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