AAPI Heritage Month: Jenny Poon, Entrepreneur and owner of CO+HOOTS

It’s Asian American Pacific Islanders History month and joining us is 2016’s Phoenix Business Person of the Year, Jenny Poon, who talked to us about being an entrepreneur and her involvement in the local Asian American community.

Why is AAPI History Month important to you?

“We get to really delve into the history of Asian Americans, which has not been the case for a long time, or even consistently. So it’s recognition, recognition of all the work that our ancestors have done, to bring us to where we are today,” Poon said.

And what is your business, CO+HOOTS?

“We’re really more of an entrepreneur center. So anyone who wants to start a business, thinking about starting a business, is exploring that or growing your business, you can come through our doors, and we’re kind of the welcome mat for entrepreneurship, anything from starting to growing and scaling. We have office spaces, we do a lot of entrepreneur education and small business education, and then network resources, anything that you need to help your business grow,” Poon said.

Why did you start this business?

“It’s my baby, founded in 2010, co working is a pretty common thing now really just share real estate. I built it with the goal of helping entrepreneurs really to be able to grow, I come from a family of entrepreneurs and small business owners, I  just saw how difficult it is to really find the resources to grow when you’re not connected to networks or don’t have so come from generational wealth where you have, you know, experts, you can you can just call a family member. So that’s what really harbored it is helping our underrepresented community as well as entrepreneurs that are just trying to figure it out,” Poon said.