Remarks – Athena Awards
Chicago , IL
Tuesday, April 17, 2007  

• Thank you, Judy, for that kind introduction.

• Thank you, Martha Mertz, for your vision to create this organization.

• Yvonne Wood and all the Board members of the Athena Foundation: Thank you for this high honor and wonderful award. I am touched by what this award stands for – strength, courage, wisdom, and enlightenment. I will do all I can to measure up to these values.

• This has to be my Oscar moment! I have many people I want to share this award with:

• My husband, K.C. Chun;
• Korean American and Asian American community leaders;
• Governors Thompson and Edgar, who gave me the opportunity to serve the great State of Illinois in their Administrations;
• The Honorable Judy Baar Topinka – my mentor and the person who brought me out of retirement;
• My friend Alice Phillips, who has been with me through the high points and the low points;
• My Women’s Bureau family – staff, partners, and mentors; and
• President George W. Bush and Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao.

• The first Director of the Women’s Bureau was Mary Anderson, an immigrant from Sweden who came to the U.S. at age 16 and worked as a stitcher in a shoe factory in Chicago for 18 years.

• Now we have come full circle. Thanks to President George W. Bush and my boss, Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao, a Korean immigrant is now the first Asian-American Director of the Women’s Bureau in its 86 years!

• Just think of the transformation of one individual! I was born in the horse year. My mother waited two weeks to announce my birth so she could say I was born in the goat year – a small animal sign that men would prefer. Mother was determined to maximize her chances of finding a suitable man for me to marry.

• I came to America in 1965 to marry another “Chun.” In Korea at that time, you could not marry anyone with the same last name. My future husband, K.C., and I had to trace back over 1,000 years to find a common ancestor! I came to America, where K.C. was, so we could get married. Because tradition was so important to my father, he disowned me. It took 10 years and my 2 boys to reconcile and get his blessing.

• This ridiculous law finally changed. In 1996, I published my book, From the Mountains of Masan to the Land of Lincoln, in Korea. One of the stories was about how I had to leave my country to get married. My book raised this issue for public debate. The law changed one year later. Not only has this law changed, but women can now keep their children if they divorce, and receive an inheritance from their family.

• Tonight I want to talk about the 3 defining moments in my life:
• Going to graduate school at Northwestern;
• Organizing , with other community activists, the Asian American Coalition of Chicago, which led to Governor Thompson’s office and then 10 years as a member of the Illinois Cabinet; and
• Becoming the 1 st Asian American Director of the Women’sBureau in its 81years.

Northwestern

• When I went to Northwestern University for further education, it was not my idea – it was my husband K.C.’s. He was working on his Ph.D. at Northwestern.

• Even though I grew up a tomboy, in retrospect it is amazing how Korean cultural and societal expectations played in my mind. I thought that after a woman got married, she should have a baby before anything else. Plus I thought I would never work outside the home even one day in my life, so why bother to get further education?

• K.C. and I fought like cats and dogs for six months about whether I should go to school or have a baby. We finally compromised – I enrolled at Northwestern for a Master’s Degree while I was expecting. I entered the School of Education in September, and the following February, in the middle of the academic year, I delivered a very handsome baby boy.

• I am where I am because of my education at Northwestern.

Asian American Coalition of Chicago

• With the passing of the 1965 revision of the immigration law, and the ending of the Vietnam War in 1975, many immigrants and refugees came from Asia and settled in Illinois. The influx of so many newly arrived immigrants presented a unique set of challenges – cultural differences, a language barrier, adjustment problems, and discrimination. To address their needs, a group of us got together who desired to serve this community and help state government to be more responsive to the needs of Asian Americans. Our small group of 13 became a movement -- many more people joined, and the Asian American Coalition was born. That was 23 years ago.

• I was given credit for organizing 13 Asian American ethnic communities to create a united voice. This volunteer work led to my job as Governor Thompson’s Special Assistant for Asian American Affairs, and that led to becoming a member of the Illinois Cabinet.

• I want to thank the Asian American Coalition members in the audience tonight.

• In 1999, I decided to retire from state government. I want to thank Judy Baar Topinka, who, in her capacity as Chair of the Illinois Republican Party, called me out of my retirement in May 2000. She said, “Shinae, you are tooyoung to retire.”

• On December 21, 2000, I was one of a small inner circle of Asian-Pacific American Republican leaders gathered for a strategy meeting, and that’s when I met my future boss, Elaine Chao. Twenty days later, she was named Secretary of Labor.

• Elaine Chao is a remarkable American woman – the 1 st Asian American woman Cabinet member, the 24 th Secretary of Labor. She is a compassionate, caring Labor Secretary who has a special place in her heart for APAs and women. Thanks to her, 50% of all PASs (Presidential appointees with Senate confirmation) at the Department of Labor are women – and DOL has the highest number of APA appointees of any Cabinet agency.

The Women’s Bureau

• After I was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in May 2001, I had the great honor to walk into an institution, the Women’s Bureau, which had 81 years of history. The first questions I asked were, “Are we relevant to the 21 st Century economy?” and “How do we measure our success?”

• I am very proud to say that we transformed the way we serve our customers. The Women's Bureau is now a place for:
• Best ideas and innovative programs
• Technology driven on-line learning programs, with 600 dedicated mentors and 300 value-added partners
• Results -driven/Outcome oriented
• Replications and capacity building

• The Women’s Bureau promotes 21 st Century solutions to improve the status of working women and their families, so they can achieve Better Jobs! Better Earnings! and Better Living!

BETTER JOBS!

• GEM-SET : an electronic mentoring (e-mentoring) project encouraging girls to pursue careers in science, engineering and technology – girls in the pipeline.
• With all the progress women have made, women are still underrepresented in science, engineering, and technology.
• I would like to say thank you to Nancy Chen, our Regional Administrator, and to our national contractor: The University of Illinois at Chicago, for their work on GEM-SET.

• Working Women in Transition (WWIT) :

• If you want to see the changing face of America’s working women, take a look at this program. It has diversity in race and ethnicity; income; education; age; and the target groups of women in transition.

• This project uses a combination of “high tech” and “high touch” strategies to assist women in 1) finding employment, 2) increasing their earnings, and/or 3) entering into career education/training opportunities.

• Web site serves as a portal to career-related online training and workforce development tools – www.workingwomenintransition.org. Online learning offers flexibility of time and place. It enableswomen to effectively integrate learning into their lives.

• Participants receive e-mentoring, face-to-face mentoring, and job readiness training.

• Target populations include single mothers (Pennsylvania); incarcerated women (Vermont); Hurricane Katrina survivors (Louisiana, Georgia, Texas); Native American and rural women (South Dakota); recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (Arkansas); women recovering from substance abuse (Kentucky); baby boomers changing careers (Ohio); and Asian American women who desire to start or expand their own businesses (Illinois).

• National contractor: The University of Kentucky.

BETTER EARNINGS!

• Wi$e Up :
• A financial security and retirement savings project for Generations X and Y women.
• Just under half (47%) of wage and salaried women participated in a pension plan as of March 2005.
• On average, women retiring at age 65 can expect to live another 20 years, compared to 17 years for men.
• Texas A&M University is our national contractor, and State Farm is our corporate sponsor. I want to say thank you to State Farm and Dianne Lerman.

BETTER LIVING!

• Flex-Options for Women : This program brings together volunteer mentors who are corporate executives with best practicesANDbusiness owners interested in developing flexible workplace policies and programs.

• When we conducted focus groups to understand what Generations X and Y women want and need now and in 2020, we found that workplace flexibility is their most important issue going forward.

Mary Scranton

• As I thought of the many people I want to thank who helped me in my career, I thought of a woman I never met, a 19 th century woman.
• My mother’s only wish in life was for her girls to get a college degree instead of a dowry. Mary F. Scranton, a 19 th Century Methodist missionary, made my mother’s dream possible. Mary Scranton made the choice to leave her comfortable home in the U.S. At age 50, she traveled across the world to establish the first institution of formal education for women in Korea in 1886. She started with one student. Ewha Womans University currently has 20,000 students and is one of the largest women’s universities in the world.
• I wish I could tell her how many women’s lives she changed – including my own. Without her vision and sacrifice, I would not be standing before you today.
• I learned from her what a difference just one person can make. Now I try to give back and open doors for other women – as Mary Scranton did for me.

BEEF STORY

• I want to leave you with my favorite story about gender equity.
  
• I’ve always believed that gender equity starts at home.  When I was growing up in Korea, beef soup was a very popular and special dish that every family enjoyed.  More often than not, I noticed that I did not have beef in my portion of the soup.  Mine was full of vegetables, with no beef.  All the beef was in my father’s soup and my brothers’ soup.   I did not have any hard feelings about this.  In fact, I enjoyed my beef soup without the beef.  (HERE I AM, A HEALTHY VEGETARIAN, PERHAPS I WILL LIVE LONGER THAN THEY DO.)  But I have become very conscious about that missing beef, and ever since I have been asking “WHERE IS THE BEEF?”