St Cross Alumna Selected as a Finalist in Study UK Alumni Awards

St Cross alumna Yeonjoo La (MPhil Development Studies, 2014) has been selected as a finalist in the Study UK Alumni Awards 2022–23 (Business and Innovation Award), which is co-organised by the British Council and the British Embassy in South Korea.

The finalists have been selected because they are “are active in initiating and contributing to innovative or creative new ideas, solutions or business opportunities that have the potential for growth.”

I feel honoured to be nominated as finalist. The University of Oxford had been my dream school for a long time, and I was fortunate to have studied there. Now as an alumna of Oxford, my achievements have been acknowledged by the British authorities – how wonderful it is!

Yeonjoo is the Chief Strategy Officer at TissenBioFarm, a Korean food technology company that she describes as a “multi-disciplinary startup team solving one problem together: making meat without slaughtering animals and tearing down trees.”

With animal agriculture generating about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, Yeonjoo believes a change is needed in the way we eat. She credits her time at St Cross with enabling her to achieve synergy with her colleagues from a wide range of academic backgrounds as they seek to tackle the challenge of making sustainable food by growing animal cells.

“It helped me broaden my worldview by giving me plenty of chances to meet inspiring people from various fields. As a social scientist, I could widen my perspectives by interacting with Fellows in natural science, engineering, law, philosophy, public policy, business, and theology,” she says.

“The College provided me with ample opportunities to meet them through College lunches, dinners, social events, and academic events. I learned how different disciplines explain the mechanism of the world and solve the world’s big problems.”