B-school Dean, Risk-Taker, Board Member
from
January/February 2006
by Lisa Ferri
“Culturally, we’ve been more geared toward academic achievement than to risk-taking.” That’s how Carolyn Y. Woo, 51, describes her fellow Chinese Americans. She herself racked up so much academic achievement that she is now dean of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. Having grown up in what she describes as a traditional Chinese family in Hong Kong, she went to an all-girls school there run by Maryknoll nuns, whom she credits for teaching her about independence and cooperation. Woo absorbed these values well. She was the first female in her family to go to college—Purdue, where she graduated with honors and worked her way up to a full professorship. Notre Dame recruited her in 1997.
Her academic research over the years has focused on strategy, organizational systems, and entrepreneurship. That’s partly why she’s a useful board member—she serves as a director of Aon Corp., a risk-management and consulting company; Circuit City, an electronics retailer; and NiSource Inc., an energy holding company based in Merrillville, Indiana. She says that being a “one and only”—the sole Asian on these boards—helps make her a truly independent director.
Woo maintains that there’s an upside to being on the outside of the old-boy and old-girl network. “I don’t play golf. I’m not big on sports talk. I don’t go to the opera. These [fellow directors] are not buddies of mine,” she says. “I’ve learned to function without needing to feel like I ‘belong,’ without needing their approval. I’ve learned how to hold my own.”
She believes boards should rethink how they fill their seats, and be more open to candidates with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Boards can benefit, she says, by getting “different approaches to a problem and different kinds of wisdom.”
Woo acknowledges that assertiveness like hers is rarely associated with Asian Americans. “Leadership and risk-taking have to be developed over time,” she says, “particularly among first-generation Chinese Americans, who have not been encouraged to be risk-takers. It has not been viewed as a good use of time.” Woo is challenging those notions in her professional and volunteer work. She is a member of the Committee of 100, a group of Chinese Americans that aims to promote Asian American participation in American life. But mostly she’s changing those stereotypes by being herself.
