Founder and President of the Women Empowerment Council Addresses Fresh-Faced Females Graduates

Dear Future Women of the World,

When the bell rings and you are dismissed from your last class, your life as a high school student will come to a close, opening the doors to a new chapter ahead. More bells will ring, more chapters will end, and some more will start. A door closes and another one opens. Life, my dear graduates, is a continuous journey full of surprises, sorrows, and joys that will go on. As you go through these exciting journeys, I hope you will allow yourself to be soaked in such surprises, sorrows, and joys, and to live in the moment. But more importantly, as you go through life, I hope you will not just “go with the flow,” a motto that seems ever prevalent among the young generation; I believe that you have the power to be in charge of your own destiny, to lead a life with purpose, and to take on challenges and learn from mistakes with intentionality. I hope you don’t let the currents of life and society take you wherever they might. I urge you to be in charge of your life and be the captain of your ship even when the harshest winds blow. You must know yourself well enough to not lose yourself in the process. But how?

When I was your age, I was busy thinking about how to, first, be a good high school student, and then after that, how to be a good college student. Outside the walls of school, I was preoccupied with honing my virtues as a daughter, a friend, and maybe a community member. Then, after college, it was how to be a good employee. Before I knew it, I was trying to be the perfect 格格 who was adored by her parents-in-law, and then after that, the do-it-all mother. As you can tell, as women we are expected to wear many hats, embrace many identities, and live for many more people other than ourselves throughout our lives. In the process of trying to balance all these hats and negotiate between all these identities, it is very easy for us to lose ourselves and forget what WE want. Yes, what YOU want, for yourself and as yourself, not for your parents as a daughter, for your husband as a wife, for your children as a mother, for your company as an employee. So, the question that I want you to always remember to ask yourself, from time to time is What do I want? If you allow yourself the time and space to ask and reflect on that question regularly enough, you will be much more in touch with who you are and what you want, which will then unleash many insights from within you. In the busy hustles and bustles of adult life, finding security from within yourself by strengthening your self-awareness will ground you and help you stand strong even in the harshest of circumstances.

Self-awareness will also help you find your passions, without which life would be rather tamed and repressed. I can tell you that when I was 18, coming out of high school, I did not know I wanted advocacy for girls and women to be my full-time job. I started with things most immediate to me, asking myself what I wanted to do, which happened to be sales at the time. So I decided to join Boeing to sell airplanes after I graduated from college. But it turned out that to enter the sales department then, I either needed to be an amazing engineer, a possibility that I knew for sure has escaped my fate, at least in this life, or I needed to have an MBA. But I needed to have an executive sponsor to pursue my MBA. So, I went to seek support from an executive in my company. When I was able to get an MBA, I knew that some international experiences would allow me to do what I wanted (still, then, selling airplanes) much better, so I asked my MBA program to let me study abroad in China for a year. That was over 27 years ago. I have now worked and lived in China for most of my adult life, and was able to pursue my passion for advocating for girls and women by starting my own company at the Women Empowerment Council (WEC). Throughout all these different experiences, I always allow myself to stop just for a minute to ask myself the question What do I, Su Cheng, want? By answering that question and understanding that the answers will change over time, I have been able to make hard choices and adapt, without losing the essence of who I am and what I love to do, which is to be the connector for people and advocate for girls and women through business, education, and entrepreneurship.

By knowing what I want, I have also empowered myself to ask two other important questions, namely Who can help me? and Who can I help? You will learn, if not already, that women are also expected to be superhumans, bearing the burdens almost always on our own. But make no mistake: We are stronger and better TOGETHER. So, as you nurture others, also let others support you through your journey by asking others for help and accepting it when you need it. Always have at least one mentor and sponsor, if not more, that can help advocate for you throughout your academic and professional lives. In addition to being self-aware, learning to be resourceful will be of immense value to you as you embark on the ups and downs of life as an adult in this big, big world. Empowered by self-awareness and passion, two of the six traits that pioneering research by the Women Empowerment Council in our 2022 DEI Report has found to be essential to cultivating inclusive leadership in the workplace, you will go on to pursue your brave dreams and become inclusive leaders that can positively impact the world around you.