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Seaon Shin sits in the third row of Levine Hall in the Wu and Chen Auditorium with her three PillPal teammates in the adjoining seats — Lyles Swift, Wyatt Shapiro and Eric Chao. It’s the final round of PennVention, Penn’s annual tech innovation competition that offers over $20,000 worth of prizes. Nearly 100 candidates submitted proposals, and PillPal is one of the eight finalists.
The first group takes the stage, and Seaon watches the slideshow from the edge of her seat with taut shoulders. She’s on deck to pitch her brainchild, PillPal, a smart, multi-pill dispenser, to the seven judges. She adjusts her hair a few times and settles on a low ponytail before heading to the podium.
“Last semester, [my product design class was] talking about applying smart technologies to dumb objects,” Seaon says from center stage. “And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fascinating if you could apply a smart nanoscale to a pill dispenser, and be able to connect with people far away?’”
Seaon opens her presentation with the story of her mother, Yunsun, who lives in Dubai and has been battling an autoimmune disease for 20 years. Yunsun inspired Seaon to create PillPal.
Because the PillPal device syncs with a mobile app, it would allow Seaon to keep track of her mother’s medical adherence. Juggling numerous medications often leads to unintentional neglect and mix-ups, a problem for 75 percent of Americans. That adds up to about $4,000 in wasted medicine per patient per year — a $300 billion cost for the U.S. government. PillPal aims to reduce these expenses by sending notifications to your phone reminding you when and how to take your medication.
But most importantly, PillPal is a source of encouragement. The mobile app allows friends and family all over the world not only to monitor a loved one’s medical performance, but also to send supportive messages or videos. Even the devices’ sleek, cylindrical shape is more encouraging than a standard orange pill bottle, which Seaon believes symbolizes disempowerment and sickness.
“We imagine and envision a world where taking medicine is an empowering experience,” Seaon says, concluding her PennVention presentation. “And we believe that PillPal ... can change the way we take medicine.”
A GLOBAL BEGINNING
Seaon is all about youth empowerment. Back in her room on Pine Street, she explains that her passion for social impact started before PillPal — even before Penn.
While growing up in Indiana, Seaon’s neighbors introduced her family to the Baha’i faith. Founded in 1844 in Persia, Baha’i is a modern religion based on the unity of all people and beliefs.
Over the years, Seaon’s entire family converted from Christianity to Baha’i. “The main driving factor was the focus on education and nonjudgment,” she said. Baha’i champions education and service — fertile ground for Seaon’s own curiosity. Through Baha’i, understanding and improving humanity became central to her childhood.
“They believe that religion should be progressive, which I really like,” Seaon says. “If humans are progressive, then why shouldn’t religion [be]?” Although she moved around a lot as a child — from California to Indiana to New Mexico — Baha’i ideals remained the framework for her outlook on life.
In 2003, Yunsun had to go to Seoul for various treatments. Seaon gave up her last year of junior high and homeschooled herself through eighth grade so she could care for her mother through this rigorous process.
“One day coming back from the treatment, wherever I [looked I saw] some beautifully-made origami objects with a message,” Yunsun recounted. “She thoughtfully made them and placed them in various locations in Grandma’s house, thinking that it [would] give me some space to smile and relax. Whenever I think of that situation, my heart is filled with warm energy blissful and tearful. She was 14.”
At one point, Seaon’s parents wanted to go back to Korea, but Seaon and her sister Hayon pleaded against it. “I could not survive the education system. I would die there,” Seaon said, laughing. “I was like, ‘Please don’t go.’ And then they found a happy medium and were like, ‘Oh we’ll stop in the middle of the desert’”— the desert being Dubai. Yunsun got a job teaching graphic design at Zayed University, and the family moved there in 2007.
MINDING THE GAPS
Although she loves the fast-paced multiculturalism of Dubai, Seaon was disillusioned by the socioeconomic discrepancies — 12-year-olds riding limos to their birthday parties contrast with the poor public schools of the city. “It’s sometimes a little bit hard to center yourself in terms of finding a spiritual and material balance,” she said.
The feelings subsided when Seaon found a passion in service projects. Through community and environmental work, “I discovered a sense of inner peace and identity,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, if I could share this with other young people, we could together grow and build this community.”
But many youth struggle to discover what matters to them, let alone know how to pursue it. Despite Dubai’s affluence, the city lacks any sort of structure geared toward fostering innovation.
The Global Youth Empowerment Movement aims to fill that gap. GYEM is Seaon’s social enterprise based in Dubai that promotes self-discovery and entrepreneurship. Through workshops designed by educators, life coaches and students, participants gain the tools and networks to develop their ideas. Seaon deferred her entry to Penn one year in 2010 to co-found this nonprofit organization with her mother. Yunsun loved being a mother-daughter “power couple.”
“We all want to be doing something meaningful with our lives,” Seaon said. “I think that’s a pretty universal sentiment. It’s not that [the youth] don’t want to do something meaningful, it’s they don’t know how. So for us, it’s if we can give young people the tools, then maybe we could inspire them.”
Seaon took a second gap year last year to develop the company and managed to raise over $250,000 for GYEM — $50,000 of that came from a contract with Pepsi to run a workshop for 200 underprivileged kids.
Despite her success, Seaon’s age provokes skepticism in adults who don’t take her seriously. “GYEM was one of the best communities of youth I’ve worked with,” says Hayon Shin, Seaon’s younger sister and Creative Director of GYEM. “Unfortunately, being youth also meant that having to deal with older people and their outdated and rigid ways was a pain.”
That is not the case in the GYEM office, where Seaon and Suzan Shedid, the operations manager of GYEM, have been working together for four years. Shedid admires Seaon for the way she motivates her colleagues to create a productive, energetic work environment. She knows how to get what she wants — at the end of the day, that’s what GYEM is all about. She’s “not your traditional colleague,” says Shedid. “She’s outgoing, likes connecting with people’s interests and knowing their story. In one word: empathic.”
“We all want to be doing something meaningful with our lives. I think that’s a pretty universal sentiment."
-Seaon Shin
AT PENN, AND BEYOND
If it wasn’t for Wharton professor Katherine Klein, Seaon might not be back at Penn now. Klein has been a close mentor to Seaon since they met her freshman year during a management work-study. During Seaon’s second gap year, she was torn in deciding whether to return to Penn. Though she was eager to build more products and companies, she understood the benefits of earning a degree and wanted to rejoin her friends.
Seaon will graduate at the end of this semester so she can return to work as soon as possible. She will have completed all of her credits for her management, entrepreneurship and innovation major in three years. To do so, she has to take seven classes this semester. “But I don’t go to a lot of them,” she said, laughing.
When she’s not in class, she’s Skyping GYEM colleagues in Dubai at 4 a.m., pitching PillPal to pharmaceutical companies, developing a Wharton Social Impact Initiative Certificate or piloting PennPurpose, a spin-off of GYEM that will offer workshops tailored to Penn life. Seaon hopes to implement them into New Student Orientation.
College freshman Joebert Rosal participated in one of the workshops and found the experience to be invaluable. “The biggest take away came from a quote in a Ted Talk we watched by Simon Sinek: ‘People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.’ This quote helped me to realize that what I do has to be authentic and that when that happens, people better understand and are willing to help you achieve goals.”
To Seaon’s suprise, PennPurpose even appeals to seniors. “They want to do it now too because they’re at that transitory point,” explains Seaon. “[From] high school to college, everything changes for you. Then once you’re in the working world, you don’t have these massive shifts anymore. There’s not a lot of time for you to actually stop and reflect like we have this time now.”
All of these workshops are a by-product of Seaon’s ability to listen. Colleagues, friends and family members alike praised her ability to step back, listen and think about methods of improvement.
For College senior Brennan Cusack, Seaon’s communication is contagious. “In a pre-professional university culture, your role as a part of a greater community can get lost in a drive to support only individualistic interests,” he said. “Being friends with Seaon has kept me thinking how I can combine my interests and skills with a responsibility to make the world a better place.”
That’s exactly what Seaon plans to do after she graduates. “I love building things. I love creating,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of pain in the world. It really upsets me, and I want to have tools and capacities to be able to be fix things when I see them, work with local people, share knowledge across continents, across cultures. I want to be doing that wherever I am.”
“Being friends with Seaon has kept me thinking how I can combine my interests and skills with a responsibility to make the world a better place.” sentiment."
-Brennan Cusack, College Senior
