CEO Today - Business Women Awards 2023

performance of our team but also that we help each other find personal growth and new capabilities by providing a supportive environment. One way we encourage and support employees’ personal growth is to encourage every one of us in the company to have a “flag”, a New Year’s resolution. The flag is nothing related to business but about our personal growth area. We ask all staff members, and that includes me, to put a personal flag on workplace messenger, and we run the personal flag program on Lark, a biz chat and collaboration platform. We want to make it transparent and stressfree, so everyone can see it and support each other in this personal growth area. At DHGate, nearly half of our employees are female, including those at different levels of management. We have provided skills training, such as presentation and public speaking, for both men and women to grow. But in fact, skills do not matter that much. The most important thing is that women need to dare to stand up and speak out. Many women are constrained by their own mentality and consider themselves as “not good enough.” Yet, once a woman dares to speak, her enthusiasm can easily influence others, even if her skills are still developing. As long as a woman breaks her cognition barrier, her skills come naturally. Fundamentally, we at DHgate recognize the role of women deep in our hearts without considering their roles or titles. For example, Serene Jiang is a young, energetic female colleague in our company. Although she joined DHgate quite recently at an entry-level position with very little e-commerce experience, we had her present MyyShop at our annual Seller Conference in July 2022, one of our key events. She surprised us with an excellent presentation, which assured her many responsibilities after that. I’m also proud that more than 55 percent of the store owners on DHgate marketplace are women. Most importantly, I encourage women colleagues to break limitations set by themselves; mindset changing is the most important change. It unlocks all the doors so that you’re no longer looking up at the ceiling. Also, at DHgate, we have dedicated nursery rooms in our office to provide a safe and secure space for breastfeeding mothers. We encourage and organize activities to enable men and women to bring their children to the office. We also send gifts to the children to let them know how loved and missed they are. I’m happy when I see children walking or running in our workplace. I continue to encourage women to break the limitations they have set for themselves. Once that happens, we can move to the important step of focusing on our goals. “I personally have more than 30 years of business and digital experience. In 1999, as one of the first generation of e-commerce entrepreneurs in China, I established Joyo.com, China’s first B2C e-commerce platform.” CEO Today Business Women Awards 2023 CHINA - 15 -

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