The Hong Kong-born head of CreAsia Studio discusses why she left a booming Silicon Valley and returned to Asia
I GREW UP IN HONG KONG. My father was an interior designer, my mother a housemaker. I went to St Mary’s Canossian College for most of my secondary schooling, until transferring to King’s College for the last two years. Although it’s an all-boys school, for a brief period they accepted girls and I had the privilege to study there during that time. I was a bit of a nerd, a straight A student, good in math and science. I didn’t do much except focus on my exams, but I was never too sure what my career would be. I applied to a bunch of universities and went to the University of California, Berkeley (in the United States), when they accepted me for computer science.
AFTER I GRADUATED, in 1990, I got a job at software giant Oracle right away. They were pretty big already, with lots of resources. They even flew me in for an interview. I was well paid, and they treated us well. The company was about 70 to 80 per cent guys. I always seem to be in settings where there are more males than females, but I never came across any discrimination or disrespect. I actually quite enjoy being the minority as a woman and Asian. Male engineers tend to be quite straightforward; they speak their minds without a lot of politics. Silicon Valley was growing so much. It was still a boom period. I had a very comfortable life but something was missing.
