Line of Sight Podcast · Don Heider PhD, Brigit Helms PhD

Promoting Agency for Young Women Entrepreneurs in Myanmar and Beyond With Matt Wallace

·43 min·2 clips

ONOW used chatbots and coach review to reach more than 10,000 businesses in 18 months with nine coaches.

1. Line of Sight Podcast’s “Promoting Agency for Young Women Entrepreneurs in Myanmar and Beyond With Matt Wallace” centers ONOW’s work with young women entrepreneurs in Myanmar, Burma. 2. Karen Rundy, Director of Alumni Solutions at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, interviews Matt Wallace, CEO and co-founder of ONOW, because he built the organization’s model. 3. The episode asks how ONOW moved from in-person training in Yangon to digital scaling across Myanmar and beyond. 4. Matt Wallace says ONOW started in 2012 and became a freestanding entity in 2016 with a business model that sustained it. 5. He says the original program helped young women migrating from villages to cities, often after factory jobs, launch businesses with incubation, finance connections, and two years of coaching. 6. He explains that his first work in Myanmar grew out of English teaching and research into Southeast Asian international politics at the University of Illinois at Springfield. 7. Matt Wallace says Cyclone Nargis killed about 120,000 people and triggered migration from the Delta region into Yangon. 8. He says Yangon added about 3 million people over 10 years, which exposed gaps in jobs and enterprise support. 9. He describes a friend’s sister who moved to Malaysia for work, had her passport taken by an employer, and had to be rescued back to Myanmar. 10. He says that story pushed him toward helping women think about business and income instead of leaving out of desperation. 11. Matt Wallace says ONOW’s first model was a traditional entrepreneurship training center, but it did not understand its target customer well. 12. He says the team learned by talking to customers, iterating, and building a model that responded to demand. 13. He says the typical participant is 18 to 25, starting a first business that may create one or two jobs. 14. He says ONOW is better at coaching and connecting than directly funding businesses. 15. Matt Wallace says Myanmar’s SIM card prices fell from about $2,000 to about a dollar by 2016, making smartphones widely accessible. 16. He says ONOW then used digital tools for financial education and later applied chatbots to entrepreneurship support during the pandemic. 17. He says the pandemic shift let coaches review business-owner data quickly and give individualized support through calls or meetings. 18. He says that model helped ONOW reach more than 10,000 businesses in 18 months with nine coaches. 19. The conversation is reflective and practical, with Karen Rundy pressing on mission, leadership, faith, partnerships, and scaling. 20. People interested in social enterprise, women’s entrepreneurship, and Southeast Asia will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a fast general-business talk may skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded look at how entrepreneurship support can become durable local agency.

It presents ONOW as practical support for young women in Myanmar, especially those moving from village to city and trying to find a way beyond factory work.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for a calm, practical look at how ONOW helps young women in Myanmar/Burma start businesses.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Line of Sight Podcast