20 SEPTEMBER 2012 This article may never have appeared without a series of serendipitous events that began with the late submission of an abstract for the Aquaculture America 2012 conference in Las Vegas. May Myat Noe Lwin, who prefers to be called Noe Noe, sent in her abstract with the same title as this article but it arrived after all the appropriate sessions had been filled. Steven Rawles, the Technical Program Chair, passed it to me because I was hosting a session called Aquaculture Pioneers: Life & Times and Lessons Learned, featuring presentations by six well-known senior scientists with long careers in aquaculture. At first thought, it seems that Noe Noe’s career and record is not comparable to those older and more experienced presenters in the session. By coincidence, I had collaborated on a funding proposal involving Noe Noe and Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF), of which I am Executive Director. Knowing of her work, I was honored to have this dynamic young woman present in the Aquaculture Pioneers session. She is clearly an aquaculture pioneer and has done much to distinguish herself at such a young age. Fortunately space opened up in the session and I was able to accommodate her presentation. Noe Noe was the last speaker of the session, indeed of the whole conference, and she captivated and amazed the audience with her personal story of a young , confident, and determined Burmese woman building a business in Thailand, of entrepreneurship, of seafood commerce, of challenges overcome, and of the people who helped her along the way. “I had not planned to become a crab farmer. It just happened while I was home visiting my family.” And so began the presentation given by May Myat Noe Lwin (Noe Noe) at Aquaculture America 2012 in Las Vegas. Education After finishing secondary school, Noe Noe enrolled in 2000 in Yangon Eastern University in Yangon, Myanmar, graduating with a B.Sc. in Physics in 2003. Following her interest in education, in 2004 Noe Noe began graduate studies for a Master’s degree in Education at Assumption University in Thailand. She also started working as a school teacher at See Phi Naung Japanese International School in Bangkok, Thailand. She was awarded an M.Ed. degree in Curriculum & Instruction from Assumption University, Bangkok, in 2009. Opening an Aquaculture Supply Business During her university years, Noe Noe’s uncle, Mr. Zaw Zaw Naing, worked as a technician at a freshwater prawn hatchery and prawn farms outside the city. On school holidays she would return to Yangon to visit her family. It was during such a visit in 2006 that she happened to talk with her uncle about his prawn farming experiences. He mentioned the difficulties he and other prawn farmers were having in obtaining equipment and other supplies to use on their farms. This planted the seed of a business idea in her mind, which she developed with the help of her uncle and his boss, U Shan Kyi. It was not long before Noe Noe was shopping for supplies and equipment in Bangkok using a list drawn up by her uncle and shipping everything back to him in Yangon; thus, CNN Aquaculture Supply was born. Noe Noe continued to teach at the school while she developed her supply business and her entrepreneurial skills. Eventually, she and her uncle opened a retail store in Yangon. In March 2008, Noe Noe resigned from her teaching position to focus on her business activities full-time, inasmuch as her responsibilities had multiplied considerably. She was now purchasing aquaculture supplies from Thailand, making deliveries to Myanmar, sourcing products and handling sales and marketing in Myanmar (and eventually India and Indonesia), and translating product information from Thai to Burmese. Crab Farming in South Thailand Noe Noe’s interest in the business of aquaculture, specifically crab farming, deepened in 2008. Realizing that she needed to know more about the technical side of farming, she enrolled in a short course on soft-shell crab farming offered by the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) in the Philippines. Successfully completing the course, she decided to set up her own soft-shell crab farm in late 2008. In a bold move, Noe Noe abandoned her career in education to become an aquapreneur, giving up her profession and lifestyle as a teacher in Bangkok to become a crab farmer. She chose to relocate near the town of Ranong, located on the western coast of south Thailand, about 600 km from Bangkok. Ranong is a border town with many people crossing back and forth into Kawthaung, Myanmar. This location would provide her easy access to her business network in Yangon. My Personal Experience as a Burmese Woman Farmer and Entrepreneur in the Aquaculture Industry in Thailand1 May Myat Noe Lwin 2 with Dave Conley 3 May Myat Noe Lwin (Noe Noe), owner of CNN Soft Shell Crab Farm.
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