Technology

The 4th APEC Women Connect “Her Power” Entrepreneurship Competition Announces 2023 Winners, Celebrates Women Empowerment

Published

2 years ago

February 2, 2024

BEIJING, Feb. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The fourth annual APEC Women Connect “Her Power” Entrepreneurship Competition came to a successful close on January 19th, 2024, wrapping up a successful four-month season of building up and empowering a new batch of over 1,300 aspiring women entrepreneurs and influencers who represent the entire gamut from nano- to mega-sized platforms.

Co-hosted by cross-border e-commerce company DHgate, social commerce platform MyyShop, and women empowerment organizations The Inner Mountain Foundation and APEC Women Connect, the “Her Power” Entrepreneurship Competition invited women e-tailers to show off their social commerce capabilities through competitive challenges focused on boosting their product sales and social awareness. Participants also learned about the many facets of social commerce (such as social media marketing) through exclusive e-learning sessions with key mentors from partner organizations. Participants of this year’s competition hailed from countries including (but not limited to) the US, Puerto Rico, Nigeria, India, China, Canada, Australia, Spain, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam and the UK.

The competition concluded with the fourth “Her Power” Entrepreneurship Competition Awards Ceremony, held online on the afternoon of Friday, January 19th, 2024. The ceremony kicked off with inaugural remarks by Julia Torreblanca, the APEC Business Advisory Council Chair for 2024, as well as a keynote speech by DHGATE Group Founder, Chairperson and CEO Diane Wang. The ceremony proceeded with two panel discussions, two showcase presentations and the presentation of three types of prestigious awards to 23 winners.

“When we intentionally introduce digital empowerment to women and SMEs, we unlock a powerful force for positive change,” Torreblanca said. “Supporting women entrepreneurs and SMEs with the right skills and access to technology not only strengthens their individual capabilities but also contributes to the overall growth of the SME sector. This symbiotic relationship creates a ripple effect, fostering economic empowerment at both the individual and community levels.”

Diane Wang expanded on this sentiment in her keynote speech: “Having been a part of the tech industry for three decades, I have seen how technology and digital tools, especially for women, can be transformative. The digital economy has significantly lowered the barriers to entrepreneurship, enabling women from various backgrounds to pursue their dreams. This equal opportunity is a game-changer.

“To further amplify this impact, I have initiated several projects aimed at empowering women in the digital economy, including training programs and global entrepreneurship competitions,” Diane said. “Our projects have reached over 100,000 women across 51 countries, showcasing the untapped potential of women worldwide waiting to be realized through digital empowerment.”

23 Entrepreneurs Commended for Inspirational Business and Personal Growth

Three “AWC Her Power Queen” World Champions were rewarded for the competition, representing the participants who had the highest sales quantity and social media engagement and most unique story angles. 20 awards were also granted in two “Rising Star” categories this year, representing the “Best Inner Mountain Power Queens” and the “Best MyyShop Influencer Queens” of the competition, selected according to similar criteria.

The fourth “Her Power” Entrepreneurship Competition marks the first time the Inner Mountain award has been granted. Developed in partnership with The Inner Mountain Foundation, a newly launched organization focused on promoting women empowerment around the world, this award recognizes the participants who made the most progress at finding and realizing their inner strength during the event period.

The Inner Mountain Foundation fosters a community of like-minded women who can lead, nurture, and inspire those around them — starting with themselves — by providing access to various entrepreneurial resources, mentorship, training, information, support, recognition, and even funding for women-owned businesses.

“AWC Her Power Queen” Award Winners

–       World Champion: Sabrina Eshaq (@nnarrgiss)
–       World Champion: Ericka Sutton (@itsme234girl)
–       World Champion: Tiffany James (@tiiffxny)

“Best MyyShop Influencer Queen” Award Winners

1st Place: Nusaiba Labaran (@nusaeba21)2nd Place: Dakota Ackerman (@dak.bby)3rd Place: Deanna Anderson (@deannaay)4th to 10th Place, in no particular order: @suzyd03, @cxozyt, @annekoii, @ka1ese, @ersmakeup, @dulcessweetworld, @evilhiccup

“Best Inner Mountain Power Queen” Award Winners

1st Place: Lizette Baldeo (@lizettebaldeo)2nd Place: Lilly Burke (@lillybuurke)3rd Place: Damaris Sucely Mayorga Pineda (@damarispineda3)4th to 10th Place, in no particular order: @Quynh Tran, @Karen Lê, @Pagie Trần, @allisonlitt, @dawnlewinsky, @in..your..dreams, @caelielangston

Every winner was not only recognized for their achievements but also received a cash prize and exclusive gifts from the competition’s brand partners (including MySmile, a California-based oral hygiene specialist.)

Empowering Women Through Digital Literacy E-Learning

The awards ceremony featured two panel discussions focused on educational topics. The first panel was about the importance of enhancing one’s digital skills, and was presented by Microsoft China Senior Program Manager Melinda Ma, along with DHGATE Group’s Vice President of Global Business Development Justin Hu and Vice President of Logistics Supply Chain Shawn Liu.

The second panel, called “Empower Women Inner Light”, invited Lean In China co-founder Leiya Lei, International Association of Women President Megan Bozzuto and the SHERO Initiative co-founder Rita Chao to discuss the overarching theme of the “Her Power” competition: women’s empowerment in entrepreneurship.

Two “My Journey to Digital Proficiency” showcase presentations highlighted three success stories from two ongoing programs in the China chapter of The Inner Mountain Foundation. The first story came from the organization’s pioneering “Women Going Global” program, which targets female entrepreneurs and business leaders in cross-border industries, and was presented by The Inner Mountain Foundation member Qiuling Zhuang. Two more case studies from the foundation’s “Sailing Youth” course, designed by DHgate for university students majoring in cross-border e-commerce and business, were presented by Andrea Qi and Chanunthida Chumchong.

These presentations built on the content of the “Her Power” Entrepreneurship Competition itself, which was highly focused on cross-disciplinary e-learning courses related to improving social commerce skills such as cross-border e-commerce, how to boost sales on social media, novel shopping experience strategies, cultivating a sales persona and securing financing. All of the learning content was designed specifically with Gen Z in mind, to further empower young entrepreneurs from any background.

The competition’s 22 e-learning sessions were all uploaded to Youtube for contestants and all other interested parties to review the content at their leisure. The courses were delivered by a wide array of mentors from partner organizations, including Snapchat, Flyway, Bonjour Girls, Y.O.U Beauty and NETEASE, among many others. A few examples of course titles include “How to Become a Great Product Manager”, “Build Digital Ad Creatives with High Revenue Potential in the New Digital Era”, and “Women Empowerment Self-Discovery Story Sharing”.

This year’s partnership with The Inner Mountain Foundation also brought a new focus on personal growth and inspirational motivation. “To achieve this, we’ve provided numerous experience programs focused on tapping one ‘s inner strength, networking platforms for sharing and inspiring, and most importantly, a decentralized mechanism for realizing companionship within our community,” Diane Wang said in her keynote. “We’ve successfully created a safe space where women can lead, nurture and inspire each other, through the strength they uncover within after discovering and climbing their Inner Mountains.”

In addition to the people mentioned above, other attendees of this year’s “Her Power” Entrepreneurship Competition Awards Ceremony included:

Danning Zhang, from HEBE GroupSteffi Sun, from Quadrant LabRui & Francisico, winners of the third “Her Power” competitionTom Tran & Phuong Hoang, winners of the third “Her Power” competition

About APEC Women Connect

Founded in 2016, APEC Women Connect is an APEC-endorsed program initiated by Ms. Diane Wang, the China Representative on the APEC Business Advisory Council, Chair of the APEC Women Leadership Forum, Co-Chair of WiBAC of B20 Indonesia, and Founder, Chairperson and CEO of DHgate.com. APEC Women Connect aims to empower women, especially young women, to realize entrepreneurship via digital solutions through inspirational sharing, practical learning, effective recognition, and awards. APEC Women Connect has been included in the annual recommendation to the APEC Economic Leaders for three consecutive years. It has also been included in the annual recommendation to G20 Leaders by B20 for two consecutive years.

About DHgate

Founded in 2004, DHgate has become the leading B2B cross-border e-commerce marketplace in China, boasting over 34 million live listings annually. Through their global operations and offices, including in the USA and UK, DHgate reaches millions of people with trusted products and services. As of December 31, 2022, DHgate served more than 59.6 million registered buyers from 225 countries and regions, connecting them to over 2.54 million sellers in China and other countries.

For more information, please visit DHgate.com and follow @DHgate.com.

About MyyShop

MyyShop is a pioneering social commerce platform launched by DHGATE Group that provides an effortless selling experience on social media. The platform aims to empower different types of creators—from nano to mega-influencers—to turn their social media influence and passion for content creation into thriving online businesses. Equipped with MyyShop’s social commerce and online store creation toolkit and resources, creators can quickly identify viral or in-demand products, leverage MyyShop’s AI-powered product recommendations based on shoppers’ interests and sales trends, build a customized online shopfront and earn commission through social commerce sales. Creators can also efficiently create their own personalized product lines through MyyShop’s centralized platform and extensive network of verified cross-border suppliers and manufacturers.

For more information, please visit MyyShop.com and follow @MyyShopOfficial.

About The Inner Mountain Foundation

The Inner Mountain Foundation promotes the empowerment of women through education, community, and outreach. We are led by our Founder and Chairperson Diane Wang, who first articulated the principles of Inner Mountain Thinking in her 2024 book, The Inner Mountain. As a global foundation and women’s empowerment community, we invest in impact-making educational resources that we seek to make as broadly accessible as possible. Our goal is to focus the work of the Inner Mountain on the soft skills training that we believe helps equip women to be their greatest, most empowered selves across their most wholly integrated life (connecting the self with work, family, community, and legacy).

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SOURCE DHGATE Group

Technology

Bloomberg Introduces Spread-to-Benchmark Quoting for EUR and GBP Portfolio Trading Baskets

Published

17 hours ago

June 2, 2026

LONDON, June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Bloomberg today announced the launch of Spread-to-Benchmark quoting and trading for Euro (EUR) and Sterling (GBP) denominated portfolio trades through its Portfolio Trading Basket Builder (PTBB). The new functionality expands the range of quoting protocols available for European credit portfolio trading and reflects growing client demand for spread-based execution workflows, alongside increased dealer support for the convention across EUR and GBP markets.

Spread-to-Benchmark quoting is a well-established protocol for USD credit portfolio trades and is used by market participants to evaluate and execute portfolio trades. By extending this workflow to EUR and GBP portfolio trades, Bloomberg enables clients and dealers to transact using a familiar spread-based methodology across additional credit markets.

The introduction of Spread-to-Benchmark quoting for EUR and GBP baskets reflects increased client interest in evaluating portfolio trades through a spread-based lens and the growing adoption of spread-based execution workflows in European credit markets. The workflow provides market participants with an additional framework for assessing the relationship between credit spread risk and underlying government bond yields when pricing and executing portfolio trades.

Additional Workflow Flexibility 
The workflow complements Bloomberg’s existing portfolio trading capabilities, which support the full range of market-standard quoting conventions, including Price, Yield, Spread-to-Benchmark and Spread based workflows that reference Bloomberg’s evaluated pricing service (BVAL). This gives clients flexibility to compare and execute portfolio trades using the quoting methodology that best aligns with their investment objectives, execution preferences and internal risk management processes.

“European credit clients continue to look for execution workflows that reflect how they evaluate risk and monitor portfolio trading outcomes,” said Harry Street, Global Head of Credit and Equities Trading Product at Bloomberg. “By expanding dealer support for Spread-to-Benchmark quoting for EUR and GBP baskets, Bloomberg is broadening the range of workflow options available to clients trading European credit portfolios.”

“Portfolio trading workflows in fixed income continue to become more sophisticated as institutional investors look for ways to evaluate execution quality in changing market conditions,” said Kevin McPartland, Head of Market Structure & Technology Research at Crisil Coalition Greenwich. “Spread-based quoting helps market participants more clearly distinguish between the impacts of credit spread and underlying rates movements when determining how best to execute a portfolio trade.”

Bloomberg’s Electronic Markets solutions are used by leading financial institutions to trade efficiently in over 175 markets around the world. More than 9,000 client firms use Bloomberg Electronic Markets to access industry-leading depth and breadth of liquidity across asset classes from over 800 dealers globally. Bloomberg Electronic Markets provides market participants with comprehensive solutions across the trading lifecycle, including robust price transparency, analytics, automation and execution, powered by Bloomberg’s high-quality, multi-asset class data and tools.

About Bloomberg
Bloomberg is a global leader in business and financial information, delivering trusted data, news, and insights that bring transparency, efficiency, and fairness to markets. The company helps connect influential communities across the global financial ecosystem via reliable technology solutions that enable our customers to make more informed decisions and foster better collaboration. For more information, visit Bloomberg.com/company or request a demo.

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SOURCE Bloomberg L.P.

Technology

Dr. Sunho Kang, a senior battery-technology executive with leadership experience at major global battery and EV manufacturers, joins TeraWatt Technology as Head of Product and Technology

Published

17 hours ago

June 2, 2026

SAN FRANCISCO, June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TeraWatt Technology Inc. (Headquartered in California, USA) is pleased to announce that Dr. Sunho Kang has joined the company as Head of Product and Technology.

Dr. Kang is a globally recognized battery-technology executive with more than 25 years of leadership experience spanning the United States, Asia, and Europe, and a distinguished track record of advancing innovations from laboratory research through gigafactory-scale production. He has held senior executive positions at world-leading organizations including Samsung SDI, Apple, and Volkswagen Group of America, and brings deep expertise in lithium-ion battery materials, cell engineering, and product industrialization across a broad range of applications, including electric vehicles and energy storage systems.

At TeraWatt, Dr. Kang will lead global product development and the commercialization of TeraWatt’s battery technology platform, aiming to accelerate the delivery of TeraWatt’s competitive products as well as the technology and commercialization roadmap including manufacturing scale-up.

Dr. Kang commented:

“I am thrilled to join TeraWatt Technology as Head of Product and Technology. TeraWatt’s innovative battery platform presents a tremendous opportunity to push the boundaries of lithium-ion technology, and I look forward to working with the team to accelerate product development and commercialization to deliver meaningful impact.”

TeraWatt Technology founder CEO Ken Ogata, Ph.D. commented:

“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Kang as our Head of Product and Technology. His deep expertise in battery materials, cell engineering, and productization will be instrumental in accelerating TeraWatt’s product roadmap and technology leadership. Together with Dr. Kang, we will continue to drive our mission forward.”

About TeraWatt Technology Inc.
TeraWatt Technology Inc. is a California-based company that produces lightweight, high-power, and safe next-generation lithium-ion batteries.

Company Overview
Name: TeraWatt Technology Inc.
Representative: Co-founder and CEO Ken Ogata
Headquarters: 28 Geary St, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94108, United States
Founded: January 2020
Established: December 2019
URL: https://www.terawatt-technology.com/

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SOURCE TeraWatt Technology Inc.

Technology

Tencent Cloud and Soniox Announce Strategic Partnership: Combining Advanced Speech-to-Text (STT) Technology with Global Real-Time Infrastructure

Published

17 hours ago

June 2, 2026

HONG KONG, June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of global technology company Tencent, today announced a strategic partnership with Soniox, a San Francisco-based speech AI company that specializes in developing high-accuracy, low-latency speech AI solutions. The collaboration integrates Soniox’s speech-to-text (STT) technology with Tencent Cloud’s Real-Time Communication (TRTC) enterprise-grade global infrastructure, enabling enterprises to build and deploy multilingual voice AI applications across 200+ countries and regions.

Elevating Enterprise Voice AI at a Global Scale

In enterprise voice AI deployments, latency directly affects user experience and application reliability. The integration of Soniox’s high-accuracy, low-latency STT with TRTC’s global transmission infrastructure reduces latency across the entire pipeline, creating a comprehensive end-to-end solution for enterprises deploying conversational AI applications worldwide.

Soniox is the voice platform for every language. Unlike legacy speech AI, which was built primarily for English-speakers, Soniox delivers native-speaker accuracy across 60+ languages. Its technology can handle mid-sentence language switching — a user can switch between English and Chinese in a single utterance, and Soniox will capture every word with complete accuracy. All of this works through a single API that works for both speech-to-text and text-to-speech.

By integrating TRTC, the partnership leverages an enterprise-grade real-time communication backbone featuring more than 3,200 global nodes, sub-300 ms worldwide latency, and advanced capabilities such as AI noise suppression and weak-network resilience. These capabilities enable conversational AI applications to operate reliably across diverse network environments, including regions such as Southeast Asia and Africa.

With the roll out of this partnership, developers can integrate the Soniox STT API directly within the Tencent Cloud console. Whether targeting English-speaking markets or supporting languages such as Arabic, Hindi, and Malay, enterprises can build global voice applications — including intelligent customer service, voice assistants, real-time translation, and meeting transcription — to address the demands of expansion into emerging markets and multilingual scenarios.

Wison Xie, Head of Product at Tencent RTC, stated: “Tencent RTC has always been committed to providing reliable real-time communication infrastructure for global enterprises. Our partnership with Soniox brings together our strengths in enterprise-grade audio transmission and Soniox’s advanced speech recognition technology. Together, we are making it easier for businesses to deploy accurate, low-latency voice AI applications across any language and any market.”

Klemen Simonic, CEO at Soniox Inc., stated “At Soniox, our mission is to help businesses understand every word, in any language, with native speaker accuracy and exceptional speed. Partnering with Tencent Cloud combines our speech AI with world-class real-time infrastructure, enabling enterprises to build voice AI experiences that scale globally with low latency and reliability.”

About Tencent Cloud:

Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.

About Tencent RTC:

Tencent RTC provides real-time communication solutions, including audio/video calling, live streaming, and in-game voice. With enterprise-grade security, AI-powered enhancements, and a global network of over 3,200 nodes, Tencent RTC powers mission-critical communication for customers worldwide.

About Soniox:

Soniox is a next-generation voice AI company bringing about the end of English-first speech AI. Most people on the planet did not grow up speaking English and often mix languages mid-sentence; and yet legacy speech AI was built for just English. Soniox is different: native-speaker accuracy across 60+ languages, true mid-sentence language switching, and flawless alphanumeric recognition that legacy providers still can’t match. For developers building global apps, Soniox is the only option. Try it for yourself at soniox.com.

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SOURCE Tencent Cloud