Chinese women contribute more to the gross domestic product of their country than their counterparts in any other nation in the world. They also account for 57 percent of the total number of self-made female billionaires globally, according to a Hurun Report. However, despite sitting in powerful positions at the helm of multi-million-dollar companies, they still face challenges.

It's these hurdles that Ctrip CEO Jane Jie Sun and Lean In China co-founder Virginia Tan hope to help with at their newly-inaugurated Wonder School for women, which they launched in Beijing on Monday.

Titled "nuying," or heroine in Chinese, Wonder School is described as a "career and entrepreneurship academy dedicated to cultivating a new generation of female talents for the new economy and contributing to women's success."

The school comes at a pivotal time for women, according to Tan. Now that they are demanding and getting their seat at the table, they are discovering new challenges, and no one is helping them to overcome them.

"When you get to this level, what you really need is a lot more work on your personal motivations. What's going to keep you there (in your job)? How will you balance all of those pressures?" she said.

"What kind of culture do you want to build for your team? What kind of culture do you want to build for your company? What kind of team leadership do you want to build? We'll help you to make the right choices, and that is what we want the school to focus on."

'Women need more than inspiration'

Wonder School will open in Beijing and Shanghai. It starts accepting students in August and classes begin in September.

"The idea for the school came out of a realization that women didn't just need inspiration," said Tan.

Her claim is bolstered by the 2017 Women, Work and Happiness: Impact of Women in the Workplace in a Digital Age Report which has found that "as women become more senior, the challenges of managing work and life becomes more prevalent."

"Women need services. They need solutions for challenges they face in their work life, and what you have in the market is a lot of schools and platforms telling women to do this, do that, do this. But no one is teaching women how to make decisions," she said.

"It's not just be a mother, be a billionaire…get married. It should be about when do you make those decisions? How do you make those choices?"

Feedback and first cohort

The school has already garnered a lot of positive feedback, according to Sun, who will be teaching modules in Shanghai when the school opens later this year.

The "boot camp-style," intensive courses will initially be offered to women in director positions and above and address issues such as work-life balance, communication and negotiation skills.

"If you want to build an effective ecosystem, you need to start from the top. So, you will pull in the best resources in the ecosystem. All the senior women first because they can become teachers and mentors to the next generation, just like Jane is," explained Tan.

She said Wonder School is grounded in three core concepts or "academies" - professionals, entrepreneurship and happiness - and four types of "instruments" or tools for information dissemination, including class curricula and coaching.

The school reached out to just under 20 top companies from a mix of industries in China, including foreign-owned companies.

To apply, women need only speak to the human resource department in these companies and provide necessary information as well as what they expect to achieve from the classes.

"We want to make sure that their time is well awarded for the investment they put in," said Sun.

The new generation of talent

"The new generation needs to be diligent, curious, keep up with their study on technology, science, communication skills, leadership skills because our world is moving exponentially each year," said Sun.

Tan agreed. For her, the new generation of talent for the new economy needs to be aware of the opportunities of the mobile age. They don't need to be computer whizzes, but they cannot ignore the phenomenon. They also need to be global in their outlook regardless of their location.

"Local knowledge is not enough anymore," she said. "You have to be innovative… You have to be curious. You have to be able to adapt to new things."

With the school, Tan and Sun are trying to build "a supportive ecosystem for women" that will grow and thrive for generations to come. But first they must help women decide what direction is better for them.