Lisa S. Yu is the founder and CEO of GēnLab, a selective brand incubator supporting purpose-led entrepreneurs to build sustainable global brands. Lisa is a digital marketing specialist, entrepreneur, and CEO, combining her business acumen and Chinese-German heritage with a passion for cosmetics and beauty. She has worked with some of the world's biggest brands (L'Oréal, Lancôme, and Clarins) and brought over 35 German brands into China.

Lisa is German-born Chinese and grew up in Hamburg, but spent much of her childhood in China. From a young age, she developed an understanding of both countries – the similarities and the differences. As a result, she has an intuitive knowledge of what drives brands with global success and local appeal—and it takes more than translating a slogan. It requires a brand philosophy and a sense of art.

With years of marketing expertise under her belt, she shifted focus when COVID-19 hit in 2020. She saw friends lose their businesses and the devastating toll that took on their families. With other looming disasters like climate change and resource scarcity on the horizon, she realized she had to do something. Sure, she could pick up trash from the beach in her spare time, but was there a way she could direct her expertise towards a more moral purpose? There are many ways to contribute to the planet's well-being, but sustainable brands are the only answer in the consumer products industry.

After researching a multitude of boutique sustainable brands across China, Lisa noticed a similarity: they all lacked the resources to grow. The lack of capital made them vulnerable to disasters like COVID-19 and made it hard for them to expand, robbing the world of the potential good such brands could spread. If only a company could support these small businesses and grow them into sustainable global brands. GēnLab was born.

GēnLab is a selective brand incubator supporting purpose-led entrepreneurs to build sustainable global brands. It is the ultimate realization of Lisa's previous experience in global value-based marketing with her values and passion for benefiting the planet. GēnLab provides a unique blend of capital resources, digital marketing tools, and branding expertise – all geared around the mission of giving consumers more sustainable choices while making the world a better place. Despite being only a year old, GēnLab has already raised 1.3 million euros in seed funding and is valued at 13 million euros. In addition, they have already onboarded two multimillion-euro brands: Zeya (4.7 million euros) and Alya Skin (22 million euros).

Lisa's work is globally recognized, and she has delivered keynote speeches at many summits and events, including ECV International and the OMR Festival.

Lisa, always striving to learn something new, holds a double MBA from B.I. Norwegian Business School and Shanghai Fudan University. Her research focused on Chinese consumer brands going global.

As she traveled between China and Germany, she became fascinated by brands that had succeeded in both countries, especially how they adapted their marketing for each region. This fascination stayed with her, and after earning her degree in Marketing from Lancaster University, she moved to Shanghai to help European brands expand in China. Following a successful run as a Marketing Executive in Clarins Group, she became a Digital Project Manager at the global leader in beauty, L'Oréal. In her first year, she gained international recognition for her transformation of the company's KOL management system, leading to her promotion as the youngest ever Country Head of Social at age 25, responsible for spearheading digital marketing strategy across China. Her modern approach resulted in L'Oréal securing five of the top six spots on the China Digital Love Brand Index, up from two.

Having spent over five years at L'Oréal, Lisa left in 2018 to become Vice-President of Genuine German, a one-stop collaborative partner for China market entry. She worked with a range of German companies, strategizing, executing, and managing their brand expansion in China. Leading the Beauty and Marketing divisions, she proved her capabilities to scale brands, with clients Essence and Catrice achieving +216% growth. As a result, the company is now serving over 10 FMCG brands entering the China market and is a strategic partner of McKinsey.