What would you do if you couldn't fail?

House of Hong Restaurant, Seattle -  This was the question I asked at a recently held Women of Power Luncheon hosted by Assunta Ng, Publisher of the NW Asian Weekly and Seattle Chinese Post newspapers.  Before I get to the answer of that question, though, let me first tell you that this luncheon, now in its third year, benefits one of NAAAP Seattle's partners, the Executive Development Institute (EDI). Twelve lucky auction winners from EDI's Inclusion Fusion held earlier this year got to lunch with some very powerful women. In fact, I had the privilege and pleasure of being seated at one of the tables. I'll introduce them one by one as I go through their stories.

Women of Power Luncheon (l to r) Martha Choe, Donna Giordano, Grace Chien, and Amelia Ransom Letcher (Not pictured: Sandra Madrid)

As the food arrived, Donna Giordano, President of the Quality Food Centers (QFC), shared what she thought were her keys to success(es); that was:

• to listen and learn from others;
• to take any job offered as it would lead people to know that you're the obvious choice when opportunities arose;
• to know you are in the driver's seat of your career;
• to know and articulate your value; and most of all,
• to have a positive attitude as this will assist you in achieving results, both at home and at work. 

Next, the top Girl Scout or CEO, Grace Chien, made a point to stand firm with your commitments and define successes and failures in relation to these.

Martha Choe, Chief Administrative Officer for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and also a 2010 NAAAP100 recipient, talked not only about change, but about having it be sustained and lasting. She talked about how important it is to building lasting and effective relationships and used the term, "total leadership", when addressing one's well-being: mind, body and soul. Said another way, "When you're health isn't well, neither is your leadership."

When addressing work life-balance, "there is no perfect balance and it's a matter of balancing daily or weekly based on what is important to you. Put another way, if you are on your death bed, would you regret having gone to one more meeting?"

(l to r) Sandra Madrid, Carol Butterfield and Sandi Heddington

Now, Amelia Ransom Letcher, VP Corp Diversity Affairs at Nordstrom, rallied around people first and effective communication. Can you imagine the power in having people believe flowers grow in concrete? Getting to this level of effectiveness can help you become very influential.

Sandra Madrid, Sr. Advisor to the Dean, UW, shared a story about her own career transition. She was let go from the UW after 20 years of service. Her main point was to be part of a community because no one can do it by themselves. It was with the community's support that she got her job back at the UW.

As by now, I'm guessing you want to know what they said when asked, "what would you do if you couldn't fail?" I asked this question because throughout our careers we face fear and indecision and having gone through this themselves, they would give really good insight. Well, in short, the answer was not surprising. To paraphrase what each one of them said, "I would do anything".

Given that we're already on the topic of powerful women, I would like now to take a moment to let you know about the Women in NAAAP! program, which is our own program created and developed to build competent and confident women leaders within NAAAP and within the Asian Pacific community. If you don't already know about it, you can visit our website.

Special thanks to Char Grinolds of EDI and Assunta Ng, Publisher of NW Asian Weekly and the Chinese Seattle Post newspapers for creating a great meeting.

Regards,
Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle

President

NAAAP100 Seattle Nominees

As many of you may know, May is Asian Heritage month in the United States, so what better way to start it off by announcing Seattle's nominees for the NAAAP100, an International program designed to acknowledge the contributions of Asian Americans exemplifying NAAAP's mission and values.


Earlier this year we asked members and the community at large to submit nominees. We collected them and having sorted through them, it gives me great pleasure to update you on the NAAAP 100 Nominations for Seattle. These nominees are in great company as you may be wondering. Other chapters are also nomininating leaders in their communities.

The selected few among all nominees will be invited to NAAAP's 2010 Convention being held in San Francisco later this year to receive their award. Most importantly, it gives me a sense of hometown pride that Seattle is a progressive place to conduct business and has an environment in which to foster leaders in our community.

These are the amazing individuals nominated for this year.

• Phyllis Campbell – Sr. Vice President at JP Morgan Chase | Read more ...
• John Okamoto – Executive Director for the Washington Education Association | Read more ...
• Assunta Ng – Publisher NWAsian Weekly | Read More ...
• Tay Yoshitani – Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – Port of Seattle | Read more ...
• Martha Choe – Chief Information Officer (CIO) – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation | Read more ...
• Qi Lu – President Microsoft Online Services Business and former exec at Yahoo! | Read more ...  

Thanks to those submitting nominations, too. Of course there are other wonderful unsung heroes. As an organization and in the spirit of community, we hope to acknowledge them in future years.

It’s amazing to see the diverse areas where Asians are leading now and it is quite the contrast from 20 years ago. Congratulations to all!

Regards,

Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle
President

For more information on the NAAAP100 program, please visit our website.

NAAAP Natl Webinar Series: NING

If you missed my webinar on social media, yesterday, I presented a walkthrough of NING, a new-age social networking tool, and showed how it helps businesses and associations set up a community for collaboration and to nurture relationships. I illustrated two examples, one of my clients (Vibrant Teams) and another for our own Women in NAAAP (WIN) program.

It was very exciting.  In preparing for the webinar, I had the opportunity of working with great people: Seattle Chapter members as well as the International Board Committee for the Women In NAAAP Program, most importantly with Judi Rhee Alloway, the National Chairwoman of WIN. Their support and their creative ideas led us to creating a NING network for the program as what’s evident to make the WIN program successful was to create a supportive network and moreso, using social media.

This network is in BETA though so we can gather feedback to make improvements to the network. Throughout this year, Women In NAAAP will continue to build this network for local and National participants in WIN to discuss topics related to women in the workforce, re-entering the workforce, community and family matters and much, much more.

To sum up, I'm super energized about the NING platform and the Women In NAAAP Program.  If you would like to help us test and grow this network, you're invited to sign up on NING and check it out.

Regards,

Gil Gido

NAAAP Seattle

President

Links:

 Join these social networks to join the conversation.

• Women In NAAAP on NING: http://winaaap.ning.com/
• Vibrant Teams on NING: http://vibrantteams.ning.com/

Where are they now? Li Tan, NAAAP Seattle President 2005 - 2006

Hello, my name is Li Tan. I served on the NAAAP Seattle Board of Directors for four years: two as treasurer and two as President. During my term as President, we hosted the NAAAP National Convention. The time and effort that we put into planning and fundraising for the convention was equivalent to a full time job, but it was worth it in the end. Our co-chairs, Joneil Custodio, Janet Ung and Charles Wu did a great job of taking charge and ensuring that the convention was a huge success. By now, most of us have currently moved on to other boards. This year, I became the President of the Asian Counseling and Referral Services board (ACRS) and am serving my second term on it, and Charles (full disclosure: he is my husband) is currently the President of the International Community Health Services (ICHS) Foundation. Without the experience and relationships that I had developed while being involved with NAAAP, I don’t think that I would have the opportunities that I have today.

One of the great challenges of being involved in NAAAP is working with people from many cultural backgrounds. When I refer to culture, I am not limiting myself to ethnicity but am including work experiences, types of jobs people hold, and where we grow up. I think that all of these things contribute to who we are and how we behave. In my profession, I work with many like-minded individuals, so it was nice to be in an environment with many different types of thinkers which is what NAAAP provided. This type of environment allowed me to further develop my leadership skills and appreciate how hard work and collaboration can significantly pay off. The best example that I can use for this is the convention. We had 3 co-chairs, while Asian on the outside, came with differing perspectives. I brought these three individuals together and discussed with them their interests and strengths and used this discussion to determine what types of responsibilities and subcommittees they would lead. With this structure, we were able to meet our fundraising goals and offer two days of relevant programming to our participants and sponsors. The feedback that I received from one of the co-chairs was that she appreciated that I did not micromanage and allowed her to take the lead for her subcommittee.

As a result of my experience with NAAAP, how did I end up on the ACRS Board? One of our convention volunteers was a former Development Director for ACRS who nominated me to serve on their Board. Without the opportunities to use and further develop my leadership skills outside of my profession and the relationships that I developed, I wouldn’t have had the exposure to the Asian and Asian American community and the honor of serving on another board. I highly encourage Asians and Asian Americans to become fully engaged with NAAAP. Don’t expect that you will magically be presented with opportunities when you join. As my story shows, these opportunities were presented to me through hard work and dedication.

Regards,
Li Tan
NAAAP Seattle
President 2005 -2006