Li Yinuo, co-founder of Etu Education, a best-selling author, founder of China's influential self-media account "Nuli Society", and leader of the online Nuo Community.
After completing her undergraduate studies at Tsinghua University, she studied for her PhD at UCLA. She then became a Managing Partner at McKinsey & Company before becoming the Chief Representative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's China Office. During this time, she participated in the 2016 World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. She is a member of the Academic Committee of the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University, and a reviewer for finalists of the Oxford University Rhodes Scholarship application program in China from 2015-2019. She was named as one of the "40 People in 40 Years of China's Reform and Opening-up Returnees" by The Center for China and Globalization in 2018.
Early life and education
In 1978, Li was born in Jinan, Shandong Province. Her mother was a supervisor at a chemical plant in Jinan. When Li was seven years old, her mother was sent to Germany to pursue further studies. When Li was twelve years old, her parents divorced. She began to live with her mother. From her mother, Li learned about hard work and taking responsibility. At the age of eighteen, she entered Tsinghua University's biology department.
Career
In 2005, Li started her career as a consultant at Mckinsey. At that time, she was the only Chinese employee at Mckinsey's Los Angeles office. In 2011, she became a global partner at Mckinsey and was one of the only two partners who graduated from a Chinese university. She was also the first Chinese female partner. Her expertise was in the health industry.
In 2014, Li started a WeChat public account, "Nuli Society," with her husband. Within two and a half years, the account had more than 400,000 followers.
From 2015 to 2020, Li was the Director of the China Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She focused on health, development, and policy.
In 2016, while looking for a school for her child, she realized that both international school and public school systems had faults. Subsequently, she co-founded Etu School, now comprising three campuses around the world.
Starting in 2022, Li has been focused on teaching career workshops through her personal website, yinuoli.org.
Li serves as a trustee of the 21st Century Education Research Institute and as a board member on the Academic Advisory Board for the Schwarzman Scholarship. She was previously a member of the final selection committee of the Rhodes Scholarship in China.
Media influence
In 2014, she founded the self-media account "Nuli Society", which has 1.5 million followers, and has published 1,228 original articles so far, of which 238 articles with over 100,000 readers have been shared by other self-media accounts to reach a further audience.
In 2018 she was featured in People (China) with her college classmate and scientist Yan Ning
In 2018, her speech "Where does the power come from" in the Faces Ceremony of Women's Power received 10 million+ plays.
In 2021 she was selected by Fortune (China) as part of their "China's Most Influential Business Women in 2020 (Future List)"
As of now, there are 10 self-media platforms (covering audio and video) contained within Li Yinuo's brand, which boasts more than 12 million followers. Among these platforms, the leading account WeChat Public account has 1.5 million followers, in addition to 2.8 million followers on LinkedIn.
Education impact
She founded the Etu School in 2016, which is dedicated to exploring innovative education with a global perspective. Currently two campuses operate in Beijing and Guangzhou, China, covering kindergarten and K12 stages.
As a well-known school in China, the Etu School has been reported on by a number of media outlets, including OneMoment Talk, This Thought, and other well-known domestic self-media outlets. These reports on Etu School have reached 5 million+ plays across the internet.
In 2018, Li Yinuo and the teachers of Etu School jointly published the book "School is a place bigger than home", which highlighted the outstanding outcomes of Etu's educational system.
In 2019, Etu School was upgraded to The Etu Education Group. At the same time Li Yinuo founded the Etu Whole Village Online Community, a synchronized online and offline digital iteration built around Etu's innovative education system, to realize the simultaneous and parallel development of school and home education.