Voice of Experience: Jun Wei, Managing Partner, Hogan Lovells, Beijing

,

jun_weiWelcome to The Glass Hammer’s Spotlight on Asia Week. We’ll be featuring profiles of successful business women working in Asia all week long!

By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Jun Wei, Managing Partner, Hogan Lovells is a stunning example of someone who has overcome adversity early in her life to become a successful lawyer, role model, and champion of women’s advancement in law.

When Wei was young, she was fortunate enough to live a privileged life as the daughter of parents who worked for the central government. But this came to a sudden end when the Cultural Revolution took place in China and Wei’s family was kicked out of Beijing. At this time, she was separated from both of her parents for a couple of years while her father went into custody and her mother was sentenced to work on a remote countryside.

With her unwavering optimism, Wei was able to find the silver lining for herself in all of the struggle and hardship her family endured. Wei explained, “The good part is that after the Cultural Revolution ended, China started to open its doors.” She continued, “I was one of the few fortunate young people, and only one of two females, who could attend the graduate school of Beijing University Law School. My classmates were all men who were at least ten to fifteen years older than me.”

At the undergraduate law school level, the female representation was much higher at 25-30 percent. Wei explained that unlike the United States, law school in China is both undergraduate and graduate school. The first law degree you earn is LLB and the second degree is LLM. When the Cultural Revolution ended, both schools opened at the same time and Wei was admitted at the graduate level.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Siew Choo Ng, Senior Vice President, Head of Global Network Partnerships, Asia, American Express

,

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWelcome to The Glass Hammer’s Spotlight on Asia Week. We’ll be featuring profiles of successful business women working in Asia all week long!

By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Siew Choo Ng, Senior Vice President, Head of Global Network Partnerships, Asia, American Express based in Singapore, has held many different positions and worked in many different markets during her 20+ year career with American Express.

By gaining all of these valuable business perspectives, Ng has been able to successfully apply her knowledge and experience in her new role as Head of Global Network Partnerships in Asia . “One of the benefits of working in so many different businesses and markets is the ability to network and adapt,” said Ng.

Ng has successfully navigated the company’s different businesses, but there is one thing that she has learned throughout her career that she wishes she knew when she was first starting out. “It is important to know how to manage your boss,” remarked Ng. “He or she is the one who can be your sponsor and help you with your career. Often times you are competing for their time and sponsorship with your other team members, so it helps to distinguish yourself from the pack.”

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Wei Hopeman, Managing Director and Head of Asia, Citi Ventures, Shanghai

,

wei_hopeman_smWelcome to The Glass Hammer’s Spotlight on Asia Week. We’ll be featuring profiles of successful business women working in Asia all week long!

By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Wei Hopeman, Managing Director and Head of Asia for Citi Ventures, stresses the importance of taking risks, embracing the unknown, and cultivating strong relationships in business. Hopeman joined Citi Ventures in 2010 to lead activities in Asia, which is the venture investing and innovation arm of Citi. “We act as the eyes and ears that identify new technologies to bring into Citi to help our company stay ahead of the competition,” said Hopeman.

Career Path

When she first started out in the in financial industry, Hopeman worked as a buyside analyst on the Asian portfolio of a Los Angeles based firm. “The Asian portfolio was about one billion dollars. I was asked if I wanted to move to Hong Kong to help set up the Asian office for the firm,” recalled Hopeman. “I jumped at the opportunity, which was such an amazing experience for someone my age.”

After successfully establishing the Hong Kong office for her firm, Hopeman decided to take a detour from the traditional career path in finance when she received a phone call from a friend about joining a new real estate start-up. “I knew nothing about real estate or running a start-up, but I saw it as a great opportunity,” said Hopeman. “We started in a 10×10 windowless office, raised capital, hired a staff, and developed a business plan. Eventually we grew from just two people to having offices in Hong Kong, Japan, and China.”

Although it was somewhat of a departure from her career in finance, Hopeman values the time she spent growing her start-up. “Even though this experience happened early on in my professional life, it played a huge role in how I viewed the rest of my career. It taught me that you shouldn’t be intimidated by things you don’t know because you can always figure it out if you are smart and hard-working.”

After successfully fulfilling her goals as an entrepreneur, Wei returned to the financial services industry and spent a couple of years working for an Investment Banking and Private Equity firm whose primary focus was helping European multinational companies complete strategic acquisitions in Asian markets. Always looking for the next opportunity, Hopeman decided that it was time for her to expand her industry knowledge by attending business school at Stanford.

“In business school I caught the technology bug and fell in love with the Bay area,” Hopeman said. She continued, “I became a technology investment banker and spent the next eight years learning about emerging technologies and helping technology companies with strategic initiatives.” During this time Hopeman was presented with another opportunity to relocate to Asia and help her firm establish an office in this market.

In her current role with Citi Ventures, Hopeman spends a lot of time thinking about ways to keep Citi one step ahead of the competition. “We are facing some non-traditional competitors in our industry right now like Google, Amazon, and Alibaba who are creating customer centric and data driven financial services with the end user in mind. This makes us think about new ways of conducting our traditional business and how to enhance the customer experience with new technologies and capabilities.”

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Lorna Chen, Partner, Global Asset Management Group, Shearman & Sterling LLP, Hong Kong

,

lorna_chenWelcome to The Glass Hammer’s Spotlight on Asia Week. We’ll be featuring profiles of successful business women working in Asia all week long!

By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Lorna Chen, a Partner in the Global Asset Management Group at Shearman & Sterling’s Hong Kong office, wasn’t always sure where her career would take her, but she always knew that she would do something great. “If you ask me what made me what I am today, it is my subconscious belief in myself,” said Chen.

“I was born and grew up in Beijing as a native Mandarin Chinese speaker. I completed all of my schooling in Beijing and as an undergraduate and in graduate school, I specialized in English Language and Literature and American Studies. This turned out to be a very firm foundation for my future.”

Career in Law

“I think it was destiny that after I finished graduate school, I met a group of people who were opening up their own law firm. This was right around the time that China was beginning to open its doors and privatize the legal industry. I decided to join them because it was very challenging and interesting to work for a law firm.” She continued, “I took the first National Exam ever administered in China to become a trademark agent and I ranked first. My job was to go to the Chinese administration and address issues around major trademarks being copied without permission.”

This experience motivated Chen to take the bar exam in China despite not having her law degree, a practice that was, and still is, allowed in China. It was a very exciting time, explained Chen, since China was just starting their legal system. “Originally, I planned on attending business school to earn my MBA, but after I passed the bar exam, I decided that if I was going to stay in the legal field, I needed to get a law degree to become a lawyer.”

In 1997, Chen took advantage of a unique opportunity to spend six months in Frankfurt as an international associate for a leading German law firm that was considering expanding their practice into China. “Because I spoke English very well, I was the only person chosen out of about 2,000 lawyers to go to Germany. This experience started my journey in the legal profession outside of Beijing,” said Chen.

“I had already started to take charge in my firm, so I had a first mover advantage upon going to Frankfurt,” explained Chen. After accumulating so much experience in Beijing and Frankfurt, Chen decided the time was right to start applying to law schools in the United States. However, she was asked by the partners of the Frankfurt firm to stay on board for the rest of the year because one of their mid-level associates in their Hong Kong office was leaving the firm. “The year I spent working for Bruckhaus was very valuable and really opened my eyes to what it was like to work as an international associate.”

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Kathy Matsui, co-head of Economics, Commodities and Strategy (ECS) Research in Asia, chief Japan equity strategist, Goldman Sachs Japan

,

Kathy_Matsui_GSWelcome to The Glass Hammer’s Spotlight on Asia Week. We’ll be featuring profiles of successful business women working in Asia all week long!

Although she was born and raised in the United States, Kathy Matsui became interested in living and working in Japan while she was there as a Rotary Scholar after finishing college. When Matsui returned to the US to attend graduate school in Washington D.C., she decided to focus on Japan Studies in order to expand her knowledge of the Japanese economy.

During graduate school, Matsui had the opportunity to return to Japan as an intern at a large Japanese bank. She recalled, “It was a tremendously eye-opening experience to work in a Japanese institution and I gained an interesting perspective on what it was like to work in a domestic organization.” Matsui continued, “After this experience, I decided that I did not want to work for a traditional Japanese company, mainly because I was concerned about how long it would take me to get to the level I knew I wanted to be at.”

Career Path

After graduate school, Matsui relocated to Japan and began looking for a job in an organization where she would be evaluated based on her performance. “I started in Japan’s financial industry in 1989 at the peak of the asset bubble and I was fortunate to have received several job offers,” said Matsui. “I accepted a job in the research department at Barclays de Zoete Wedd Securities where I was one half of a two person team,” she added.

Matsui has always worked in research and has always been based in Tokyo, which makes her career path unique compared to many other senior people in the financial industry who often work in different business divisions and different markets. “I love doing research,” said Matsui, “And this is where I enjoy working the most.”

In 1999, Matsui authored a landmark research study around the theme of “Womenomics” in Japan that had a major impact on her career and the Japanese business culture. In her research, Matsui outlined ways in which the Japanese economy would benefit as a whole by including more females in the labor force. She argued that if Japan could close its gender employment gap, it could boost the level of GDP by as much as 14-15 percent.

She said, “I picked this subject because I thought it would be an interesting topic to write about, and all of a sudden the research took off and I was being invited to speak about the topic frequently both inside and outside the industry.” Matsui continued, “In many ways, coming to Japan as a foreigner allowed me to gain insight into aspects of the economy and culture that I might not have had otherwise.”

According to Matsui, given the severe demographic pressures of a rapidly-aging society, there is a growing emphasis on getting more women to participate in the workforce in Japan. While Matsui still focuses on women’s empowerment through her research, she spends most of her time analyzing the Japanese economy and stock market, as well as helping to manage a macro research team spread across the Asia region.

Read more
/by

Voice of Experience: Maan Huey Lim, Partner, PwC Singapore

maan_huey_limWelcome to The Glass Hammer’s Spotlight on Asia Week. We’ll be featuring profiles of successful business women working in Asia all week long!

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“To be very candid,” began Maan Huey Lim, Tax Partner at PwC, Singapore, “Early on, when I started I was very much focused on the technical work. To be a good tax advisor, you need to spend a lot of time going though the legislation, and deciding how it would work in the real world. I spent a lot of time doing the work, but as a result, I spent less time on soft skills.”

But over the course of her career, her focus has expanded. She continued, “Don’t get me wrong – my clients loved me because I was doing top notch work. But as I progress, I find my focus changing. I’m spending my time really talking to people and engaging with the team around me. It’s such an important part of the business. I could not see as much when I was starting out. As an associate, a lot of your focus is on getting a good foundation, learning tax laws, and writing good advice. But it’s also important that you are really connecting and engaging with the team and clients you are working with.”

“You get so much more out of talking to people. You learn useful information, and the more you get to know people the more business comes to you along the way,” she added.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Mary Patrice Brown, Partner, O’Melveny & Myers

Mary Patrice BrownBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Mary Pat Brown, Partner in the DC office of O’Melveny & Myers and member of its White Collar Defense and Corporate Investigations Practice, says one of the most important things for a young woman to learn early in her career is confidence.

Brown, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, said she shared this advice as a panelist at a career presentation. “While there are many things I wish I had known when I was younger, one was that I was not the dumbest person in the room after all.”

When you’re young and lacking in experience, she explained, there’s a natural tendency to feel that your insight isn’t as valuable as everyone else’s. But that’s not true – and in fact most people have these same insecurities. “When you’re young and you go into a room, you sometimes assume that you are not the smartest. The truth is, everyone else is feeling the same thing you are.”

By remembering that everyone is subject to doubts like these, women can better cultivate the confidence they need to advance.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Clarine Nardi Riddle, Counsel, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman

Riddle.Nardi.Clarine_8423By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

For Clarine Nardi Riddle, Counsel, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman, it is difficult to pick one moment in her professional career of which she is most proud. This is because since graduating from Indiana University School of Law in 1971, Riddle has accumulated numerous achievements while working in local, state, and federal governments and in the private legal sector as well.

Although Riddle has several impressive milestones in her career to talk about, like becoming the first female Attorney General of Connecticut, being the first woman Attorney General to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court and win, and assisting in the drafting of the first Title IX plan during her third year of law school at Indiana University, she feels especially proud of the progress that has been made by women in law over the last few decades.

“At Indiana University, my class in law school probably had the largest number of women ever, and that was only a little more than twelve,” said Riddle. She continued, “It was a critical mass at that point, and we were just at the beginning of having more and more women apply to law school. It was a different world back then, and I am so happy to see where we have come since then. I am so proud of it all.”

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Philippa Nesbit, Chief Risk Officer, Citi Private Bank and Citi Holdings

Philippa NesbitBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Reflecting on her early career, Philippa Nesbit, Chief Risk Officer at Citi Private Bank and Citi Holdings, encouraged junior women to seek out broad opportunities to learn. “Really, the important thing is getting a diversity of your knowledge base. It’s easier to learn more and get a breadth of knowledge when you are junior. When you are a managing director, it’s hard to get those different experiences. I hadn’t appreciated the importance of that 20 years ago.”

She continued, “Tied to that, make sure you grasp every opportunity. Be really flexible and adapt the ways that you work. Our junior colleagues are from a generation with lots of tools and options to manage their careers – from day one, develop and build your network every day.”

“I attribute a lot of my success to being able to call many people – to get both business perspectives and career perspectives. I will always advise people to ‘push yourself’. Put yourself out of your comfort zone and into decision making roles,” she added.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Laila Worrell, New York Metro Office Managing Director, Accenture

Laila Worrell, AccentureBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Laila Worrell, Managing Director of Accenture’s New York Metro Office, says some of the most important advice she’s received is, “when given a choice, choose on the side of generosity.”

She explained, “We all have demands on our time and resources that we must prioritize.  The advice I share often is to remember to err on the side of generosity.  If given the opportunity to support or mentor someone, view it as a privilege.”

Worrell also emphasizes the importance of building strong networks internally and externally. She noted, “Many of us feel too busy with other responsibilities, but it’s important to prioritize building and maintaining your network.  It can be an incredible resource to you throughout your life and career.”

Career Path

Currently Worrell is the leader of the company’s New York Metro Office, where she is responsible for 4,000 people in New York and New Jersey. She serves on the company’s North America leadership team and CEO Advisory Council, and she also leads the company’s work in the private equity sector.  Initially, though, Worrell didn’t anticipate a career in business.  She recalled, “I joined Accenture immediately after completing my undergraduate degree.  I had majored in liberal arts and was passionate about the academic world. I thought I would eventually return to academics.”

“However, I had an incredible experience with Accenture, and I found I was very passionate about business and helping clients solve some of their most complex business problems,” she continued.  She enrolled in Harvard Business School, graduating with her MBA in 1998.  After several years leading strategy and corporate development for a major media company, she had the opportunity to rejoin Accenture, shaping the company’s growth initiatives in the North American market.

Today Worrell works with clients in the financial services industry and is also involved in the company’s initiative around skills and competitiveness. “Accenture is undertaking work to support an initiative to increase the competitiveness of the United States in the global economy, including by leveraging skills as a driver of economic growth.”

This ties into Accenture’s Skills to Succeed global corporate citizenship initiative, she continued. “One of our economy’s key growth levers is our base of skilled resources.  Accenture is committed to helping even more individuals in our communities gain the skills they need to get a job or start a business.”

The topic of competitiveness is relevant to her work with financial services clients as well. “I spend a lot of time with our clients in the financial services sector. We’re going through an unprecedented period of change in financial services. There is an enormous amount of competitive pressure. The question is how can institutions continue to innovate, transform, and compete in a rapidly evolving environment. It’s fascinating working with our clients on these issues.”

Worrell says the part of her career that has been the most rewarding is helping others advance in their own careers. “When I’ve helped people build confidence to fulfill their potential, to see what’s possible, these are the types of achievements I’ve found rewarding, absolutely.”

Read more

/by