2022 AALA Seminar Series I
CHINESE INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERS / USA – SEATTLE 2022/05/17
“The importance of owning your story and telling it in your own words.” It’s one of the many lessons attendees would take away from “Leading While Asian (LWA) – Best Practices and Lessons Learned,” part of the Chinese Institute of Engineers (CIE) 2022 Asian American Luminary Awards (AALA) Leadership Seminar series.
For this discussion featuring former Wing Luke Museum executive Director Beth Takekawa and Amazon Vice President Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, sharing how their Asian American background contribute to their careers was the focus of the conversation moderated by community leader Dick T. Woo, CPA, CGMA.
Both Beth and Mai-Lan are recipients of CIE’s 2021 awards honoring outstanding Asian American professionals and leaders with high achievements and contributions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Their experiences provide rich insights and inspiration for to the broader CIE community to draw from both personally and professionally.
“Three attributes I learned from family’s Asian culture: Grit (Courage & Resolve), Respect and Patience have helped me so much in the 20 plus years that I’ve spent in technology,” said Mai Lan, sharing how she translates the strengths of her Vietnamese family ties, her upbringing traveling internationally, and from living in many Asian countries, into the high-stakes, fast-moving world of tech.
The importance of sharing your story, aiming for less than perfection, and being comfortable outside one’s comfort zone, Beth Takekawa discussed her years of experience in the museum and creative fields. Addressing some questions such as:
“Why, as Asian Americans, what is the importance of us sharing our story with the public, other people, and coworkers,” she highlighted four important lessons from being a leader with the Wing Luke Museum: “The importance of owning your story and telling it in your own words”; “As an Asian American, how you tell your story matters”; “It’s important for us as Asian American leaders to enter unfamiliar and uncomfortable arenas”; and “There is both power and pitfall in it if you attempt to tell somebody else’s story.”
Opening the floor to interactive audience questions, Dick T. Woo continued moderating the discussion.
Mai-Lan posed the question: “How does your Asian American culture background contribute to or impact negatively of your career?” to frame the overlap between the values that she cultivated from her upbringing and finding a place in a work environment where those values are respected embraced in a way to help her move forward.
“If there’s something you would do differently all over again, what would it be?”. Beth shared that, “Most significant decisions and discussions happen in social settings and not in meetings and especially decisions,” recommending to make time to attend those social settings and that one may have much greater results.
About Us
CIE/USA Seattle is a non-profit promoting professional and academic excellence in the Asian American community through annual programs across the Greater Seattle area:
Video Link:
2022 AALA Seminar Series II
CHINESE INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERS (SEATTLE CHAPTER) 2022/05/19
“Taking the risk and step outside of the comfort zone” It’s one of the many lessons attendees would take away from “How to go beyond individual technical excellence to the next level as leader to tackle greater challenges”, part of the Chinese Institute of Engineers (CIE) 2022 Asian American Luminary Awards (AALA) Leadership Seminar series II on Mar 12, 2022.
For this discussion featuring CEO of Coding Dojo Mr. Richard Wang, Partner Software Engineering Manager of Microsoft Dr. Cha Zhang and Director of Research Science of Meta Dr. Robert Y.Wang, sharing how they handled the risks and challenges during their careers was the focus of the conversation moderated by the formal Citadel Chief AI Office and formal Microsoft Chief AI Scientist Dr. Deng Li.
Richard, Robert and Cha are recipients of CIE’s 2021 awards honoring outstanding Asian American professionals and leaders with high achievements and contributions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
AALA is the CIE/USA-SEA flagship program, the AALA platform is to honor and celebrate outstanding Asian American professionals and leaders with high achievements and contributions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) within Pacific Northwest.
Speaker Robert Wang shared his experiences about technological inevitability, wearing different hats, and going outside of his comfort zone. “Taking the risk and step outside of the comfort zone”, said Robert. He shared with the audience about his experience of stepping outside of the comfort zone when he was in school and his career path. Robert took some challenging and difficult risks, but the choices rewarded him with new opportunities.
Speaker Cha Zhang discussed about the lessons that he learned on how to build a successful team by improvising the psychological safety of team members and creating a high-performance team with mutual trust. “People is the most important asset of a team” said Cha, he talked about his self-development starting as a small team manager, later managing multiple project teams. Cha emphasized on how to build a successful team to improve the productivity of not only the whole team but also each individual.
Speaker Richard Wang provided the audience with his presentation focusing on risk taking, and how to create opportunities for yourself. He believes that if the door is not open for you, you must build a door and create the opportunity for yourself. “Take A Risk”, this phrase was mentioned so many times thru Richard’s speech, he shared with the audience of his inside about how he decided to give up his decent job from the Boeing Company and started to form up the right team to make a success for coding dojo, as well as the challenges and failures that the company and Richard, as the founder of the company, encountered after the successful operation of the company.
Opening the floor to interactive audience questions, Deng Li continued moderating the discussion.
Cha and Robert posed the question about how to play the role during this concurrent complicated geopolitical environment, especially the present complicated relationship between the USA and China, to acquire engineering talents that will benefits US and the global society.
“As an individual, the influence to the present complicated situation is quite limited. However, from the technology and innovation perspective, developing technologies and tools welcoming the global society to help people to realize their dream, enhance connection, enlarge possibility with AI technology to small the gap between nations”said Cha.
“What can we control? There are lots of things that individual cannot control. But in terms of technology innovation, that can be isolated from geopolitics. Education, mentorship, those are what CIE are doing, which is to help and teach people. As a manager, developing an environment for employee to help the company and communities is important.” said Robert.
Richard posed the question about how to attract people and find talents to work within small business.
“You cannot build a world-class company without world-class talents. As the founder of coding dojo, the keys to locate and find the right talents can be culture fit, chemistry fit, career stage/job fit. While developing the business, it is also very important to consider the employee self-development as well. Those will help to attract the right talent with passion to grow up with the company.” said Richard.
About Us
CIE/USA Seattle is a non-profit promoting professional and academic excellence in the Asian American community through annual programs across the Greater Seattle area:
Video Link:
Email: contact@CIE-SEA.org