SUNY Korea

"Write the Life You Want”: James Rhee on Agency and Kindness at SUNY Korea 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. Rhee, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law and the former Executive chairman who led the celebrated turnaround of Ashley Stewart, framed the talk around a simple tension: the world is changing faster than our ability to feel in control. In moments like this, he said, people chase perfection, outsource judgement to leaders or smartphones and forget their own authorship. What is Agency? “Agency means you are not a puppet, you choose, you act, you own the outcome,” he explained. True agency blends autonomy, competence, connection, and trust. To visualize this balance, Rhee offered his signature red helicopter metaphor. A helicopter is loud and crashes more often than a plane, but it can move in six directions and, crucially, it can hover. Having agency does not mean being the best at everything, but rather, being balanced. He added, “The best pilots make constant micro adjustments,” an image for how agentic people lead through times of uncertainty. 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. Written by Student Reporter, Onyinyechi Achi (onyinyechi.achi@stonybrook.edu) October 2, 2025