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As an “architect of time”, Heejin Choi is launching her own media platform to help people spend their time meaningfully
Heejin Choi is an educator, author, and entrepreneur who has worked on sustainable development in urbanizing low- and middle-income countries for over 15 years, both in the private sector and with intergovernmental organizations, like the United Nations.
She joined the 2023 Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change as a Korea Foundation Fellow, as she plans to launch a media platform called Sabbatical Times in 2023.
Sabbatical Times is dedicated to “empowering individuals, organizations, and societies to imagine and shape better futures through rest, contemplation, and growth”.
Heejin sees her role as an “architect of time” to help people spend their time meaningfully. She imagines her vocation as a planner who “looks at futures that should be and helps to shape these futures by mobilizing resources strategically according to a set of times” as well as incorporating a “reminder of beauty” to aid in the power of imagination.
Heejin believes that the media “may be deeply connected to opening new doors to people through ‘a reminder of beauty’, which presents freedom, healing, and the power to imagine.”
During the program, Heejin was a faculty member who held an interactive workshop with participants and actively engaged with them during the two-week program.
To her, this year’s Media Academy theme of Imagining Inclusive and Equitable Futures “was an important moment that reminded us of the importance of imagination… the opportunity to think of a better future together with diverse people was meaningful”.
Reflecting on her experience at the Media Academy, she believes that "Salzburg Global Seminar plays such an important platform role. From the perspective of an entrepreneur trying to pioneer the media field, the Media Academy was a time to network with current and future experts in the field and has become a new community on the new path I am going to take”.
She plans to implement the lessons learned during her experience and “positively return the time I received here to society, especially since I still live in a country where the war has not ended… through Sabbatical Times or some other opportunities, I hope to make a contribution to imagining and creating a better future for the two Koreas and, through that, a better world".
Heejin expressed her deepest gratitude to both Salzburg Global Seminar and the Korea Foundation for supporting her participation in the Media Academy.