Voice of Experience: Wendy Cai- Lee, Director, Chinese Services Group, Deloitte

By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Wendy Cai-Lee is quick to point out that much of her success is attributable to the sacrifices her parents made for her and her sister. When the director of Deloitte’s Chinese Services Group was just twelve, her father—a former diplomat from China’s State Department—gave up his career and his country and moved his family to the States. “We moved mostly for money and my sister’s and my education,” said Cai-Lee. “My father was concerned that if we waited any longer, I wouldn’t be able to learn English and speak it without too much of an accent.” She continued, “My parents were hardworking people who put their careers on hold and put all their hopes and dreams on their children. There was a lot of emphasis on education.”

The family ultimately settled in New Jersey. “It was a huge adjustment. But kudos to my parents: they made the move when I was young enough so that the impact was not as traumatic as it would have been if was older. I was very lucky that my parents not only moved me here when I was very young but also with a sold background of Chinese—I speak 5 Chinese dialects—and moved us to a town with an excellent school system.”

Cai-Lee was a good student and a quick learner, although there were some challenges: “In New Jersey, I grew up in an Italian and German town…my sister and I were the only Asian Americans in our school system.” Still, Cai-Lee said, “I learned English within a year. And, by the time I went to junior high, I already joined the junior debate team. I don’t think I’m that much smarter…it’s just that my father was already teaching me geometry in 5th grade. I just simply I learned all that stuff early on so it was easy to excel.”

Her father was the driving force behind most of her educational decisions as well. “My father is disciplined and goal-oriented. Ever since I was a child, there was always a plan: 5-year, 10-year…very early on, I had a to-do list and would check off what I had to do. I didn’t have the flexibility of going to school to sort out what kind of person I was going to be. By high school, my father already explored with me what would be a good career option with me. I took classes that would get me into those classes [later on].”

Her father also decided that she would attend an all-women’s university. Since Cai-Lee’s goal was to study business, she enrolled at Douglass College and, by the end of her junior year, had a job offer from Chase Bank.

She was accepted into the Global Management Training Program, an elite program that hires only 25 students per year. “It’s a very grueling 12 month program, with 150-hour work weeks,” said Cai-Lee. “We were fully committed throughout the year, rotating throughout the bank doing commercial, investment, wholesale. In addition, we were broken into teams to do team projects. And, after the program, based on performance, students get placed into different areas in banks based on their interests.”

She is grateful for the training and discipline of that program. “I learned how to work in a big firm. It formed my habits and taught me to be a disciplined professional.”

Building Her Own Business

Cai-Lee started out as part of the bank’s investment banking group, and followed the leader of the group to Citibank. She welcomed the opportunity to experience another large firm, but soon left the bank—and a fulltime MBA program at Columbia—to start her own business.

“A colleague of mine from Chase had a great business idea. He is more of a technical person, a nuclear engineer with an MBA from University of Chicago. He came up with the idea for logistics software—a software platform to help improve inventory control efficiency for retailers—and I put a business plan together.” She tried to do it all, but quickly came to the conclusion that investors would not take them seriously unless she and her business partner were willing to put it all on the line. “I thought it was very worth the experience and the shot at it. I very strongly believed in the business idea and the viability and it was important to take it to the next level of commitment,” said Cai-Lee.

Although much of her career had been conducted according to one of her plans, this move was definitely not. “It was a once in a lifetime opportunity because it was during the dot-com days where very young people with good ideas and good plans were able to get funding from investors. I doubt that at any other time in history someone would give a 24-year-old $12 million.”

Initially working out of her apartment, Cai-Lee built the business call by call. “A 24-year old doesn’t know how to do what I did. I had a spreadsheet of 200-something investors and cold called them; I called everybody. I learned how to network and talk to strangers. I went to every relevant conference. I submitted applications to investors.” As always, she learned from the experience. “I made a ton of mistakes day and night, small and big. Investors and friends tell you how your pitch can be revised and you do it. I revised my business plan 50 or 60 times.” With the help of some angel investors, she and her partner were soon able to afford office space and had a staff of 12 people.

But she had not yet shared the move with her parents. “My parents did not find out until 6 months later [when my mother opened some mail that went to her house.] She came to me and said ‘Either you got a 50% pay cut or you lost your job.”

Ultimately, she and her partner sold the company back to their private equity investors in December 2000. “The business was 2 ½ years old at the time. At that time, everything moving very fast and the company grew very fast. I sold right before January 2001, before the market crash.” As the founder, Cai-Lee was sad to let the company go. “But my father taught me that sometime you have to take a step back to allow yourself to reach the next level. That was one of those times.”

From that experience, she learned that you don’t always have to go in a vertical progression in your career and in life. “Sometimes, taking two steps sideways or two steps back will get your four steps forward. That is something I wish I knew earlier on,” Cai-Lee remarked.

Managing Relationships: Up and Down

She joined Deloitte by chance after a friend told her the firm was looking for people to build a business development center, marketing and selling to CEOs and CFOs. Cai-Lee “didn’t want to join a large corporation,” she said. “But, one of the key things is that you never know what kind of opportunities a particular firm or endeavor may bring you.” She has now been with the firm nearly eight years, and has overseen all cross-border transactions between the U.S. and China for the last six.

When asked what lessons she’s learned over her career, Cai-Lee quickly answered, “I wish I knew that that managing relationships up, down and laterally are all equally important. A lot of managers spend a lot of time managing down and don’t spend as much time managing up. Managing up is critical in terms of managing expectations of the people who are going to be judging you. And managing laterally is important because those are the colleagues from whom you might need help.”

Cai-Lee admitted to being occasionally challenged by work-life balance issues. “Work occupies a lot of my time. There’s 24 hours in a day; something has to give. It’s important to know that if anybody tells you they have it all, that’s just not true.”

She suggested looking at work-life balance from a broader perspective. “You can’t evaluate the whole work-life balance thing on a daily basis. Ask yourself whether you missed any major events like important soccer games or teacher meetings. If you evaluate on a daily basis, it is never going to work. But,” she said, “I think that some of the challenges the last generation of working women had to face have dissipated. It will continue to get easier although there are certain things that are never going to change because women are the ones who bear children. Overall, our situation has gotten better.”

In addition to a full workload, Cai-Lee is involved in a number of fundraising and charitable initiatives. She serves on the board of Asian Women in Business, where she launched a new scholarship fund for Asian women to provide them the opportunity to attend 4-year accredited academic institutions based on leadership skills and community service. In addition, she works with the UN Population Fund, which focuses on health education safety for women. “There are so many organizations out there but it is difficult to spread yourself across initiatives. I like to focus on organizations with a sharp focus on education,” she said, “The focus of these two organizations is similar, so I can leverage what I do for one with the other.”

She also spends a lot of time with her family. She laughed, “Have you ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Well, the Chinese are much worse in terms of being all over each other’s business. That often requires time: there are always birthday parties, weddings, vacations, regular dinners and barbecues.”

Of the future, Cai-Lee said. “I don’t know where I’m going to be in 10 years. I have a goal—of course—I want to be able to spend more time with my family and excel professionally. I think being able to continue to transform myself is a professional achievement. Being able to leverage the opportunity I have at that moment has been something I’m pretty proud of. I keep an open mind as I never know what opportunity will come my way.”