QS Editorial
Published on 2 July 2026
The RISE Project Group (Director Yoon Seong-taek) at KU (President Kim Dong-One) held a special invited lecture by Cheryl Edison, a global business strategist based in Silicon Valley, USA, at Hana Square on May 28, 2026.
Cheryl Edison has worked in global commercialization, including advising the U.S. Department of State on startup ecosystems and carrying out cooperative projects with the UN, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Drawing on collaborative experiences with UC Berkeley and the U.S. Institute for the Future (IFTF), she currently applies her expertise in building startup ecosystems and developing strategies for entering overseas markets.
The lecture covered the U.S. startup ecosystem, North American market-entry strategies, global business development, and collaborations with investors and partners, presenting real cases of global startups and commercialization that drew an enthusiastic response from attendees. In particular, she shared her own experiences related to the global market trends she observed in Silicon Valley, the growth process of startup companies, and approaches to communicating with overseas investors and partners.
The lecture was held for the student- and faculty-led startups at KU, on-campus resident companies, and Campus Town startups, with about 100 people attending. Students and startup representatives who attended commented that it was a meaningful opportunity to learn directly from Silicon Valley experiences and cases of global commercialization and that it helped broaden their understanding of the process of global expansion.
The director of the KU RISE Project Group, Yoon Seong-taek, said, “This lecture was an occasion for students, researchers, and startups to gain a more practical understanding of the global market and the Silicon Valley scene. We plan to continue expanding global industry-academia cooperation and technology commercialization programs.”
The KU RISE Project Group is pursuing global industry-academia cooperation as a core strategy, in line with the Seoul RISE project’s goal of strengthening the global competitiveness of Seoul. Focusing on Seoul’s strategic industries such as AI and bio, it is expanding cooperative networks with overseas universities, research institutions, and companies and is making efforts to build a foundation for global technology commercialization and the cultivation of future human resources.
