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 Matthew
Fong
Conference Chair of the Committee of 100
Interview by Mario Machado
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Matt Fong, Committee of 100's
Conference Chair 2000, is one of America's brightest stars in politics.
Fong, a fourth generation Californian was California's State Treasurer,
and made a strong but unsuccessful Senate bid in 1998 as the Republican
Party's candidate from California. A prior member of California's
State Board of Equalization, he holds an MBA from Pepperdine University,
a J.D. degree from Southwestern University School of Law, and is
a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is from a family of
pioneering politicians. His mother, former U.S. Ambassador March
Fong Eu, was Secretary of State of California for more than twenty
years.
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Mario Machado: What
were the responsibilities of the host committee?
Matt Fong:
The host committee was focused on trying
to come up with the panelists, trying to come up with a theme, and
then trying to recruit the speakers to make it a success.
Mario: So the home
run hitters who are here are quite significant. Jerry Yang, one,
as you mentioned earlier, what kind of response did you get when
you approached him the first time out? Did he say, "I'll make the
date for you"?
Matt:
Many of these speakers on the panels are
also Committee of 100 members, they knew the importance of the sharing
of their time, and we do this once a year, and so we made a conserted
effort that they knew that this theme of the convergence of technology
and communications here, especially in Hollywood, would be appropriate
and they should make the time. And they were all enthusiastic.
Mario: Were you the
one on your panel or at least mentioned, the biotech aspects of
investments in the biotech arena rather than just staying strictly
in the Internet arena?
Matt:
It was important that we ask Frank Kung,
one of our members, to focus on that. Because right now most folks
are not focused on that, they are focused on the Internet. But in
the next ten years, biotech will be capturing quite a lot of that
market share.
Mario: Now, your
membership of the Committee of 100 is not limited to 100 people
I've learned, it's beyond that, and you have to be a Chinese American
to be a member, however the conference is opened to all types of
people. What do they gleam from this when they come here, members
of the community at large that are not Chinese?
Matt:
We're sponsored by many well known organizations
from AT&T, Pacific Bell, and State Farm for example, not Asian
organizations. They want to help, one, to support the community.
Some are looking to do business in Asia, and are looking for the
connection and the right relationship to help and assist them.
They are looking to be supportive of the creative arts, and so tonight
when we have our "Joy Luck Club" cast come, they are very supportive.
So it's a variety of things, but we've tried to
make a consorted effort on this conference to really open up our
arms and be as inclusive as possible, really focusing on young adults,
young professionals and students.
Because I think that we have a mentoring responsibility
to help bring up everybody, so that not just a few do well, but
we want the whole community to do well, so this conference we have
particularly tried to do a successful outreach, and that's probably
part of the reason why we have oversold all of our functions from
our panels to our meals.
Mario: Matt Fong, Chairman of
the event, at the Committee of 100 Conference at the Westin Bonaventure
Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
I'm Mario Machado. Thank you
Matt.
Matt: Thank you, Mario.
- End of Excerpts -
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