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Phoebe
Eng
Consultant, Author, and Lecturer
You will succeed only at that which you love," says Phoebe Eng.
At the Aspire Conference, Eng spoke about family expectations and
personal dreams. She is a self-assured renaissance woman who
left few career paths unexplored. Not only is she a former international
corporate attorney but also a publisher of A. Magazine in the
journal's early days. In 1995, she attended the U.N. World Conference
on Women in Beijing as a leading social activist and member of the
Ms. Foundation Group. Currently, she is a national lecturer
and director of the strategy group The Different Mirror.
She recently gained prominence as the author of Warrior
Lessons: An Asian Woman's Journey into Power. In writing the
book, she interviewed as many women as she could, wanting to make
her journey inclusive of women from all walks of Asian-American
life. "Expectations," in its every shade of meaning, is
a consistent theme in the book and Phoebe chose to speak to us about
it.
Growing up Asian-American, she felt there were only three
life choices deemed acceptable by her parents' generation. A. doctor;
B. engineer; C. lawyer. Eng says, "my mother always told me
I would be a lawyer. The rationale was that if I became a lawyer,
I could protect her as well as myself. We'd never be hood-winked."
In today's age, she recognizes an equally weighty expectation: D.
billionaire entrepreneur. But what about her own dalliances with
self-employment? "My mother thought 'entrepreneur' meant someone
who didn't make any money.
Phoebe asserts that Asian-Americans must often work double
time to satisfy their personal needs as well as family expectations.
Phoebe herself studied both engineering and English literature so
that her "parents would be happy, the world would be happy."
She began to make peace with her inner struggles after she
realized that the expectations placed on her were really those passed
down to her by generations past. "If you think of where your
mother came from, where your father came from, it turns out
those expectations have little to do with you!" Today, Phoebe
forges ahead as a consultant, author and lecturer, rocketing
above and beyond those expectations she speaks so eloquently about.
-- AC's Leona Chu
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