With the world changing so fast and becoming less stable, it is easy for us to lose our agency. On September 30th, 2025, Global CEO and National Bestselling Author James Rhee, founder of the Red Helicopter and Johnson Chair of Entrepreneurship at Howard University, visited SUNY Korea for a distinguished Seminar on how to reclaim agency and lead with kindness. The event drew distinguished guests from the Incheon Metropolitan Office of Education, local high school teachers, and members of the SUNY Korea community, with opening remarks by the Dean of Academic Affairs.
Additionally, he argued that kindness is not soft; it is structural. “Kindness is an investment in someone’s agency,” he said. It is not direct, not merely “nice,” it creates positive externalities known as goodwill, that disperses in teams and communities. As he succinctly put it: “math + kindness = truth.” In kind environments, ego and fear diminish, brains expand, and creativity rises. That matters in a future where what’s most human – empathy, judgment and “jeong” (정) – will be our advantage.
The talk was threaded with his personal story. Growing up between cultures, Rhee shared how external success once left him feeling less agentic and even less Korean. Reclaiming agency, he said, is often painful and requires courage: confident people ask for help; insecure cultures punish it. Agency is not fear based, and we must be confident and curious. We cannot have agency if we do not trust ourselves, and we cannot be kind to people if we are not kind to ourselves.
He closed with a challenge: “The ultimate act of agency is to write the life that you want. If you can lead yourself, you can lead others. What is your red helicopter story?” Rhee encouraged students to listen to their own inner voice and refuse to let others silence it. The process of linking past, present and future with balance, connection, measurement and goodwill, is the journey of agency itself.
SUNY Korea thanks James Rhee for his impactful seminar and for setting us on a mission to discover our agency and to lead with kindness.
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