Who is Who
Jingjin Liu is the Founder and CEO of ZaZaZu and The ELEVATE Group, a global voice in women’s leadership, and a former senior executive who broke barriers across Europe and Asia. Known for her bold frameworks on visibility, influence, and power, she is on a mission to impact five million professional women, helping them transform competence into undeniable, strategic leadership.
The Moment the Room Shrunk
There is a moment, quiet and sharp, that becomes a fault line in a woman’s life. For Jingjin Liu, it came in a boardroom where her strategy was solid, her numbers precise, and her preparation flawless. She delivered her recommendations with the calm confidence of someone who had done the work twice over. Yet when the conversation shifted to next steps, the credit drifted elsewhere, landing on a colleague who had repeated her point with more volume than substance. She watched the room nod, not at her, but at a voice the system was conditioned to hear as authority.
Walking out that day, she understood something that would shape the rest of her career. “I stopped trying to earn fairness and started building power.” The realization wasn’t dramatic. It was a line snapping after years of being the only woman, the only Asian, and the only under-35 director in rooms where decisions were often made in conversations she was never invited into.
The sting never fully leaves. It simply becomes fuel.
Foundation: Where the Fire Began
Jingjin’s corporate climb began not in glamour but in factories, operations centers, and supply chain corridors across Siemens and WABCO, where she learned how money moves long before she learned how politics does. Those years were her real MBA. She discovered how influence precedes meetings, how alliances outlast presentations, and how results matter only when they are remembered.
Being the only Asian woman in senior settings forced her to see the game clearly. She understood early that competence without visibility collapses under bias. She built a leadership style anchored in receipts, allies, and narrative clarity. She demanded operational rigor from herself and others. She translated wins into the language leaders respond to: revenue, cost, risk, and customer impact.
And through those years, one belief hardened into truth: “Women aren’t the problem. The levers are.”
Her entrepreneurial instincts sharpened while co-founding ASBO Drives Technology GmbH, a venture that brought modern gearbox technology to rural China. When the company was later acquired by CMEC, it affirmed her conviction that measurable value can transform industries and lives.
Ascent: Learning to Lead in Places She Wasn’t Expected to Be
In the male-dominated automotive world, Jingjin rose as a “Triple-Only,” the only Asian, the only woman, and the only senior director under 35 serving as Global Marketing Director at WABCO. She oversaw portfolios worth hundreds of millions and contributed more than 200 million in revenue growth.
But her rise did not come from blending in. It came from refusing to be overlooked. She prepared rooms before entering them, set her context in writing, and built reputational capital with executives who valued clarity over noise. She navigated comments about appearance, assumptions about ambition, and quiet exclusions that happen in golf-course politics.
She learned an uncomfortable truth: if women do not author their work, someone else will. It is why she teaches today, “The market will not reward the value you hide.”
The Birth of ZaZaZu: The Confidence Beneath Every Voice
ZaZaZu did not begin as a corporate concept. It began as a personal truth. “A woman who cannot claim her body will struggle to claim her voice.” Confidence, for Jingjin, was not a soft skill. It was a muscle built privately and deployed publicly.
ZaZaZu created spaces where women confronted self-limiting beliefs, internalized expectations, cultural conditioning, and the invisible labor that shapes female ambition. The transformations were profound. One participant shared that she left with the desire to dig deeper and let go of old patterns. Another said, “I don’t need to find a man to define my value. I am enough.”
ZaZaZu revealed something essential. Women’s growth was not failing. The systems around them were.
That philosophy reached a global audience when Jingjin took the TEDx stage in Frankfurt with her talk, “Confidence in the Bedroom Leads to Confidence in the Boardroom.” In it, she challenged the audience to confront an uncomfortable truth: power does not begin in meeting rooms, but in how women relate to their own bodies, boundaries, and desires. The talk echoed her core belief that confidence is not cosmetic but structural, and that women who reclaim ownership of themselves are far more likely to claim space, voice, and authority in the world around them.
“Building power is never about permission. It starts with ownership.”
ELEVATE: Power By Design
Where ZaZaZu focused on personal empowerment, ELEVATE focused on structural power. Jingjin built it not to “fix” women but to fix an outdated architecture that was never designed for them. She often says the modern workplace still assumes a man with a full-time partner at home. ELEVATE became the counter-design.
Its tools are unapologetically strategic. Sponsor triangles. Visibility playbooks. Strategic communication scripts. Real-time rehearsal for high-stakes decisions. The goal is simple but revolutionary: close the gap between a woman’s competence and her control over outcomes.
Her clients describe her in vivid, human terms. Dr. Claudia Winkler calls her “a force of nature.” The World Economic Forum praised her for dismantling the myth that good work speaks for itself. Her INSEAD mentees highlight her ability to reveal blind spots before they become costly detours.
Impact: Where Transformation Becomes Contagious
Jingjin’s work has touched thousands, not only through workshops and coaching but through community-building. She is the architect behind one of Singapore’s largest mentoring walks. Leaders call it a movement, not an event, because its purpose is transmission.
As she often reminds participants, “Power does not trickle down. Women pass it hand to hand.”
These mentoring walks have changed careers. Women who entered feeling “steady” left with clarity, language, strategy, and the courage to negotiate new roles. Others found sponsors who amplified their names in rooms where decisions were made. Some simply rediscovered themselves after years of shrinking to fit expectations.
One story she shares often is a woman who finally found the courage to resign from a job that undervalued her. When her previous manager tried to guilt her into staying, she replied, “I’m not leaving you. I’m leaving the version of myself that needed your approval.”
To Jingjin, that sentence is the essence of empowerment.
Motherhood: The Most Honest Classroom
Motherhood deepened Jingjin’s mission. It forced her to question the cultural narratives that ask mothers to disappear inside their roles. She writes openly about this in her Motherhood Diaries, where she challenges the idea that mothers must choose between ambition and presence. Her daughter, she insists, will grow up understanding sovereignty, not modesty. Humanity, not self-erasure.
Motherhood taught her that ambition is not the enemy of care. Silence is.
Vision: A Generation That Does Not Ask for Permission
Looking ahead, Jingjin aims to impact five million women across Asia. She dreams of a generation that does not wait to be chosen, a generation that arrives with receipts, presence, and coalitions. She believes visibility is not vanity but strategy. She believes empowerment is not motivational but structural. She believes women can lead loudly and still be heard.
And she believes one truth above all: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
By living visibly, leading boldly, and refusing to shrink, she makes the impossible visible for those who follow.
