

“Marketing strategies based on old-fashioned emotional appeal or those pushing the customers in a forceful way no longer work. Only scientific strategies can move customers’ hearts,” Yang said.

May 26, 2009
SNU PR Office