Shirley Young
Governor and Former Chairman
of the Committee of 100
Interview by AC Team's Mario Machado

Technical Requirements

     Shirley Young, is both a successful businesswoman in the corporate world as well as a successful entrepreneur. She is the President of Shirley Young Associates, LLC, a business advisory company, and serves as senior advisor to General Motors-Asia Pacific and consultant to Interpublic Group of Companies for Asia. Having an earlier career at Grey Advertising, Shirley Young is recognized for her expertise in brand development and consumer motivations.

     She serves on the Board of Directors of the Bank of America, Bell Atlantic Corporation, and has served as a Director of Dayton-Hudson Corporation, Holiday Inn/Promus/Hurrah's, the Bombay Company and as Vice Chairman of the Nominating Committee of the New York Stock Exchange.

     Shirley Young is Governor and ex-Chairman of the Committee of 100, and serves as chairman of the Committee of 100 Cultural Institute. She is a founding member of the Committee of 200, an international organization of leading businesswomen.

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Mario Machado: Behind us is a panel, all men. It seems that there are many, many more male entrepreneurs in the Asian community than there are female entrepreneurs. Why is that? Is it genetic?

Shirley Young: I don't know. I think that's quite interesting, because there are a lot of women entrepreneurs in America. But I think this is such a lively field, and perhaps it has to do with the computing background that perhaps men, particularly in this dot-com world, have had a head start playing games and doing things that are related to computers, perhaps have more of a background than women do.

Mario: You've done both things, you've worked the corporate world, you're an entrepreneur at heart. Do you encourage women who might be watching to, in this new millennium, go out and do it themselves or take the corporate route?

Shirley: Well, I think the key is to have, as I say, always have a dream as to what I wanted to do.  And the dream, I came to it... I wanted to be involved in the international world, and I wanted to hopefully make some contribution to the world economy, market economy in the world. Some kind of economic progress.

Now, I had absolutely no idea how to do that, but I ended up in market research and advertising, which I never intended to be in, and ended up working in China helping General Motors develop a big plant, investing a couple billion dollars to bring Buicks to China.

So in the end I ended up doing what I wanted to do, but there was no plan. So I always say, don't plan too hard. Have a dream, have a goal, and always try to decide how you are going to make a contribution in the work that you are doing. But keep your eye on that dream, because in the end, somehow you always end up doing it, although I would have never imagined ending up in a company like General Motors doing what I wanted to do.

Mario: To the young people who might be watching, young women particularly, give them some advice as to how to be as successful as you are.

Shirley: As I said, think about what your dream is, and also think about how you are going to make a contribution. Don't focus too much on yourself, because you will discover that if you focus on making a contribution to whatever organization or entity you're involved with, somehow you will always end up progressing. And secondly, if you keep an idea of what your dream is and what you love to do, you'll be good at it and you'll succeed at it.

Mario: Shirley Young, thank you.

Shirley: You're welcome!

- End of Excerpts -

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