Smith Club of San Francisco
and Marin
Alumnae Profiles
Doreen Woo Ho '68
Winter 2003/2004
Part I
A small self-portrait titled “Sometimes, Serendipity”, by Doreen Woo Ho ’68, appeared in a January 2003, issue of the Sunday New York Times business section. She writes that early in her working life, a chance meeting introduced her to what might have become an entirely different and far less safe career, that of a war correspondent or journalist. Her many significant accomplishments in the world of banking during the past quarter century and more, however, could only have happened with a steady focus on goals ahead, with little left to chance.
Today Doreen is President of Wells Fargo’s Consumer Credit Group, overseeing both the Home Equity business and the Personal Lines and Loans business. Wells Fargo is America’s leading provider of both these areas of consumer finance.
Doreen was born in Australia, where her father, a Taiwanese diplomat, was assigned. When she was eight the family returned to Taiwan, and Doreen quickly added Chinese to her first language, English. A year in Japan brought exposure to a third language, but when her father was called to French-speaking Africa, her parents decided to enroll her in boarding school in the States.
At thirteen, Doreen found herself an ocean away from her family, at a Catholic school in Maryland. Having lived already in three other countries, Doreen thought she knew how to feel like one of the group. But she remembers noticing, at a roadside stop during a field trip to Virginia, the sign "Whites Only" at the restaurant entrance. She was aware that her friends all paused, and she knew what was running through their minds before they all hustled into the restaurant together with her. This was the first time she had to ask herself, "Where do I fit?" It didn't help that one teacher seemed unable to mask her prejudice, constantly finding fault with Doreen.
Once admitted to Smith as an international student, Doreen felt no discrimination from anyone; in fact, she still feels being Asian was an advantage, because her professors always remembered her. She recalls there being fewer than ten Asians on campus during her four years (today there are over 250 Asian-Americans in the student body), yet she felt that Smith truly treasured diversity. Doreen says she really learned how to think at Smith. She rates her professors there superior to those at Columbia, where she received an MA, concentrating on East Asian Studies and Chinese History.
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Part II: War Correspondent Years
After unsuccessfully looking for work in publishing (these were the times when companies still told women they needed to start as secretaries), Doreen returned to Taiwan and was hired by Citibank, where her English was valued in a PR-focused job. To her disappointment, she learned that had she been hired as a management trainee by the bank in New York and then sent to Taiwan as international staff, she would have enjoyed the higher end of a vastly different pay scale. This awareness may have been the first inkling to lead to the serendipity that was to follow.
In the early 70's, Doreen's then husband worked for CBS news in Cambodia, and Doreen decided to leave Taiwan and go with him to Phnom Penh. Stopping in Saigon en route, she met a Time Magazine bureau chief who needed to replace his Cambodian war correspondent, and he offered her the position. On-the-job training consisted of observing more-experienced writers in the small press corps and some coaching by Telex from New York.
Doreen remembers how the journalists all shared information and covered for one another when someone needed to leave for R&R. Whenever major events occurred, leading American newspapers would send in correspondents to write reports from the field. They'd often ask Doreen to describe what had happened, even though her job was to do more analytical writing from the sidelines.
"This was very heady stuff!" she says, recalling the sense of both the enormous power of the press and of how easy it might have been for someone to pass along distorted information.
Her press ID allowed her to meet the Prime Minister of the country or enjoy a quiet, albeit surreal, performance of the Royal Cambodian Ballet, on the royal palace terrace while battles raged outside the city.
For a year, Doreen endured the chaos, with the Khmer Rouge sometimes destroying the power supply, the nightly roar of nearby bombings and hissing of rocket launchers, and the constant worry that her building might come under attack. The glamour of being a journalist in a war zone began to wear off as she witnessed the condition of many correspondents' personal lives. They could be sent somewhere for a couple of days, or maybe it would be a few weeks; events, usually tragic ones, controlled their lives. Doreen clearly saw that she no longer wanted to be just the observer or reporter; she wanted work where she could initiate events.
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Part III: The Citibank Years
Upon returning to the States, Doreen received offers from both Time magazine and Citibank. Feeling confident that with experience she could master management skills and be the one who made things happen, she chose banking and began a 24-year career with Citibank in San Francisco, where she rose to senior-level positions in a number of the bank's divisions.
One of her most noteworthy contributions was the bank's successful promotional campaign, "Citi of Dreams". She also established Citibank's statewide business banking division and played a major role in significantly expanding the bank's mortgage business in California.
During these years, Doreen and her second husband raised three children, the youngest of whom is still a teenager. An important personal accomplishment for Doreen is having always had someone at home for her children at the end of the school day. She's very grateful for the support of her husband and household help, acknowledging that there were some family trade-offs necessary to accommodate her career. And, while she may not have pushed as hard in her work when she had young children at home, she believes managing the career-family balance is a very individual circumstance, and what works for one may not be right for another.
"My daughters," she says, for example, "would say I'm a role model, but I wouldn't say they should follow what I did."
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Part IV: At Wells Fargo
In 1998, Doreen moved to Wells Fargo, where she's now President of Consumer Credit, a division that has more than two million accounts and over 5,500 employees. Doreen is the ranking Asian American banker among the top five banks in the country. Money Magazine named her one of "America's most powerful women executives." She's also a regular attendee at Fortune Magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business Summit.
This year, USBanker inaugurated its ranking of the "25 Most Powerful Women in Banking" and selected Doreen from a pool of several thousand candidates. This recognition cites Doreen's "customer-focused approach" and "contributions to team members and the community".
Both her work and community contributions have been recognized by the Chinese Historical Society of America, which named Doreen one of eight Chinese-American Women of Honor, and by the Chinatown Community Development Center that honored her in 2003 as an Outstanding Corporate Visionary. Doreen is also Vice President and Treasurer on the San Francisco Opera's Board of Directors.
Banking is an industry that has provided great opportunity to women; many banks, including Wells Fargo, employ more women than men. Doreen believes that women's ability to be inclusive in team-building and problem-solving gives them an advantage in today's business world. She comments that in today's information age, with so much data to absorb, women find it natural to collaborate, ask for help and receive input. Delegating, relying on others' judgment, and empowering others are also skills that Doreen has learned and used in making many contributions to banking throughout her career.
Doreen sees herself as a product manufacturer, guiding her team through innovative product development and distribution, keys to Wells Fargo's top position in consumer credit. A Citibank executive, who once affectionately referred to Doreen as "our little China doll," might now review with awe her list of accomplishments, achieved with great strength of purpose. Doreen has helped change the statistics on some key benchmarks comparing men and women in business. Her advice to young women is to stay engaged in work to some degree if raising children. Once the kids are grown, trying to pick up links in a broken chain can be very challenging at a time when a firm-holding anchor can provide much needed support.
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