Dr. Bee-Leng Chua
Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Center
Hawai‘i Pacific University welcomes Dr. Bee-Leng Chua as the first Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Center in the College of Business Administration. She is also Associate Professor of Management, teaching in HPU’s MBA Program. Dr Chua brings a wealth of research, networks, and academic pursuits with her from her position as founding director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
During Dr. Chua’s 18 years at The Chinese University, she held positions of Associate Professor of Management, Director of Industry Development, and Associate Director of MBA Programs. She looks forward to building strong community relationships in Hawai‘i as she did in Hong Kong.
Dr. Chua has initiated a variety of key efforts to promote entrepreneurship education and research. She launched the Asia Moot Corp® Entrepreneurship Competition in 1998, a business plan competition for leading business schools in Asia. Asia Moot Corp is now hosted by Thammasat University in Thailand. The championship team competes in the international Moot Corp Competition at the University of Texas at Austin. She also initiated the highly successful and on-going Booz Allen Hamilton Social Venture Challenge at CUHK to promote social responsibility in the student community. In 2007, with funding from the Commission on Poverty, Dr. Chua established the Hong Kong Social Enterprise Challenge, a business plan competition for university students throughout Hong Kong.
Dr. Chua led Hong Kong as Project Coordinator and Team Leader for the Hong Kong study in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). GEM is the largest study of early stage entrepreneurial activity in the world conducted by a consortium of 200 scholars from more than 40 countries with London Business School and Babson College as founding institutions (www.gemconsortium.org). Before leaving CUHK, she helped establish STEP (Successful Trans-generational Entrepreneurship Practices) in Asia Pacific. STEP is a global family business research initiative led by Babson College.
As member of the Advisory and Vetting Committees of the Hong Kong Government’s Cyberport IncuTrain Centre, Dr. Chua assisted in recruiting entrepreneurs from the digital media sector for the incubation program as well as provided input in the training and development of the incubatee companies. She also mentored entrepreneurs in the Incubation Centre of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks. She was an assessor in the Small Entrepreneur Research Assistance Programme (SERAP), Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC), within the Hong Kong government. As a member of the Hong Kong Women Entrepreneurs and Professionals Association, she helped design and carry out the Outstanding Women Entrepreneurs and Outstanding Women Professionals Awards. She served as chair of Public Affairs in the Zonta Club of Hong Kong, and was on the Executive Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong – Entrepreneurs Group.
Before moving to Hong Kong, Dr. Chua held the position of Deputy Head, Survey Research Branch, Personnel Research Dept., at the Ministry of Defense, Manpower Division, in Singapore from 1983-88. Dr. Chua earned her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio University at Athens.
Dr. Chua’s current research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurship education, micro-enterprise, pro-social behavior in the community and workplace, and career decision- making.
