AAPI Heritage Month: A Letter to My Mentor

Dear Madge,

It’s a beautiful weekend in the Pacific Northwest as I receive your email from across the country. In this email you shared your Podcast with Boston Children’s Museum. As I listened to the 40 minutes discussion of your STEM professional journey, I reflected on our mentorship for the last 12 years.

You are my role model for being both a leader and an Asian. I ‘found’ you during an IBM customer conference. At the time, I was a new engineering director and you were one of our customer executives. Although it took me 7 years to get to my director rank and I have delivered not only as an engineering leader, but also a business leader with significant P&L responsibilities, the imposter syndrome was overwhelming me. Meeting you gave me the breakthrough of that “bamboo ceiling”, specifically via your executive presence, and your book. I always remembered your executive presence, orange jacket, a bright scarf, and warm yet confident demeanor. Then I read your Innovator’s Path book, where you presented 8 key innovation skills, each with a leading Chinese character. Chinese characters are all about telling stories, and the way you deployed them was so effective that this book created an everlasting impression on me. In both examples, you showed how to be an Asian leader. By learning from you, I know that I can fully be myself while achieving what I want.

You are also my role model for nurturing deep network relationships. People often ask me about networking tips, especially how to build a deep relationship with someone whom we never had the opportunity to work together with. I got lucky with you. Over the last decade, you were generous with your time, and you were always there for me whether it’s an email update or a call request. You would listen, we would laugh together, and you would always encourage me. When you see something that reminds you of me, you’d drop me a note to make that connection. By learning from you, I gained the confidence that nurturing deep network relationships is entirely possible, and it’s entirely up to me.

Last February, to recognize International Day of Women and Girls in Science, you wrote an article for Sampan, the only bilingual Chinese-English newspaper in New England. In this article, you again encouraged all women and girls to be fearless about STEM, about being that innovator. As I read your article, I couldn’t help but to think about the meaning of Sampan. Sampan in Chinese is a small fishing boat, the kind that is referred to in “Fresh Off the Boat,” the kind that is probably used by the old man in Hemingway. Sampan is also a boat that brings the travelers to their next destination, sometimes over the troubled water to a stop with more clarity, like this sunny afternoon I am in.

Thank you Madge for being that Sampan for me.

#AAPIHeritageMonth #AAPI, Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash