Asian American Corporate Women Taking Care of Business
June 29, 2007
Last Tuesday, Asian Women in Business held a panel discussion, entitled “Born to Lead: Corporate Women Trailblazers,” at New York City’s Time Warner Center. Over 150 Asian businesswomen, and a few men, heard stories about race and gender relations at work, dealing with male-dominated industries, climbing the corporate ladder, and the balance between work and family from four of the nation’s foremost businesswomen and CNN correspondent Alina Cho, who also moderated the event.
“We’re highlighting Asian women in business who have broken through what could otherwise be seen as a glass ceiling – how they went about doing it, what kind of obstacles they faced, how they overcame those, and what pushed them through,” Cho said.
The four distinguished panelists were Yvonne Chan, a partner at the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Punita Kumar Sinha, senior managing director of private equity and investment management firm The Blackstone Group; Seong Ohm, senior vice president of Sam’s Club/Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.; and Michelle Kim, chief counsel of programming for Time Warner Cable. Each woman spoke about their experiences, from being a young student to working their way into upper-level executive positions.
Chan was born in New Zealand to Chinese parents and graduated from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where she also worked as a law clerk in the High Court and Court of Appeals. She left home to go to China in 1983 on a two-year scholarship, “essentially because I am Chinese, and I was the only one out of six children who felt strongly that I wanted to be in China and study the language and go back to my roots,” Chan said.
After two years, she got a position with her current law firm in Hong Kong, and she stayed there for three years before going on to Harvard for her master’s and then working in New York. Chan said that being able to handle the climate of a big business law firm nullified the fact that she was female. “At the end of the day, being a woman wasn’t the issue. I think you have to enjoy your job with a passion, and being in a New York law firm with the hours that we keep and the unpredictable life that we have, one really has to love it so much that you’re prepared to make certain sacrifices for it,” she said.
Kumar-Sinha attended the almost all-male Indian Institute of Technology but handled gender bias well. “Those years prepared me for my professional life because it toughened me up. It was good that I had to face comments from younger boys. After five years of that, life seemed pretty normal in a male-oriented culture,” she said as the audience laughed.
Kumar-Sinha added she has handled the Indian market at Blackstone since 1994, and was given the task only because of her race. With India’s economic growth this decade, she acknowledged the benefit of working within her background. “If you want to move quickly, you have to go with your strengths. As much as I tried to do other markets, I would never have become the portfolio manager of a large fund had it not been in an area of strength,” she said.
Ohm of Walmart/Sam’s Club commented on the value of teamwork and communication between her and co-workers, friends and also her husband, in determining which path to follow during her career.
“If I didn’t network and stay connected with all the people I previously worked with, I would’ve been lost,” she said. “The way I ended up with Wal-Mart wasn’t by applying; I made a call to congratulate one of my buyers that I had known for 15 years, who eventually became the senior VP of Wal-Mart. He said, ‘Send me a resume; I’d love for you to talk to Wal-Mart,’” she said.
Later she joked about relocating to Bentonville, Ark., and how her husband supported the move after she had supported a move to New York earlier in his career. “I can’t be married to my job; I have to be married to my husband. We had a lot of discussions about whose career was more important at the time, so we moved to New York City.” Ohm said.
Kyung Lee said the event appealed to her because of the opportunity to network and bring the community together. “It’s good to honor the cultural background of women or men. We all need to come together to support this. I’m working with Deloitte; we have a very special program called the Women Initiative, and this is the same thing. It’s a similar kind of spirit, but it’s extending beyond corporate boundaries — now we can network with people all around,” she said.
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