Noona’s Noonchi®, LLC
Jeanie Y. Chang, LMFT, CCTP
A Licensed Clinician, SpeakerExecutive Coach & Author
Noona’s Noonchi®, LLC
Noona’s Noonchi®, INC
Your Change Provider, PLLC®Hi!
I’m Jeanie Y. Chang!
Jeanie is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. She is an accomplished international speaker, providing keynotes and offers workshops for corporations, community organizations, and colleges addressing the intersectionality of mental health and identity, DEIB and psychological safety, as well as education about topics such as burnout, resilience, mindfulness, stress, and mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, and suicidality. She serves as a subject matter expert on mental health for media outlets around the world.
Jeanie is the Founder and CEO of Noona’s Noonchi®, LLC, a global wellness company created out of her global social media influence as Noona’s Noonchi – a clinician, speaker, and coach who deep dives into K-Dramas from a mental health perspective. Noona’s Noonchi®, LLC provides mental health education and resources for organizations around the world. It is also a global tour operator, offering K-Culture tours including K-Drama and K-Pop sites, cultural hands-on activities, and wellness experiences. In addition, Jeanie is also an executive coach , external faculty for McKinsey & Company and a DEIB advisor for business and corporate leaders. Jeanie’s book with Wiley Publishing titled, “How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life: Powerful Lessons on Belongingness, Healing, and Mental Health” was released with a strong, global response on May 7, 2024.
Jeanie is also the Founder and CEO of Your Change Provider, PLLC®, a clinical practice founded on solutions and her unique, trademarked framework Cultural Confidence®. Her Cultural Confidence® program provides psycho-education in all sectors from corporate to schools. She has presented her trademarked curriculum for many corporations such as Google, J. Crew, Microsoft, Mondelez International, and the NFL. She has also spearheaded her program for non-profits including the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), the Council of Korean Americans (CKA), The Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (SASE), and the National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP).
Jeanie has specialized training in grief, trauma and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Her expertise includes intergenerational mental health, workplace mental health, and K-Dramas for mental health. She followed a calling in the field after a diverse career path, starting as a broadcast journalist in Washington, DC in the ’90s, then attending business school. Her work in the corporate sector includes C-level business operations, marketing, public relations, and client success management.
Jeanie is an active volunteer in the AAPI community. She serves as Board Chair of Asian Mental Health Collective (AMHC) and is a facilitator for the Council of Korean American’s Network of Korean American Leaders (NetKAL) program. In 2019, Jeanie created the Self-Care & Wellness program for NAAAP, and founded her own non-profit organization in 2020 called, Authentic Self-Care & Wellness, Inc. which promotes mental health research.
For her own self-care, Jeanie enjoy watching K-Dramas and traveling with her husband of 26 years. They are the proud parents of four children ages 17-23.
Frequently Asked Questions
Noona’s Noonchi LLC
A global wellness, media and tourism company headquartered in U.S.
Noona’s Noonchi Inc.
It’s a global wellness, media, and tourism company established in Seoul, S. Korea in 2023
Your Change Provider, PLLC®️
An interdisciplinary therapeutic practice founded on a solution-focused approach and Cultural Confidence®, a unique framework that is rooted in a state of being and intentional living. The purpose is to engage clients for change through finding solutions and embrace Cultural Confidence® which promotes diversity, equity, and inclusive practices in corporate, community, and colleges. The hope is to be healthy and happy in all aspects of your life.
Solution based model (providing clients with K-Drama to solve a solution in mental health)
– Having something relatable to compare to something serious to be able to connect the idea
– Hence Your Change Provider LLC
It was all happenstance. I was in a difficult family therapy session between a mother and teenage daughter and decided to lighten the mood by suggesting they watch a K-Drama episode for ‘homework.’ The episode was from a K-Drama, titled Reply 1988 where it showed a parent-child relationship that I wanted them to see as an example of what they were experiencing. I only assigned them one episode, but they came back and watched the entire series and they were changed forever.
After that, I brought K-Dramas into my workshops and support groups and found people related to the stories and characters that it made easy for them to talk about in a way that it wasn’t about themselves. Mental health is already hard to talk about so when you have a story to show and to make your point and not make it about the person, it’s easier to talk about. K-Dramas portray stories and characters with themes that are universal and I brought them into my work to promote more conversations about mental health.
I launched Noona’s Noonchi in December 2020 after being encouraged by college students to house my content on YouTube. I had consistently been using K-Dramas in my work at that time, in virtual mental health support sessions since there was still a global lockdown. I had more content than I knew what to do with so it made sense to launch Noona’s Noonchi on social media.
I knew I wanted to use ‘Noonchi’ (눈치) in my title since noonchi is a part of my daily life. It’s the unique Korean concept of social and emotional intelligence which is a huge part of my work. Noonchi is about gauging what’s going on around you including with clients, followers, colleagues, and understanding how they may be feeling. It’s also about what your gut instinct is telling you. Noona is what boys or men refer to their older sisters or older girl friends and it sounded catchy with Noona so Noona’s Noonchi was born.
Noona’s Noonchi has become a global community that promotes belongingness through conversations surrounding how K-Dramas have benefited our mental health.
In the early days, people were quite amused. This is well before Squid Game made K-Dramas go viral. They didn’t understand how K-Dramas could benefit your mental health and there are still some skeptics out there. But now I tell folks I have a book on How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life and that K-Dramas are a tool in helping us take care of our mental health and provide life lessons in the stories and character development. These days, I’m getting less questions about how the two tie in together, and more about I would love to hear more about your work and how K-Dramas do help with our mental health.
As a corporate speaker on workplace mental health, about 70% of my talks now include K-Drama clips. It makes for a great conversation , most importantly promotes belongingness in the community or organization which leads to transformative change.
These tours were curated to invite K-Culture lovers from Jeanie’s community and from across the world, to embark on a journey to learn more about Korean history, K-trends, K-Food, and K-Pop, as well as immersive cultural experiences through visiting iconic sites and K-Drama locales. Jeanie also hosts special K-Drama and mental health sessions during the tour and invites a guest speaker from the K-Content industry to address the group. This 8 day tour across S. Korea is a valuable touring experience and an opportunity for tour participants to discover more about themselves.