Female Cambodian entrepreneur Kimsrun Elida has been selected to take part in the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016 at Stanford University in California next week.
This year’s summit, initiated in 2010 by US President Barack Obama, will be hosted by Obama and will see “more than 700 entrepreneurs from over 170 countries” participating.
The summit will serve as a forum for top entrepreneurs and executives from Silicon Valley to share their experiences and ideas with the emerging and aspiring entrepreneurs from around the world.
Selected by the US Embassy, Elida will be the only participant from Cambodia to attend the summit this year. Currently, this thirty-seven-year-old entrepreneur is a General Manager at Camcona Trading Cambodia.
In a phone interview, she told VOA that she hoped to get “experience, innovative ideas from other companies that I will meet [at the summit],” and hoped she would find potential partners for future business collaborations.
Elida added that, “entrepreneurship contributes and plays an essential role in improving the country’s economy” by creating jobs.
She said that in the past few years “there has been an increasing number of entrepreneurs. Some have even formed an association... Cambodia also has a growing business sector, especially in the food industry and brand-named building materials.”
Elida also plans to share what she learns from the summit with other young aspiring entrepreneurs upon her return to Cambodia.
“The US Embassy has worked with the Asean Young Entrepreneurs Association and when I return I will bring back the experiences I have acquired to share with them.”
