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Influential Leaders

Wei Qi Wong

Co-Founder, Ibupreneur Malaysia
Recognition Year(s): 2025
Category: Community or Social Impact
School: Universiti Utara Malaysia
Location: Malaysia

Summary

An agile entrepreneur with a background in technology consulting, Wong drives environmental sustainability and advocates for the empowerment of women. She is the co-founder and CFO of Ibupreneur, a social enterprise dedicated to cultivating women entrepreneurs in Malaysia. Under Wong’s leadership, Ibupreneur has provided more than 300 underprivileged communities of women with economic initiatives to improve their social mobility. Wong also co-founded Circlepac, a sustainable packaging company that aims to reduce plastic waste in the Malaysian food delivery ecosystem.

Entrepreneurial Impact

An agile entrepreneur and homegrown scholar, Wong holds a Bachelor of Accounting (Information Systems) with honors from the Universiti Utara Malaysia, where she earned her cohort’s Entrepreneurship Award. Prior to her entrepreneurial ventures, Wong worked as a technology consultant specializing in digital innovation. She has successfully led multimillion-dollar business expansion strategies and enhanced both supply chain solutions and digital knowledge management for multinational organizations.

Wong initially co-founded Ibupreneur to combat high rates of Malaysian women falling outside the workforce—42.7 percent according to the Malaysian labor force report in 2024—due to household responsibilities, as is the social norm. To close this gender gap, Ibupreneur’s mission is to empower women to achieve financial independence through home-based activities, such as baking.

The original business model was a platform to connect these women’s talents to a larger network of clients. As demand increased, the challenge became twofold: The enterprise lacked the capital to scale the initiative, and business clients wanted measurable and sustainable impact.

Taking a strategic approach, Wong gathered data from previous engagements with women and realized a need for more upskilling opportunities. With this evidence, she created a two-pronged proposal for the allocation of funds. First, Ibupreneur would diversify revenue streams through the launch of Ibupreneur Academy, offering training workshops to women communities. Second, it would optimize kitchen operations costs.

Under Wong’s leadership, Ibupreneur received 250,000 MYR (nearly 56,600 USD) in funding from the Yayasan Hasanah foundation—the social impact arm of Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia. Not only was Ibupreneur able to empower more than 300 women, but revenue quadrupled per each MYR of funding and costs decreased by 30 percent.

Seizing another opportunity for social entrepreneurship, Wong committed to making an environmental impact through a new venture, Circlepac. During the COVID-19 Malaysian Movement Control Order, she was shocked by the amount of single-use plastics that came with her food deliveries. Wong realized that as many stayed home, their use in takeout and food deliveries increased.

Based in Malaysia, which ranked eighth globally in mismanaged plastic waste and had an annual market growth of 20 percent in food deliveries, Wong saw an opportunity to offer compostable packaging solutions and help Malaysian businesses achieve sustainability goals.

To date, Circlepac has supported more than 400 businesses in adopting compostable packaging, successfully replacing about 2 million pieces of plastic packaging. By expanding Circlepac further, she aims to tackle downstream waste management processes and close the circular economy loop through composting services.

Wong’s strategic entrepreneurship and passion for giving back have earned her multiple recognitions, including TalentCorp Malaysia’s 2023 Citra Madani award, in celebration of Women Empowerment Month, and the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia’s 2021 Best Social Entrepreneurship Project Award. She has also received the honor of being an Association of Southeast Asian Nations delegate, representing Malaysia in the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, and a finalist for the Women of the Future Southeast Asia Award 2021.

Additional Information