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At age 10, Jenny Woo got really good at reading nonverbal social cues.
It was out of necessity: She emigrated from China to Houston, and didn’t speak English. She connected with her peers largely through what she now defines as emotional intelligence, or EQ — watching their body language and listening to the tones of their voices to learn what excited, inspired and angered them.
In the decades that followed, Woo turned her EQ skills into a career at corporations like Deloitte and Cisco, training managers how to better communicate. She spent some time helping run her kids’ Montessori school in Southern California.
While working on her master’s degree at …