Creating Heritage Press
What first started as a desire to create bilingual books evolved into something greater –a desire to create books that better reflected children’s heritage and culture. Jennifer and Sandra spent many nights meeting over Zoom and going over ideas for their first book. They wanted to create a book that was in English and a second language but how fun would it be to include Korean food and traditions in the books? In the end, they decided to put together a collection of the most basic words in a child’s life customized with elements from Korean culture. One of Jennifer’s favorite pages in her book collection is the one with a chocolate chip cookie (a classic Western dessert) and Korean seaweed soup side by side.
Together they chose to name their company Heritage Press with a vision of providing young children with books and resources that celebrate a love of diverse languages, cultures, and stories of each child.
In April 2021, they published their first Korean-English book series and hope to create more.
Mission Statement
Heritage Press was created with a vision of providing young children with books and resources that celebrate a love of diverse languages, cultures, and stories of each child and their families.
Values
- We value diversity and inclusion and believe that every child should have books available to them that reflect their world, as well as books that show them new ones.
- We value education and aim to create beautiful, high quality, and durable products that teach, inspire, and facilitate language exposure and cultural connection
- We believe in the importance of family, immediate and multigenerational, and truly believe that the best way for a child to learn at a young age is through connection and time spent with family and individuals who love them.
Our Team
Jennifer Hong (Founder)
Jennifer is a co-founder of Heritage Press, mother, and educator who lives in Los Angeles with her 2 children and husband. She has been a public school teacher for 10 years and has worked with children since she was a teen. Growing up, she was raised by her immigrant parents and grandmother who only spoke Korean. It was a way of life for Jennifer to speak Korean at home and English at school. When she became a mother, it was her hope that her children grew up learning her heritage language and culture. As Jennifer looked for bilingual books to read to her children, she found them hard to access and difficult to find. She created Heritage Press in order to fill the need for high quality bilingual books and resources for the growing number of families who are looking for a way to share their language, stories, and culture, even if they are not fluent or speak different languages in the household.
Sandra Lee (Founder)
Sandra has worked as a professional Korean translator for over a decade and her love of children led her to majoring in Child Development when she attended college. When Sandra had the opportunity to live in South Korea for a few years, she became immersed with the culture, the people, and most of all, the Korean language. When Jennifer approached her with the idea of publishing bilingual books for children, Sandra was thrilled to find an avenue that combined her love of languages and children.
🇵🇭 Sheila Ong (Tagalog)
Sheila has always been fascinated by languages and cultures. She loves going on solo travel adventures to experience the way locals go about their daily routines, taking in the beautiful differences and looking into common grounds. Her passion for languages and cultures, her very own Tagalog (Filipino) at the forefront, is one of the tools that support her craft as a translator.
🇧🇷 Cibeli da Rocha Hirsch (Portuguese)
Cibeli lives in Brazil and works as a professional translator 2010. She is a mother of one girl.
Currently living in Brazil, she has studied and worked in China, Spain, the US and Germany.
She has been an avid reader since she was a child, and it's a pleasure for her to use her profession to make books understood in other languages and countries.
🇫🇷 Nathalie Chaudun (French)
Nathalie has been a professional English into French Translator since 2012. She has always loved traveling, discovering different cultures and learning languages. Actually, she has been lucky enough to turn her passion into a lifestyle! Serial expat, she spent 15 years abroad and lived in China, the United States and Canada. Born in France, she is passionate as well about her native language. She communicated her interest to her son, who was born and raised in another country, especially through books she translated for him. When she is not traveling, Nathalie enjoys reading, cooking and practicing
yoga.
🇰🇷 Soyeon Jeon (Korean)
Soyeon is a mother of two little twin boys who adore vehicles. As a translator, she buys many children's books to destress after giving birth. However, something interesting happened along the way: she became captivated by these books as they beautifully depict life's raw realities through simple yet heartfelt sentences. Interestingly, it wasn't her sons, but she herself who grew through these readings. She hopes that young readers of Heritage Press's books discover a fertile ground upon which they can step and flourish in their own growth.
🇨🇳 Yunjie Xiong (Simplified Chinese)
Yunjie has worked as a technical writer and translator for 6 years. She has always had a deep passion for reading and language since she was young, and her love for them has grown stronger through her international experiences studying and working in China, Germany, and the United States. She enjoys sharing a wide variety of children's books with her own children, believing that reading brings them the joy of exploration, the power of imagination, and the value of lifelong learning.