Higher standards. Greater agency.
I'm Helen Park. I spent thirty years in the room where leadership teams decide who to trust. Now I teach women entrepreneurs how to use that same judgment to build companies they can grow on.
The problem
You make your highest-stakes calls about people without ever having sat in the room where those calls get made at the highest level. The wrong person doesn't just slow you down. It costs you the time and energy you need to build.
Here's a start: I look at how someone acts when the pressure is on, not just what they promise.
The plan
Read. Translate. Lead.
1
Read
Get one idea a week from thirty years of watching leaders build.
2
Translate
Turn agency and nunchi, the Korean art of reading a room, into your own calls.
3
Build
Apply it to your company through AgencyTrait, or to your life through the books.
My current era
Raising them.
Caring for her.
Still becoming me.
I'm almost 48, raising two girls and finding myself squarely in the sandwich generation.
I'm thinking a lot about what we model for our children, what we inherit from our parents, and how we care deeply for the people we love without disappearing from our own lives.
My girls are watching how I build this. I want them to see what it looks like to make hard calls on your own terms, and to trust yourself doing it.
I want to be someone my mother is proud of in this chapter, the way I've tried to be in every one before it.
That's why I'm sharing what the boardroom taught me. So you build your company on people you trust, and you win.
I'm still building.
Still learning.
Still taking care of myself.
Still changing my mind.
Still figuring out what deserves my time, energy and attention.
About Helen
I've spent a lot of my life paying attention to people.
I've worked alongside founders, CEOs and executives making consequential decisions about people.
That work taught me to notice things.
How people make decisions.
How they respond under pressure.
How they read a room.
What they tolerate.
What they choose.
Whether they trust themselves.
Now I'm paying attention to many of those same things in a different room: my own life.
I'm a Korean-American entrepreneur, author, daughter and mom raising two girls in Los Angeles.
I don't have every answer. I do know that the way we pay attention shapes the choices we see, the standards we keep and the lives we make.
A few things
I can't stop
thinking about.
Agency
See your choices clearly. Trust yourself enough to make one.
Standards
Decide what deserves your time, energy, attention and acceptance.
Nunchi
Read the people, energy and context before deciding how to move.
Practice
Turn what you believe into the way you live every day.
What do we pass down?
Year after year, I've watched adults develop qualities like judgment, self-trust, situational awareness and agency.
Becoming a mother made me wonder:
What if we didn't wait until adulthood to teach them?
I'm raising my girls to have opinions, make decisions, read the room, take care of themselves and know that their lives belong to them.
And as my own mom gets older, I'm understanding more deeply what she gave me.
I'm somewhere in the middle now.
A daughter.
A mother.
And still a woman becoming herself.
My work
Build on people you can trust.
A resume and a good conversation aren't enough to build a company on. AgencyTrait shows you how someone actually operates, before you build around them.
Get this wrong and you're not just out the cost of the hire. You're back to doing the job yourself while you're still paying to grow.
- 1Run the AGENCY assessment on your candidate.
- 2Get a Plain Read report on how they act under pressure, not just what they say.
- 3Compare candidates side by side before you decide.
Books
Ideas I've put on paper.
Leading Through Human Experience
Decades of boardroom judgment, written down, so you can build on what I learned the hard way.
Explore the book
Coming soon
The Agency Effect
Get early access as it's finished.
Worth Knowing
Every week, one idea from the boardroom, on the people decisions that make or break what you're building.
One useful idea, person, practice, perspective or experience at a time.
Thoughtful notes from Helen. No fixed schedule. No noise.