ETHNIC DIVERSITY – CHINESE AMERICANS ANDREA JUNG AND HAZEL LEE

ANDREA IS CEO OF AVON,  A WORLDWIDE ORGANIZATION

SHE IS AN INSPIRATION ESPECIALLY FOR WOMENFOLK ALL OVER THE WORLD.

Keys to success from Avon’s top boss on Shine

http://shine.yahoo.com/event/poweryourfuture/keys-to-success-from-avons-top-boss-2523603

For Andrea Jung, the chairman and CEO of Avon Products (AVP), this moment happened right after college, when she was in the management training program at Bloomingdale’s. All day everyday, there she was in the stockroom, switching vendor hangers for store hangers on thousands of pieces of clothes. “I remember calling my parents around Thanksgiving and saying, ‘You paid for me to have a great education and this is really not that meaningful…Maybe I will quit.’”

Jung, who grew up in a traditional Chinese-American family with a tremendous amount of discipline, had made her way to Princeton and wanted to go into the Peace Corps. But her parents didn’t have a lot of money, so they insisted she take a more conventional path. When Jung called them about quitting that first job at Bloomingdale’s, “the reaction was fast and furious,” she recalls. Her parents told her: “You are not quitting. You start at the bottom and you work your way to the top.”

Related: Wharton admissions: As elitist as you’d expect?

“So, I didn’t quit,” Jung says. “I persevered, and it ended up being a really terrific run in retail.”

She traded retail— Bloomingdale’s (M) and then Neiman Marcus—for the beauty industry, moving to Avon in 1994. Jung was assigned to create a global Avon brand and did that so impressively that she was considered for the top job three years later. But she got passed over. And though she felt tempted to quit, she stayed. Two years later, she got the CEO job and became the youngest female chief executive in the Fortune 500.

“Bloom where you’re planted,” says Jung. “And follow your compass, not your clock,” she adds, preaching patience in any career. She has certainly demonstrated that. Now at the helm for 12 years, Jung is No. 5 on the 2010 Fortune Most Powerful Women list and the longest-serving among the female Fortune 500 CEOs. “I feel like the wise old woman CEO, trying to pave the path for a lot more after me,” she says.

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Jung is on the boards of Apple Computer (APLL) and General Electric (GE), as well as Avon. And as a single mother of a daughter, 21, and a 12-year-old son, she has learned plenty about juggling work and family. “You can’t, in my experience, necessarily have it all in one day,” she says. “But you’ve got to make those choices.” Now 52, she could well go and run another big global company after Avon, which had revenue of $10.9 billion last year. But she says, “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that yet.”

Related: Ex-Google exec Singh Cassidy on Joyus and facing her “inner entrepreneur” 

Right now, she is focused on Avon’s longevity. As part of the company’s 125th anniversary celebration this year, she has traveled to 15 cities around the globe and met with some 5,000 Avon representatives at each stop. The greatest satisfaction of leading Avon, she says, is helping 6.5 million representatives—entrepreneurs in 105 countries—build businesses from the ground up. By providing the money and products for reps to get started, “we’re one of the largest micro-lenders in the world today,” Jung notes. “Yes, we are a beauty company, but we do more than just sell beauty.”

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HAZEL LEE’S STORY IS INSPIRING AND HEARTWARMING. A WORLD WAR II HEROINE, TOO.

HAZEL LEE WAS THE FIRST CHINESE AMERICAN WOMAN TO BECOME A US AIR FORCE PILOT DURING WORLD WAR II. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE WHAT A WOMAN CAN ACHIEVE. 

SHE IS ALSO AN INSPIRATION AND A TESTAMENT TO THE VIRTUES OF ETHNIC DIVERSITY VS RACIST SOCIETIES  AND ALSO MALE CHAUVINISM. 

Hazel Ying Lee – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_Ying_Lee

Hazel Ying Lee (Chinese: 李月英; pinyin: Lǐ Yuèyīng; August 24, 1912–25 November 1944) was a Chinese American pilot who flew for the U.S. Army Air Forcesduring World War II.^[1]

Lee was born in Portland, Oregon. Her father was a merchant. Her mother devoted her energy to raising 8 children and helping with the family business. Despite the widespread Anti-Chinese bias of her time, Lee led a full and active life. Lee swam, played handball, loved to play cards and in her teenage years, learned how to drive.

Following graduation from high school in 1929, Lee found a job as an elevator operator at Liebes Department Store in downtown Portland. This was one of the few jobs that a Chinese American woman could hold during this time period.

In 1932, Lee took her first airplane ride. At a time when less than 1% of pilots in the US were women, Lee joined the Chinese Flying Club of Portland and took flying lessons with famed aviator Al Greenwood. Despite opposition from her mother, Lee “had to fly.” In discussing Lee’s love of flying, her sister Frances said, “It was the thought of doing something she loved. Lee enjoyed the danger and doing something that was new to Chinese girls.”

In October 1932, Lee became one of the first Chinese American women to earn a pilot’s license. In speaking of Lee and the handful of other Chinese American women pilots of that time, author Judy Yung has written “Although few in number, these first Chinese American aviators, in their attempt to participate in a daring sport, broke the stereotype of the passive Chinese women and demonstrated the ability of Chinese American women to compete in a male dominated field.” While in Portland Lee met her future husband ‘Clifford’ Louie Yim-Qun…..

Lee was a favorite with just about all of her fellow pilots. She had a great sense of humor and a marvelous sense of mischief. Lee used her lipstick to inscribe Chinese characters on the tail of her plane and the planes of her fellow pilots. One lucky fellow who happened to be a bit on the chubby side, had his plane dubbed (unknown to him) “Fat Ass.”

Lee was in demand when a mission was RON (Remaining Overnight) In a big city or in a small country town, she could always find a Chinese restaurant, supervise the menu, and often cook the food herself. She was a great cook. Fellow WASP pilot Sylvia Dahmes Clayton observed that “Hazel provided me with an opportunity to learn about a different culture at a time when I did not know anything else. She expanded my world and my outlook on life.”

In September 1944, Lee was sent to Pursuit School at Brownsville, Texas for intensive training. She was part of Class 44-18 Flight B and went on to be among the 134 women pilots who flew “Pursuit,” that is faster, high powered fighters such as the P-63 Kingcobra, P-51 Mustang and P-39 Airacobra. Lee’s favorite was the Mustang.

Lee and the others were the first women to pilot fighter aircraft for the United States military.

On November 10, 1944, Lee received orders to go to the Bell Aircraft factory at Niagara Falls and pick up a P-63 and deliver the plane to Great Falls, Montana. (A side note: During the War, Lee and the other Pursuit Pilots delivered over 5,000 Fighters to Great Falls. Great Falls was the link in supplying our Russia allies with planes. From there, male pilots flew the fighters on to Alaska, where Russian pilots waited to fly the planes home.)

Bad weather delayed the mission at Fargo, North Dakota. On Thanksgiving morning, the weather cleared and Lee was able to leave Fargo. A little after 2 P.M., Lee was cleared to land in Great Falls. A large number of P-63’s approached the airport at the same time. There was confusion on the part of the control tower. Upon landing, Lee’s plane and another P-63 collided, and were engulfed in flames. Lee was pulled from the burning wreckage of her airplane, her flight jacket still smoldering.

Two days later, on November 25, 1944, Lee died from the burns she received in the accident. Only 3 days after learning of Lee’s death, the Lee family received another telegram. Lee’s brother, Victor, serving with the US Tank Corps, had been killed in combat in France. As they prepared to bury Lee and Victor, the family picked out a burial site in a Portland, Oregon cemetery.^[3]

The cemetery refused to allow the family to bury Lee and Victor in the chosen spot, citing cemetery policy that did not allow Asians to be buried “in the White section.” After a lengthy battle, the Lee family prevailed. Lee was laid to rest in a non-military funeral, and buried alongside her brother, on a sloping hill in River View Cemetery,^[3] overlooking the Willamette River.

For over three decades, members of the WASP and their supporters attempted to secure military status for the women pilots. In March 1979, following United States Congressional approval of Public Law 95-202, the efforts of the Women Airforce Service pilots were finally recognized and military status was finally granted.

38 pilots of the WASP died while in service to their country during the difficult years of World War II. Lee was the last to die.