Laurel Skurko Kao is Managing Director of Linc International, founded in 1992. Ms. Kao has an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University. She has held positions as Executive Director, Business Planning & Development at The Este Lauder Companies in New York, in brand-management at Procter & Gamble, France, and in sales management at Yagami-Shinwa Medical in Japan.

In Japan in the 1980's, Ms. Kao developed a reputation as an authority on health and fitness, where she appeared regularly on television and in the press, publishing a syndicated weekly column on health in a leading national news publication, The Asahi Weekly. Throughout the decade, she continued to work between the US and Japan, identifying and adapting business opportunities in the health & fitness industry to the Japanese market, and working with such business leaders as Sony Fitness and StairMaster.

In Europe in the early 1990's, Ms. Kao's work began to incorporate consumer products marketing into her health practice, and added Europe to her business network. She worked in brand-management at Procter & Gamble, France, leading category-wide national sales promotions, and analyzing market research data to create strategic recommendations for household brands. Based on her understanding of the European market and skills in brand-management, Ms. Kao founded Linc International in France, where she began working with clients to identify growth opportunities across national borders and across industries.

In the US in the late 1990's, Ms. Kao became an internal consultant at The Est�e Lauder Companies. She worked with the president and COO in managing key corporate processes during its first year as a public corporation, overseeing operational relationships with several key retailers and assuming chief responsibility for the new product development process across all five corporate brands.

Today, Ms. Kao is the managing director of Linc International, marketing The American Journal of Chinese Medicine and working with other partners to market alternative health. She also maintains her support of entrepreneurial ventures as co-chairperson of the New York Metro Board of Advisors of The National Foundation for Teaching Youth Entrepreneurship.