Founder's journey - case study

The founder was admitted into the world famous school, Columbia University from a Chinese high school. After work experience in New York as a banker she furthered her study at Harvard University and MIT. With her own wonderful study and work ackground and the successful experience of guiding other children, she can stimulate your child's great ambition.
Earlier Days: Yiting studied hard in English in her high school years. She had a dream of living in the New York City like her role model, Carol, in Growing Pains, a popular TV series in the 90's. As one of the top 3 students, Yiting took her teacher's advice to apply for Columbia University in her last year's high school study.
Preparation: Columbia University is the only school she applied. Nonetheless, the work was still Herculean, from learning about the degree programs to deciding on intended majors. The most challenging thing is to write the required application essays. She had little support other than her parents' colleague who worked abroad for a few years. The financial aid process was a whole black box to her.
Application: All her hard work was not wasted. Yiting was accepted by Columbia with full scholarship including room and board, despite having her application parts lost and replaced... All of a sudden, a new world presented to her, i.e. choosing dorms, new student orientation, visa, … along the fact that this was her 1st time going abroad or even taking an airplane.
Columbia Life: Her college education at Columbia was a lot more fun than expected. She was involved in many extracurricular activities and took the leadership roles early on. She also enjoyed learning to play golf, fencing, and followed a piano teacher for a couple years. Being in New York has the tremendous advantage for the diversity it offers.
UBS Career: Upon graduating with a master's degree in Financial Engineering, Yiting took a job offer in investment banking with the Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Group of UBS. Living in New York has the clear advantage of being close to Wall Street and Midtown, the center of finance. Many long hours were spent helping clients buy and sell companies. She was eager to explore why and how deals happen.
MIT & Harvard: Post her banking career, she followed her passion for entrepreneurship and innovation, Yiting joined the MBA program at MIT Sloan School of Management concurrently with a Master of Public Affairs program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Yiting took 4 months off each summer to work on independent consulting projects around the world. Her interest in education got nurtured during her 3 year at the world's two greatest institutions, Harvard and MIT.
Origin of KCG: At MIT, Yiting met her current co-founder, Zhan Xu. Through many dinner and tea discussions, the KCG model emerged and was immediate put into action back in 2006. Yet, both Yiting and Kent felt need for further professional development. Yiting became a professional management consultant with Booz while Kent joined force with Capital Today, a prominent VC firm. At the end of 2008, when both parties felt it was the right timing to dedicate full-time working on the business. Thus KCG is today.