Wonder Woman Wednesday #8: Stephanie Tan
Making Traditional Chinese Medicine simple and accessible to all!
Did you know that Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM, can be found in over 185 countries and continues to expand its influence as a mainstream alternative medicine practice?
This week I sat down with Stephanie Tan,
CMC alum and Founder and CEO of NOOCI, a for women by women supplements brand on a mission to modernize Traditional Chinese Medicine and make it accessible to all.
Stephanie founded NOOCI when she was pregnant with her second child during the pandemic in 2020. She wanted a natural solution to relieve her allergies and anxiety and discovered TCM as a positive alternative.
ALSO:
NOOCI is conducting a 6-week clinical study for their Noo Air, Nasal Relief product. You will receive 2 months of free products so make sure to fill out the questionnaire here if you are interested!
Read my interview with Stephanie Tan to learn her inspiring story ⬇️
How did you find your passion for entrepreneurship after Claremont McKenna?
Like most Claremont McKenna graduates, I started off in investment banking at JP Morgan in NYC. I decided this was not something I loved.
I then went to culinary school in New York! I loved eating and thought why not learn about cooking and do something I’m passionate about? I didn’t know how to peel a carrot so culinary school was a little embarrassing…
The world of commercial cooking was extremely male dominated so I decided not to pursue a career as a professional chef and moved back to Hong Kong.
I joined my family’s insurance and healthcare business. Within the business, I was always very entrepreneurial — or I guess the term is intrapreneurial.
I started and ran a wellness center for people aged 50+ to help nurture their social, emotional and physical wellness.
After this, I started a home healthcare business called Evercare with my partner. The goal was to connect families with carers & nurses.
And then the opportunity came up that we were going to start a virtual insurance company in Hong Kong.
I was asked to join the founding team. I thought I know nothing about insurance but this could be a big opportunity.
How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact your journey?
The pandemic made me realize that insurance was not my thing. I was pregnant with my second child and had really bad nasal allergies.
This is when I started thinking about NOOCI and deep-diving into Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Growing up in Hong Kong, I was familiar with all the complex layers and modalities of TCM.
I thought there was a big opportunity to demystify TCM and make it approachable and easy to integrate into people’s lives.
I also wanted to integrate Western medicine and TCM together rather than create this separation between the two.
What did the very early stages of building NOOCI look like?
I was very interested in the natural space (natural herbs) and I thought the Hong Kong market is very small.
Even though I grew up in Hong Kong, I’ve always to straddle the two worlds: the United States and Hong Kong.
I thought do we launch in Hong Kong? But my dream is to launch in the US….
The beginning was really talking to a lot of people in Hong Kong, running a lot of different focus groups to gain different opinions and perspectives (think Google Forms, SurveyMonkey etc) and qualitative work.
Eventually, we thought we should survey people outside of Hong Kong. Everybody was SO supportive and excited about the idea.
Finding the right manufacturing partner was also very important. We wanted to work with the best.