Jane Chen (Embrace Global) - Doing the Inner Work

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Business, Life Lessons, Creativity, Startups, Strategy, Thought Leadership, Education, Stanford University, Leadership, Challenges, Journey, Culture, Etl, Innovation, Founders, Stanford, Entrepreneurship

4.5 • 740 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jane Chen is the co-founder of Embrace Global, which created a low-cost infant warmer that has helped more than one million babies in low-resource settings. Her new book, Like a Wave We Break: a Memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself, tells the story of her globe-spanning journey to break free of the narratives that once defined her and confront the long-buried truths of a traumatic past. In this conversation with Adjunct Lecturer Emily Ma, Chen encourages entrepreneurs to focus on journeys instead of outcomes, sharing her experiences with burnout and healing to illustrate the importance of self-compassion and finding the worthiness within.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders and other Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at the Stanford School of Engineering. STVP empowers aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ecorner

X: https://x.com/ECorner

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/stanfordstvp.bsky.social

LEARN MORE

STVP: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

eCorner by STVP: https://stvp.stanford.edu/ecorner

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://stvp.stanford.edu/giving-to-stvp/.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Super excited today to have Jane Marie Chen back in our classroom with us.
0:20.0	Jane is a friend and a classmate from the Stanford to have Jane Marie Chen back in our classroom with us.
0:26.6	Jane is a friend and a classmate from the Stanford Graduate School business, and she is the co-founder of Embrace, which is a little tiny startup that actually got funding from BASIS,
0:35.4	which is the Business Association for Stanford Entrepreneur
0:38.0	Students, to get going to build an infant incubator that has saved over a million babies.
0:45.0	She is so incredibly well recognized across so many different forums, a World Economic Forum,
0:50.3	Forbes, 30, and she just wrote a book called Like a Wave We Break. And I'm so thrilled she's here to share that with you today. All right. Well, Jane, welcome to the Entrepreneur Thought Leader series. What a pleasure to have you back. And I want to point out, Rahul Panicker is here, my co-founder. Oh, goodness. Yes. Wow. Okay. This is really true.
1:11.6	We were part of the original Stanford class in 2007 and we moved to India together and
1:18.6	he's been on this whole crazy journey.
1:20.6	Well, that means you were pitching to bass us together.
1:23.6	We were pitching to bases together.
1:25.6	Yep.
1:26.6	Well, let's start with that. Okay. And then we'll come back to this incredible journey you've been on.
1:30.3	What was it like to be at Stanford with this, you know, like this concept, right?
1:37.3	Early concept and this was part of design for extreme affordability.
1:41.3	Yeah.
1:42.3	And you pitched at the basis competition and you got a little bit of seed funding.
1:46.5	You and Rahul.
1:47.2	Yep.
1:48.4	What would you say to, if you could go back in time to, I think it was 2008.
1:52.6	Like if you could tell yourselves something, what would you tell yourselves?
1:58.5	In that moment, you mean like as we were starting embrace or, oh, gosh, what would I,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Stanford eCorner, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Stanford eCorner and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.