Krista Goon
KRISTA GOON
“I started writing stories when I was 9 after reading my first Enid Blyton. My dad was an English teacher too so it was natural that I took to the language the way I did. Everything that I’ve done in my life has revolved around communication because to communicate well is to impact and influence.”
Helping entrepreneurs with Storytelling & strategy
She started writing stories and poems in her childhood as a way to express herself and decades later, communicating with confidence has become her strength and unique ability.
She leverages her strength to help clients create compelling messages, copy and content for their websites and marketing. Besides being an entrepreneur, she is also an author, podcaster, speaker, trainer and marketer. She has also been invited to moderate panel discussions and facilitate workshops.
When her friends were playing with Barbie dolls, she was honing her skills by learning how to type on a secondhand typewriter at 11. She started sending her articles to The Star to be published. When she turned 16, she decided she wanted to become a copywriter.
She furthered her studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Communications with a major in Journalism. In 2004, Krista returned to her alma mater to study for her Master’s degree in English Language and Linguistics.
After completing her Master’s degree, she decided that the corporate world didn’t fit her free spirit personality. She joined Nic in the web design business and directed her energy towards helping Redbox Studio clients with their content strategy, content planning and content production.
She didn’t know anything about website copywriting when she first joined the business in 2004 but over the years, she not only mastered website copywriting but also learnt SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), web design, digital marketing, branding, strategy and more.
Together with Nic, she wrote and published their book, Web Wisdom in 2016. The book is currently being revised for a reprint this year.
Today, she is involved in consulting, speaking, moderating, podcasting and teaching besides helping Redbox Studio clients share their best stories online.
She is also the host of Redbox Studio’s FB Live sessions and her own Womenpreneur Asia podcast. (Her podcast has reached a milestone 100 episodes as at February 2024. Check out Episode 100 where she is interviewed by a friend about how she conceptualised her podcast.)
“My forte is in sharing stories about what businesses do best. It starts with having empathy, being curious and writing with heart so that others who read the story will be more open in doing business with you. This is what copywriting is about – giving people a chance to know, like and trust you. The copywriting and website development work that we’ve done not only shares our clients’ stories but helps to differentiate them too,” Krista says.
“People need to respect content because content is powerful and persuasive when done right. The right stories can influence people and help businesses market better!”
Co-Founder of WomenBizSENSE
What do you do when you can’t find a group to meet your needs? Well, you set one up!
Krista co-founded WomenBizSENSE in 2006, an association for women entrepreneurs with Josephine Yoong. It is still Penang’s most active women organisation to date. Her co-founding of a non-profit organisation to support women in business led to her nomination for the Great Women Of Our Time Awards in 2008 organised by The Malaysian Women’s Weekly magazine.
“I’ve always been involved with women’s rights; as an undergraduate I used to write about women’s empowerment issues,” Krista says.
In 2009, after meeting the founder of the Pixel Project, Regina Yau, she spearheaded Redbox Studio’s pro bono involvement in the design and development of the international website for The Pixel Project – a global campaign aimed to raise awareness about violence against women.
The Accidental Entrepreneur
She calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur” because she embarked upon entrepreneurship because she didn’t enjoy working for others. It felt too restrictive for her free spirit.
By growing Redbox Studio’s visibility and results, she was demonstrating to their clients that it was possible to become smarter and effective at marketing.
She began to speak in public events about using websites for marketing beginning 2006. What makes her different is her authentic ability to connect with audiences while offering highly valuable and practical content.
For the past 20 years, she has spoken to thousands of entrepreneurs, students and employees at events such as:
- 2006 & 2007 KDU College – Speaker
- 2008 Penang Tech Conference – Speaker
- 2011 Global Entrepreneur Week – Panellist
- 2012 MAD Incubator DARE Biz Start – Panellist
- 2012 USM Industry & Community Advisory Panel – Speaker
- 2014 Penang Skills Development Centre Women’s Forum – Moderator
- 2015 Penang Institute Women & Work Forum, Panellist
- 2015 The Incitement, Speaker
- 2016 Piktochart -WebCamp, Speaker
- 2016 INTI University College – MBA class – Speaker
- 2016 Women Entrepreneur ROCK Day – Organising Committee & Moderator
- 2016 Women Entrepreneurship Seminar (under YB Yap Soo Huey/Pulau Tikus) – Speaker
- 2017 Penang Women Chamber of Commerce – Keynote speaker
- 2017 Malaysian Catholic Campus Students’ Day – Speaker
- 2017 Women Entrepreneur Night (Scoopoint) – Speaker
- 2018 KDU Best Business Competition – Judge
- 2018 Startup George Town – Mentor & Speaker
- 2018 Women In Economy Conference – Organising committee & lead facilitator
- 2018 Startup Stories – Panellist
- 2019 MBA class, INTI University College – Guest lecturer
- 2019 Ecommerce Discussion, Women Netpreneur – Moderator
- 2019 Women leadership workshops for Jawatankuasa Pembangunan Wanita & Keluarga – Facilitator & Module Creator
- 2019 Women leadership workshops for Majlis Pengurusan Komuniti Kampung (MPKK) – Facilitator
- 2019 Training of Trainers for MPKK under Penang Women’s Development Corporation – Trainer
- 2019 Changing Faces Women’s Leadership programme by East-West Center, Hawaii – US scholarship recipient & sole Malaysian representative
- 2019 Women on Boards discussion, Gals With LEI, Hawaii – Moderator
- 2019 WomenBizSENSE Business Mentoring Programme – Mentor
- 2020 – International Association of Business Communicators (Online Event) – Presenter
- 2020 – 2021 Penang Women Entrepreneur Mentoring Programme – Mentor & Programme Advisor
- January 2021 – Virtual Training for Real Estate Agents (CPD Programme) organised by G Institute of Real Estate Sdn Bhd – Trainer
- March 2021 – Workshop for single mothers by Circle of Hope Foundation – Speaker
- March 2021 – International Women’s Day event by Lean In Penang – Panellist
- May 2021 – WomenBizSENSE Virtual Forum: Marketing In the New Norm – Panellist
- June 2021 – WomenBiz Channel by eBizStart – Speaker
- Sept 2021 – Penang Institute – Panellist
- Sept 2021 – Women Netpreneur Programme – Trainer
- Oct 2021 – INTI University College – Guest lecturer
- Jan 2022 – Universiti Sains Malaysia, NETHICS Workshop – Speaker
- June 2022 – Gorgeous Geeks & SMECorp webinar – Speaker
- June 2022 – Leveraging LinkedIn for Your Business – Trainer
- August 2022 – TalentCorp: Communicate For Impact & Influence – Speaker
- May 2023 – Intel WIN: Grow, Grit, Resilience e-forum – Panelist
- July 2023 – PWDC Workshop: Mothers In The Workforce – Co-facilitator
- September 2023 – Finding That Sweet Spot for Collaboration – Workshop for WomenBizSENSE – Trainer
- October 2023 – Panel session “Scoops, Styles & Skincare: Online Success Strategies for Beauty, Fashion and F&B Brands in the Digital Age” for WE ROCK Day, a women entrepreneurship expo jointly organised by WomenBizSENSE & JCI Pearl – Moderator
- December 2023 – Dare To Dream Big – Panel session for Lean In Penang featuring Nurul Izzah Anwar, Dr Vimi Ramasamy & Rose Kuan – Moderator
- March 2024 – International Women’s Day workshop for a multinational company in Bayan Lepas Free Trade Zone
Empowerment & Leadership Matters
In October 2013, she was among the top 30 women invited to Penang’s first ever Lean In at Penang, a workshop based on the book “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook. She went on to become a facilitator for the second Lean In at Penang workshop at Hard Rock Hotel in July 2014 and a Lean In Roundtable observer in October 2014.
She was privileged to moderate a panel discussion which featured Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir at the Women’s Development Forum organised by the Penang Skills’ Development Centre in September 2014.
She was also a technical committee member for the first ever Women In Economy Conference 2018 organised by the Penang State Government.
Krista is a former board member of the Malaysian chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators and former director of Penang Women’s Development Corporation. At present, she is a member of the Malaysian Association for Facilitators.
Her story and body of work have also been featured in the media. She was interviewed by eHomemakers.net (September 2004), The Malaysian Women’s Weekly magazine (July 2005, August 2009 & September 2012), Guang Ming Daily (March 2011 & July 2012), Malaysian SME (April 2014) and The Borneo Post (January & August 2017), Penang Monthly (April 2021), SAITO Graduate School (March 2022) and Buletin Mutiara (April 2022).
She co-wrote and produced an anthology featuring 24 leadership stories of Penang women that was published by Penang Women’s Development Corporation in June 2022.
Connect with Krista
Business aside, she still writes for pleasure – documenting her soup exploits in her soup blog while musing over life at Mayakirana.com.
Besides English and Bahasa Malaysia, she also speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Taishan and is presently learning Spanish.
In 2016, she co-founded TSN Book Adoption Centre with Nic to prevent good books from being recycled while generating funds for charity. The project has been hailed as a Malaysian success story for other global Tzu Chi chapters to emulate, having raised more than RM500,000 for charity and saving thousands of books from being turned into scrap paper!
She once had 14 hamsters, a parakeet and a calico cat, Margaret. Whenever free, she enjoys crocheting, gardening and reading books by Ken Follett, James Michener and Terry Pratchett.
She is passionate about environmental sustainability and practises as much as possible, a zero waste lifestyle.
Her motto is to stay kind, agile and humble with this quote: “What matters most is who we become when we succeed.”