Toronto Global

Talking about Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Spotlight on Catherine Lee

Catherine Lee — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 12:57:00 +0000

Tell us about yourself and your role at Toronto Global.

My name is Chin Nyong Lee but I go by Catherine Lee. Many people misunderstand my first name to be Chin and middle name to be Nyong but my first name is only complete when the two are together. I am a Senior Advisor on the investment attraction team, looking after the Asia market. I support Asian companies expanding to the Greater Toronto Region.

I provide my clients with information and make sure our region is on their radar when they consider expanding overseas. I try to do everything in between to ensure that they have peace of mind when coming to Canada because I understand how difficult it could be when starting anything in a new place. I have been in this role for five years – time flies!

What do you love most about your job Catherine Lee?

Working at Toronto Global means always pushing yourself to educate yourself. The world is constantly moving, and the work here needs you to stay up to date with the latest current affairs and industry changes. This is what I like most about the job, not to mention getting to work with my forward-thinking clients who always seek to solve challenges ahead of their journey – which is where I can help.

What is a common problem that you help clients/people solve?

I help my clients see our region and Canada from an unbiased perspective. As an Asian-Canadian, I am familiar with some of the most prevalent stereotypes Canada has and I understand my clients’ concerns over them. From doing business to having a sustainable life in Canada, I help them navigate our region in the most efficient ways possible.

Tell us what equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) means to you and why it’s important.

To me, EDI means everyone gets the same opportunity to be seen and heard without any labels attached. It is important because it is a part of basic human rights that everyone have equal opportunity.

What is your approach to bridging cultural differences with international companies hoping to come to Canada?

I am an Asian-Canadian myself, and I believe my ethnic background and life experience of growing up in Korea and studying in China has helped me tremendously to connect with my Asian clients in depth. Many of them find me as an accessible resource, who can be empathetic to their concerns. Being able to hear and understand the clients’ thoughts is the first step of my job and is always the beginning of any project that expanded to our region successfully.

How have you made use of a hybrid work environment?

I am probably the one who benefited the most from the hybrid work environment, as my work hours are not typical. Before COVID, when we were working in the office five days a week, I often worked overtime as I had calls with my clients anytime between 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., after I completed my regular nine to five office work. Now that work is hybrid, I am more flexible with my daily matters outside the office, it has improved my physical and mental health a lot.

Tell us about a family/cultural tradition or celebration that you look forward to.

When I (Catherine Lee) was young, I always looked forward to January 1^st because when the new calendar year came, every Korean got one year older. This tradition was officially cancelled by the Korean government as of June 2023, as it was considered outdated and made all Korean people feel older than the rest of the world. As an adult, I am not as excited to get a year older on January 1^st – quite the opposite, actually – but I always enjoy the Korean new year traditions such as having tteokguk (Korean rice cake soup) and wearing hanbok (Korean traditional clothing).

Christmas is a big celebration in Canada, so as a Korean-Canadian household we get to celebrate Christmas then the new year within a week of each other. We also celebrate the Lunar New year, called seollal, which is often a month after January 1^st. So, from the end of December to early February, our family and community are in a constant festive mode!

Where/what is your favourite place/memory in the Toronto Region, and why?

I (Catherine Lee) love the Trinity College quad at the University of Toronto. This is where I lived, studied, and made memories with friends. My engagement photos were taken there as well. There are so many hidden spots only the students know on the University of Toronto campus, and they all make great places to take strolls, all year round. Many people don’t know that the UofT has its seven distinctive colleges – they are truly an urban oasis in the centre of busy downtown Toronto!

How many languages do you speak Catherine Lee?

I am pretty sure I can survive anywhere speaking English, French, Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin.

Tell us about your family/children/pets Catherine Lee.

I am a newlywed as of last month, so I just made my own family! My husband and I have two cats, named Lemon and Dalkomi (aka Komi). Lemon is a flame point Siamese cat, who’s been raised like a prince since he was a kitten. Lemon’s big (13lbs) and very spoiled. Komi is half the size of Lemon who was once belonged to the streets, so she knows how to fight. I (Catherine Lee) brought two cats into my marriage and my husband didn’t mind at all, although he knew nothing about cats before dating me.

My husband is a living example of Toronto’s technology industry – he is a machine learning engineer and the CTO of his second company he co-founded. So, whenever I have questions about the industry, he is my go-to person who gives me real-life answers. My husband is the most generous, patient, and street-smart person I (Catherine Lee) know.

Tell us something that most people would be surprised to learn about you.

I worked at a daycare in a small city called Saint-Lin–Laurentides in Quebec. It was a long time ago, and I was probably the only Asian person the kids ever saw in real life back then. In those days, I had a passion for French, and went to French speaking competitions and such as the school district rep. Catherine Lee was almost minored in French Language during my undergrad, but it was too much on top of my double majors.

What’s your personal mantra or favourite quote Catherine Lee?

Just do it! I am a generalist and have so many interests, maybe too many. If I didn’t live by the quote, I wouldn’t have done what was considered quite random in my life such was working in Quebec or studying in Beijing. All the things that I “just did” for my genuine interests and passion made me who I am today.

Want to learn more about Catherine Lee’s work with Asian companies? Check out our Korean landing page. If you want to learn more about Catherine Lee or Toronto Global, feel free to contact us.

AIMMO Chooses York Region As Its New North American Location For Its Connection To The AI Industry

Catherine Lee — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:24:00 +0000

AIMMO, one of the world’s leading AI Data companies, has launched its first Canadian office in York Region’s City of Markham. AIMMO, originally based in Seongnam South Korea, is entering global markets with recent North American and European expansions. AIMMO offers a broad range of AI services and chose the Toronto Region for its booming AI and tech industry.

In collaboration with KOTRA (Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency), Toronto Global worked closely with AIMMO in securing its new North American headquarters. We sat down with Head of Global Sales, Doyle Conan Chung, and Business Development North American Team Lead, Dan Jongho Baek, to learn more about AIMMO’s services and exciting plans for the future.

Q: Can you tell us more about AIMMO?

AIMMO is an AI Data Company founded in 2016. We provide a service that processes AI’s learning data into the form that customers want. AIMMO uses its own data management technology and AI to effectively collect, curate, and process various forms of data such as images, videos, and audio to help companies develop artificial intelligence models.

Here at AIMMO, our services are separated into two categories. The first is an AI data management service called AIMMO DaaS (Data as a Service), which specializes in autonomous driving. AIMMO DaaS is supported by our second category of services, AIMMO GTaaS (Ground Truth as a Service), which collects, curates, and processes large amounts of training data that is difficult for companies to manage directly and provides software for customers to use.

AIMMO is currently focusing on global expansion with offices in the UK, Canada (North America), Vietnam and Japan. We have recently been successful in a bid to work on UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) projects with Europe’s largest automotive engineering and self-driving test and verification infrastructure.

Q: What are your growth and expansion plans for the future?

We have undergone a significant expansion in the past year. AIMMO’s GTaaS achieved about $10 million in revenue with stable revenue generation in 2021. We also established branches in the UK and Japan in 2021 and completed the establishment of branches in North America (Canada) in the first half of 2022.

In Japan, AIMMO has won projects from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Construction Machinery, while AIMMO’s UK division has won prominent autonomous driving and unmanned autonomous driving projects.

We have some significant projects in the works. We have completed project orders for NASDAQ-listed autonomous driving companies in North America and leading AI autonomous driving companies in Europe and North America.

AIMMO’s DaaS (Data as a Service), for autonomous driving which will be a significant offering in the market, will be introduced in the third quarter of 2022. AIMMO DaaS in the field of smart cities will be introduced in the global market in the third quarter of 2023. We have already received inquiries from many global companies and asked them to discuss projects and have started discussing PoC with some automotive giants.

Q: What makes AIMMO unique?

AIMMO’s GTaaS and AD-DaaS make AIMMO unique. We provide a broad range of AI services due to our two separate but complimenting technologies.

AIMMO GTaaS (Ground Truth as a Service)

GTaaS, the core service of AIMMO, the convenient outsourcing service to label large amount of unstructured data for AI models. AIMMO’s Smart Labeling technology can handle data annotation more than five times faster than manual labeling by using its own data processing platform. AIMMO’s built-in quality management system ensures 99.9% annotation accuracy.

With GTaaS, professional annotators can collect learning data and curate, process, and inspect it to meet client requirements. AIMMO’s data experts with diverse and extensive data annotation experience design the most cost-effective project workflow to generate high-quality data.

GTaaS can be applied to several fields. GTaaS services are currently being used for autonomous driving, smart cities, media, defense, and security. Technologies for GTaaS models are supported by complex AI such as: Object Detection (Bounding Box), Semantic Segmentation, Instance Segmentation, Interactive Segmentation, 3D Object Detection, Pose Estimation (Landmark, Keypoint, etc.), Multi-Object Tracking, etc.

AIMMO AD-DaaS (Autonomous driving – Data as a Service)

AIMMO’s AD-DaaS provides optimized data sets for autonomous driving perception, prediction and planning. AIMMO owns autonomous data collection vehicles that support customized high-precision data. The AD-DaaS service supplies data at the customer’s request before the development of artificial intelligence systems. The data generation infrastructure, data storage, and DaaS platform are all organically connected.

AD-DaaS boasts unique technology and infrastructure related to self-driving data collection. AIMMO has a vehicle with sensors that can collect autonomous driving data and is building a growing collection infrastructure for data generation. AIMMO AD-DaaS is a structure in which software for each stage operates as a toolchain.

Q: Why did AIMMO choose the Toronto Region/York Region?

The Toronto Region has a desirable AI industry and competitive costs when looking to operate within North America. It provides access to the AI teams from GM, Magna, Apple, FORD, Amazon, and NVIDIA, and above all, the Ontario Initiative.

“AIMMO chose the Toronto Region because of the access to the autonomous driving industry and the abundance of AI driven connections and talent in the region. AIMMO is ready to help North American AI companies grow rapidly, starting in York,” said Business Development North American Team Lead, Dan Jongho Baek.

Source: Canada’s AI Ecosystem, Research & Innovation (2019 University of Toronto)

Q: How has Toronto Global supported AIMMO throughout this journey?

When AIMMO was preparing to open its Canadian office, we sought guidance on the most ideal area to operate in, considering many different factors. Toronto Global recommended and introduced several locations within the Toronto Region including York Region. We previously had no knowledge of the area and Toronto Global connected us to various representatives, helping us make the final decision to open our office there. Toronto Global also helped us connect with the North American investors and accountants needed for AIMMO. We really appreciate their help.

More on AIMMO

With its transformative supply and licensing models and broad range of services, AIMMO is leading the global enablement of new smart applications to realize automation efficiency in various fields.

AIMMO is redefining how AI can be used and applied to power smart automation. At the heart of AIMMO’s smart automation solution is its exclusive AI-driven approach to the acquisition, curation, labeling, and augmentation of structured, highly accurate training data that is delivered even faster to users through AIMMO’s automated data operations process.

For more information, please visit www.aimmo.ai.