Responsible for 12000+ Students Safety – Where Do You Start?
Haena Kim
I want to discuss what it means to scale oversight over a multi-region, multi-generational, multi-lingual team. I’ll speak through my own management experience, as well as how my personal background of growing up in 4 different countries helped to influence how I lead safety management. An SOP is only the starting point. How do you get investors to put money into safety, how do you ensure training when nobody wants to work weekends, what do you do after an incident, what should you do when a parent sues etc… Let’s dig down into the deep end and shine a torch onto the nitty gritty.
About Haena
Haena Seongsin Kim is the founding CEO of Beyond Classrooms and Managing Director at WildChina Education, where she develops innovative experiential learning programs. Since 2022, she has expanded Beyond Classrooms into global markets like the UK, Singapore, and the US, partnering with institutions such as Harvard, Tsinghua University, and the Jane Goodall Institute. At WildChina Education, she applies Kolb’s experiential learning theory to programs serving nearly 1,000 schools, collaborating with organizations like Huawei and tourism boards in Penang, Beijing, and Seoul.
Her journey in education and innovation began early—at 16, she designed experiential programs for kindergartens in Korea, and at 20, she founded What the F. magazine at the University of Michigan. She has expertise across tourism, education, blockchain, and electronics, bringing a multidisciplinary approach to her work.
Haena’s multicultural background and adventurous spirit fuel her passion for learning. She has lived in five countries, speaks four languages, and has explored the world through paragliding, scuba diving, swimming with whale sharks, and feeding pandas. Growing up alongside the last indigenous tribespeople of the Philippines, she developed a deep appreciation for culture, community, and transformative education, which she channels into inspiring the next generation of leaders.
