oung Vietnamese businessperson Dao Lan Huong has been selected as one of 15 entrepreneurs to take part in the Australia-ASEAN Emerging Leaders Programme. — Photo australiavietnam.org

Young Vietnamese businessperson Dao Lan Huong has been selected as one of 15 entrepreneurs to take part in the Australia-ASEAN Emerging Leaders Programme (A2ELP).

The event is scheduled to take place in Melbourne and Sydney in March this year.

The list of businesspeople was announced by Australian Foreign Minister Julia Bishop on Friday.

Minister Bishop said the selected entrepreneurs have made contributions to eradicating poverty, improving healthcare and promoting education, technological development and environmental protection.

A2ELP is hoped to promote partnerships among enterprises and organisations and further deepen relations between Australia and countries in Southeast Asia, she said.

Hương is executive director of Weshop Global, which specialises in e-commerce in the United States, Viet Nam, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as Indonesia and Thailand.

While she was a student in 2004, Huong joined PeaceSoft/Nexttech Group – a technological startup enterprise – as its co-founder. She worked to build strategies for the firm, developing it into a strong 400-employee group from only five people. Huong held many important positions in PeaceSoft/Nexttech, and also invested in the Vietnam Investment Club to help young entrepreneurs in startup activities.

A2ELP is designed to create meaningful people-to-people links among entrepreneurs across Asia. It will bring together 10 social entrepreneurs from South-East Asia and five from Australia to take part in a series of innovative learning and development opportunities in 2017.

It will also offer participants a good opportunity to learn from the experiences of Australia’s leading experts in identifying opportunities and dealing with implicit negative impact on their businesses.— VNS