Julia Gouw
President and Chief Operating Officer, East West Bank

Born 1959 in Surabaya, Indonesia.

In 1978, Julia S. Gouw was the first of her family to emigrate from Indonesia to the United States to earn a college degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She initially wanted to pursue a degree in chemistry, but switched to accounting and finance. After graduating, she became a certified public accountant and eventually worked for KPMG LLP, an international accounting firm, as a senior audit manager (1983–1989).

Ms. Gouw joined Pasadena, California-based East West Bank in 1989 as vice president and controller, rising quickly in the company to become executive vice president and chief financial officer by 1994. She was instrumental in the $238 million management-led buyout of East West in June 1998. She was in charge of East West Bank’s acquisition of Pacific Coast Federal Savings Bank of San Francisco from the Resolution Trust Corporation in 1991 during the savings and loan crisis, as well as eight other bank acquisitions that took place from 1999 to 2010, including the FDIC-assisted acquisition of United Commercial Bank (UCB) in 2009.

Gouw served as the chief risk officer for East West Bank and vice chairman of both the bank and the holding company in 2008. She has served as president and chief operating officer of both entities since November 30, 2009. She has been on the board of directors of both the bank and its holding company, East West Bancorp Inc., since 1997. In January 2011, she joined the boards of Pacific Mutual Holding Company and Pacific LifeCorp.

Highly recognized by the financial community for her work and contributions, Gouw has been named in the following rankings: “25 Most Powerful Women in Banking” by U.S. Banker magazine (2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007); “Top 10 CFOs in Banking” by U.S. Banker magazine (2006); and “Best CFOs in America” by Institutional Investor magazine (2006 and 2007).

Even more important to Ms. Gouw is her ability and opportunity to serve women and her community through involvement in several medical boards and charitable roles. She is one of the original members of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles Women Leaders (2002); founder of the Executive Advisory Board of the Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (since 2005); a member of the Board of Visitors of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (since 1997); a member of the board of directors of The UCLA Foundation (since 2006); a trustee of Saint John’s Health Center (since 2003); and a board member of the John Wayne Cancer Institute at Saint John’s Health Center (since 2007).

Ms. Gouw has been recognized as a leader in philanthropy as much as a leader in the banking community. Her notable achievements include being named the Philanthropist of the Year by the National Association of Women Business Owners–Los Angeles in 2003, and Philanthropist of the Year by the Los Angeles Business Journal at both their 2003 and 2008 annual Women Making a Difference events.

Elizabeth Ghaffari: Where were you born and raised? What was your family like?

Julia Gouw: I was born in 1959 in Surabaya, which is the second-largest city in Indonesia—the coastal port from which the Venture expedition set sail in the movie King Kong.¹ I have an older sister, then there’s me, my brother, and my younger sister.

My dad had a big influence on me because he always encouraged me to have a career and be financially independent. He never wanted me to be dependent on a husband to support me. He was a pessimist who told me, “I cannot take care of you. I cannot leave you an inheritance, but the one thing I can do is to pay for your education.” I requested to be sent to college in the United States. He agreed saying, “If you have a college degree, then you can take care of yourself.” That was an encouragement.

None of my mom’s generation had any career outside home. The nice thing about my mom is that she was very, very proud, and she felt my achievements vicariously. When I started my first job, I was making just $14,000 at Texaco, but my mom thought that was a huge salary because she never had any opportunity to make any money herself.

__________

Some mothers are “tiger moms”—very demanding. There are pluses and minuses to that. Sometimes their kids may feel as if they can never do enough. I didn’t have a tiger mom. The good thing is that I learned to be demanding for myself—not for my parents.

But then I turned out to be a tiger mom, myself, because that’s how I took care of my brother and my sister. I came to the United States in 1978 to go to college at the University of Illinois, and helped my brother and sister who came here later. My brother came here to go to college in Illinois, and my sister came here at a much younger age—she went to boarding school in eighth grade, also in Illinois. My parents were still in Indonesia, so in a way, I became a substitute parent. They would tell people that I’m a “tiger mom” or their “tiger big sister.”

Ghaffari: What was it like in your early years, coming to the US from Indonesia?

Gouw: It’s interesting to me that, in Indonesia, I never heard or experienced any prejudices about women not being good in math or sciences. I was a very good student and very good at math—better than the boys in my class. Academically, whether it was math, science, or whatever, I was always at the top of the class. The first time that I heard that women are not as good as men in math was when I was in college. I was sitting in the front—I always like it in the front of the class. It was accounting or finance, and the professor said something like, “Women are not as good as men in math.” So I made a face at him, and then he said, “Well, in general.”

But, I noticed the difference. Women who grew up in Asia never heard such biases, so we didn’t fear math or science. Girls and women brought up in the US hear it much more often. My husband and I don’t have kids, but I’ve sensed that, among my friends’ kids, Asian girls who are born here and go to school here are more afraid of math and science. Ever since my favorite niece—my brother’s daughter—was very young, I’ve told her, “You are good at math. I’m going to teach you math.” Today, she excels at math. I just want to encourage her to make sure that she doesn’t feel inferior. I do believe that a lot of the girls and women growing up in America are sensitized to think that way because they get a lot of negative feedback. That thinking limits girls’ view and discourages them from going after fields that require math and science.

Ghaffari: Why did you switch to accounting and finance?

Gouw: When I was growing up, actually I thought I’d become a spy because I read books about detectives and spies. Then, I realized I didn’t like the idea of being tortured.

When I was growing up in Indonesia, the most important thing was just, “Oh, you have to go to college.” Over there, you become a doctor, a scientist or an engineer, so I just choose chemistry without really knowing what I would do with it after I graduated.

After that, people told me, “If you study chemistry, then you’ll work in the lab to do research.” But, I decided that wasn’t for me, so I changed my major to business. At first, I selected finance, then later took accounting classes and really liked it. I was good at both accounting and finance. I graduated from Illinois with an accounting degree in 1981.

Ghaffari: How did you happen to come to Los Angeles?

Gouw: Some friends introduced me to my future husband. I was going to school while he worked in San Jose. We had a long-distance relationship for two years. Then he moved to Los Angeles. I didn’t want to stay in Illinois because it was too cold—especially for someone like me who came from the Indonesian tropical islands. He owned an aircraft spare parts business with my brother and some partners. He sold the business twelve years ago and retired.

Ghaffari: What was your first job?

Gouw: My first job was as an accountant at Texaco in Los Angeles. I didn’t know anything. I just got a job because I needed a job. I had a great mentor in my first boss, Paul Archer, at Texaco—a wonderful man. Later on, he actually was the one who helped me to get a job at KPMG because he told me that working for a public accounting firm would accelerate my ability to move up. His wife, Jean Archer, was the assistant to the managing partner at KPMG, so he asked her to give my résumé to her boss and help me get an interview there.

Ghaffari: Did you have other mentors?

Gouw: I’ve had two wonderful mentors—one is a man and the other is a woman. The other mentor was a partner at KPMG. Her name is Norma Lawrence. I think it was very interesting that Jean Archer told her husband, Paul, “When Julia gets here to KPMG, she’s not going to have you to protect you.” Paul told her, “She’ll find somebody.”

I didn’t feel that I needed protection, but I appreciate the way KPMG did business. The great thing about KPMG is that they gave you a variety of assignments—new things to do. They pushed you very hard, and you always felt that you didn’t know what you were doing at first, because they moved people up and around. In the beginning, before I met Norma Lawrence, I was just doing my best. It was very different working for her. She told me, “You’re very good—very analytical.” I think she made me realize my strengths.

She had a similar background—a math major, but with an MBA from UCLA. She was very analytical, and she valued that in others. When you’re young, you just don’t know what you’re good at or not good at. Getting feedback and encouragement makes you realize where your talents lie.

Ghaffari: How do you define a mentor?

Gouw: It’s really interesting that, back in 1981, Paul Archer told me, “Julia—you’re smart and have a great personality. Had you been a male Caucasian, you would go very far in corporate America.”

It’s something that has stayed in my mind for over thirty years—it was a very difficult time because I was a woman and I was an immigrant. He said that as a friend. When he said that, he was being honest and well-meaning.

Norma Lawrence was a really good mentor because she also told me honestly that she ranked me very high for analytical skills or productivity, but then she also said, “You need to improve your writing skills,” because it was not my strong suit.

When she went to get her MBA at UCLA, she said they trained her to write better because her undergraduate degree in math also did not require a lot of writing. She put me in a writing training class reserved for managers and higher. I wasn’t yet a manager, but she recommended me for that course, “… because it will help you improve your writing.”

So, to answer your question, I believe it’s important to have people who will be honest with you—tell you what you’re good at, what you’re not good at. I think that sometimes today people are overly concerned about saying things that are politically incorrect. They don’t tell you the truth you need to hear.

The other thing that I learned was that she really cared about the people who worked for her.

She made sure to attend all the KPMG management meetings to support the people under her. In accounting firms, you work for many different partners or managers. If they are not in on the management meetings, you’re just a name on a piece of paper. They don’t know who you are when it comes time for promotions or raises. With her support, I became a manager very quickly—in three and a half years. I was so scared when I was promoted. I said, “Oh my God, most people have at least five years of experience before they got promoted. I probably don’t know what I’m doing.” And then she told me, “Ahh, don’t worry. You’re a better manager than all those people.”

She had confidence. And she had more confidence in me than I did myself at the time, but then—if I had a problem or I couldn’t resolve something—I could count on her to always be there.

Ghaffari: How did you come to work for East West Bank?

Gouw: I did audits at financial institutions, real estate, and construction companies for five years at KPMG—1983 to 1989. In public accounting engagements, you have a partner, a manager and a “senior in-charge,” which is a staff-level person. I rose to the level of senior audit manager.

I used to audit East West Bank. At the time, the bank was looking for a controller, so the CFO asked me if I would join East West because I was familiar with everything there. Back in 1989, East West Bank had $400 million in assets and, today, we now have $21 billion. We used to make over $1 million a year, while last year we made $163 million. This year, we should make over $200 million.

Ghaffari: How did you progress at East West Bank?

Gouw: I began as vice president and controller. In 1994, I got promoted to executive vice president and CFO. In 1997, I was elected to the board of directors of the bank and the holding company. They have identical boards. The bank holding company structure allows us to do things that a bank is not permitted to do. For example, we have an insurance agency under the bank holding company or subsidiaries which issue trust-preferred instruments or other kinds of capital.

Ghaffari: What were your responsibilities as CFO?

Gouw: I was in charge of the finance department, overseeing probably fifteen to twenty people. Finance includes accounting, investment, the treasury function, and budgeting. When the bank went public, it added investor relations.

Ghaffari: How involved were you in the management-led buyout of East West Bank?

Gouw: Sometimes opportunities just come about. East West was owned by a single shareholder from Indonesia—a family had bought it in 1991. The financial crisis hit Asia in 1998, and the owners wanted to sell the bank very, very quickly to a Singaporean bank, but the Federal Reserve said regulatory approval would take years. We realized we could do a private placement with accredited investors—mostly institutional investors where no single investor would own more than 9.9 percent. A private placement did not require regulatory approval and could be done in about a month.

The former owner told us that we had one month to do the deal. If we couldn’t meet that deadline, they would have to find another buyer. Dominic Ng, the East West CEO, and I went to Wall Street and we raised $238 million in two weeks and closed the deal in one month. That was June of 1998, and the timing turned out to be so great, because by August or September, the market shut down because of the failure of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund following the Russian financial crisis. Had we missed that window of opportunity, we would not have been able to raise any capital.

Ghaffari: How did the company fare after the IPO?

Gouw: Most of our growth came after we went public. We’ve had compounded growth of assets, loans, and capital increasing by 18 to 20 percent annually since then. It’s been a combination of internal growth and good acquisitions. Internal growth has all come from domestic US sources. We do a lot of real-estate lending, as well as business lending. Our customers are importers, exporters, and companies located here in California.

Ghaffari: What did you do differently from the local California banks that failed during the latest financial crisis?

Gouw: We learned a great deal from the nineties when Southern California real estate got hit hard. A lot of banks chose not to address their problems. I still remember July 2007, after the Bear Stearns hedge fund blew up, we went to our board and said, “Real estate may have a problem.” Early in 2008, we started to curtail our construction lending and at the same time began selling some of these loans. I engaged KPMG to review 100 percent of our portfolio of construction loans. We took the necessary charge-offs and raised capital. Our timing was extremely fortunate. We raised $200 million in preferred stock in April of 2008. Had we waited just a few months, the market would have shut down.

We wanted to make sure that we were protected against the downside, rather than simply focusing on the cost of raising capital. As it turned out, we can now look back and say that raising capital early, when it was available, was the best thing that we ever did.

Ghaffari: How did it happen that you retired from the bank, but then came back?

Gouw: My original plan was to stay until the end of 2008 and retire officially December 31, 2008. We were already looking for my successor in early 2008. I was still on the board, and I kept this office, coming in to work once a week. I was gone for the entire month of August 2009, traveling. When I come back in September, Dominic asked me, “Are you well rested?” And I said, “Why?” [He then asked,] “Can you help with this United Commercial Bank acquisition?”

I had done eight bank acquisitions for the bank after we went public in early 1999. Earlier, in 1991, East West Bank had acquired Pacific Coast Federal Savings Bank in San Francisco from the Resolution Trust Corporation during the savings and loan crisis. But, the UCB transaction in November 2009 was much more complex—involving almost $10 billion in assets and negotiations with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It was a transformational event for us—an opportunity to acquire a major competitor. We had to merge all those bank branches in and trim the duplication.

Ghaffari: You just recently went on a Fortune 500 company board. How did that come about?

Gouw: In January of this year, I went onto the boards of directors of Pacific Mutual Holding Company and Pacific LifeCorp. They’re a holding company and an insurance company. I was approached by Caroline Nahas of Korn Ferry, the search firm engaged by Pacific Life. Caroline is a good friend and is very involved with UCLA Anderson School. I’ve known her for many years through United Way.

Ghaffari: You’re involved in quite a few community activities. Tell me why you chose to be associated with some of them?

Gouw: The bank has been partners with United Way for the last fifteen years, so I’m involved in that role. When they wanted to establish a women leaders group within United Way, I was one of the original members.

I really enjoy my association with UCLA. It started with my contributions to the medical school, and then they asked me to join the Board of Visitors of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

I have a family member who was diagnosed and treated for mood disorders at UCLA in 1997. I learned that UCLA has one of the best medical treatment and research facilities in the field. Dr. Lori Altshuler, Director of Mood Disorders Research at UCLA, is a world renowned expert and has become a dear friend. In addition, she has a keen interest in improving the treatments especially for women.

I set up the Julia Gouw Endowed Chair for Mood Disorders Research in 2003, and Dr. Lori Altshuler is the chair holder. Since then, I learned that there are about one hundred endowed chairs at the David Geffen Medical School at UCLA, but only 7 percent of the endowed chair holders are women. Dr. Janet Pregler, director of the Iris Cantor–UCLA Women’s Health Center, told me that without my endowed chair for Lori, only 6 percent of the endowed chairs would be held by women. This is one measure of how few women doctors/scientists there are who made it to the top at academic centers.

I got to know Dr. Pregler when the Iris Cantor–UCLA Women’s Health Center invited me to a breakfast meeting about seven years ago, where Dr. Pregler talked about gender-based health bias. She said that when she went to medical school in the eighties, they didn’t even teach women’s health, but simply assumed that, since women weighed 70 percent of what men weighed, all the treatments and the dosages for women should be 70 percent of whatever men receive.

Doctors didn’t even know that the symptoms and treatments for a heart attack were significantly different for women. For men, the typical warning sign for a heart attack is chest pains, but for women it’s more likely to be nausea or fatigue. Many women were misdiagnosed and died of a heart attack for that reason.

The only thing they studied directly with women was the reproductive area, for obvious reasons. For everything else, the study is based upon men. Much later, they began to have medical courses about how women’s bodies are different and, therefore, the research has to be different, too. She said that the funding for women’s health is much less than that for men.

So, I told her and the director of development, “If you want to expand the funding for women’s health, why don’t I put together an executive advisory board for women’s health?” I got a group of women, mostly my women executive friends, and told them, “Let’s each contribute $10,000 a year for a three-year commitment and authorize the Center to use the money for research on women’s health, as well as for community outreach.”

The response from my women executive friends was amazing. They also brought their friends to join. In less than six months, we had nine board members. We have about twenty-six board members at this time.

Dr. Pregler divided the money fifty-fifty for research and community outreach, with the research funds used only for pilot studies. We’ve funded sixteen pilot studies to date. An investment of $600,000 in pilot studies has returned $6 million in government and foundation grants. Later, Dr. Pregler opened the application process to many scientists throughout UCLA.

I feel that we are the venture capitalists for women’s health. We do seed funding for pilot studies. The much bigger project funding comes from National Institues of Health [NIH], but those grants wouldn’t have come if the scientists hadn’t developed the data in the pilot study. Sometimes, their needs are very simple. Maybe it’s just a case of holding onto samples that can be used as input into other studies. Since we started, we probably have raised over $1.5 million from these women.

Our executive advisory board meets about two or three times a year. At one event, Dr. Pregler organized lunch with the scientists to tell us about some of these studies they are doing.

I’m also on the board of directors of The UCLA Foundation, the fundraising arm of the UCLA campus—undergraduate and graduate. The foundation manages the funds and also serves as an advocate for the UCLA campus in general.

Because of my involvement with UCLA, I met one of the persons from UCLA who went to St. John’s Hospital, and they introduced me to the John Wayne Cancer Center, which is the affiliate of St. John’s in the cancer research area. It’s just been a wonderful association.

Ghaffari: You are involved in a number of women-in-leadership efforts. Are you seeing progress in this area—more women taking on leadership roles?

Gouw: I do enjoy that a lot, helping other women. I do think more and more women are taking on leadership roles. It’s just not enough yet, given the percentage of the population represented by women.

We have a number of women in leadership at East West Bank. Irene Oh is our executive vice president and chief financial officer. She is a very smart, qualified person, so when the opportunity [came] for me to promote her, I think she was ready.

Our board includes Iris Chan—formerly from Wells Fargo’s National Commercial Banking Group—who just came on board after Peggy Cherng decided to spend more time on her own business, Panda Express. I’ve been involved in recommending we bring these new women onto the board.

Ghaffari: What have been some of the most satisfying things that have happened to you in your career?

Gouw: I do think that an outstanding aspect is ensuring that the bank is doing well, that we continue to sustain the financial performance. That really is a must. If you don’t do well, there’s no way that you can take care of your employees, your customers, and your investors. To me, those are the three most important things. They’re all equally important because we don’t exist without all three of them. We have to balance the needs of all three constituents. At the end of the day, we are not going to be around if we don’t deliver a strong financial performance.

I’m very proud of the fact that, because of our financial performance, we were ranked as the second-best bank in the whole country by Forbes magazine and Fortune magazine picked us as one of the ten best stocks in 2011. We are the only bank in that listing of top stock picks.

Ghaffari: Is there anything different about the way you approach investments that explains this?

Gouw: I think that we always try to be prepared for the worst case and we’re willing to raise capital even when it was dilutive. I think the problem with a lot of banks is they don’t want to unload the problem loans because they don’t want to recognize the losses. But, we always think that safety is priority number one, so if it means that we have to dilute the common shareholders to raise capital, we are better off doing that. We always want to make sure that we have a buffer, in case something bad happens. Risk management is important.

We want to be in the business where we have the value proposition our customers want. We don’t simply price everything the cheapest, because eventually, if you have to be the cheapest in town, your profitability will suffer or you have to take huge risks to make up for that discounting. But, if you offer a certain value proposition that is a win-win for the customers, then you make money and the customer also wins. I think we try to build a business based on long-term relationship banking, which is in the best interests of both the customer and the bank. That is how we can sustain our financial performance.

Ghaffari: Are most of your customers very long-term?

Gouw: Yes, although some may not be as long-term as the others. Overall, we do have high customer loyalty. When East West got started in Los Angeles in 1973, it was very difficult for the Chinese immigrant to get mortgages. We were a savings and loan thrift institute, and mortgage loans were our initial financial offering.

Over time, with the economic growth and the increase in Chinese population in Southern California, we were able to branch out and grow beyond that business. In 1995, we converted from a savings and loan to a commercial bank because many of our Chinese customers owned businesses, but we could not give them business loans as a thrift. Now, many of our customers are in the import-export business, so today we can provide them a full range of trade, finance, and commercial loans.

Ghaffari: If you converted to a commercial bank in 1995, that means you were one of the few that actually weathered the Resolution Trust era as an S&L. Is that true?

Gouw: Yes. Actually, we did not have any loss years in the nineties, despite the fact that we were 100 percent in real estate. We had eleven years of consecutive record earnings from 1997 to 2007. Unfortunately, that got interrupted in 2008 and 2009, but we resumed our record earnings in 2010. And there is a very high likelihood that 2011 will be another record year.

Ghaffari: You said there was some dilution of your shares when you went after more capital. What was the response of your shareholders? What is your relationship with your shareholders?

Gouw: Very good. Actually, some of the shareholders bought into the new issuance. We have a large presence of institutional rather than retail investors. The top twenty investors are almost all institutional investors. I think that they spend more time getting to know us. They are long-term investors that believe in our business model, as well as our ability to ride out these business cycles.

Ghaffari: How would you describe your own decision-making style?

Gouw: I use my analytical skills to make a decision. I believe in making a decision quickly, provided it’s fact-based. Gather all the facts possible, but also realize you’ll never have all the information that you need. Sometimes people are paralyzed and cannot make a decision because they are stuck waiting for more information. To me, the most important thing is that if you have enough information, and it’s fact-based, make a decision.

At the same time, I always try to assess what is the worst case. What if things don’t go well? Is the downside going to kill you or not?

I know I can always make changes. I don’t believe that whatever I decide is always correct. I try to keep an open mind—I could have made a wrong decision. If I keep my options open—that I can change directions before things get worse—I can adjust. Sometimes people want to prove that they are always right. They’re so adamant about proving that they are right, they are blind to the possibility they could have made a better decision. Or that they could change and eventually end up with a better outcome.

When I was an outside auditor at KPMG, we would return each year to an engagement that we audited the year before. Every time I finished an audit, no matter how well things went, I always thought we could improve on our efforts. So I developed this habit that has served me very well. I’d leave a note for myself that said, “What would I do to improve for next year?”

Even now, at the bank, I always say to myself, “If I had it to do all over again, what could I do to improve on it?” Because, no matter what, you can always improve on something you’ve done. You can always look back and say, “I could have done better,” or you can look forward and say, “This is what I will do next time.”

Ghaffari: Do you consider yourself a leader?

Gouw: In the past, I was just doing what I thought I should do. As it turned out, a lot of young people look up to me. I do hear from young women that think I am a role model in the sense that they say, “I want to be like you some day.” In order to be a leader, you have to have followers, people that want to follow in your path. You have to be accountable to them.

Not long ago, the wife of the UCLA chancellor had a gathering of women faculty and invited me to make a presentation on what I believe it means “to lead by guiding principles.”

To me, what is important is that everything we do in our organization has to be legal, ethical, respectful, and equitable. We build wealth through equity—we are probably one of the few banks that support junior staff through equity to ensure their interests are aligned with those of all shareholders. That’s been possible every year since we went public, except 2008. Equity is in addition to affordable medical benefits and long-term disability. This is how we, as a business, create our value proposition—otherwise we would not have a real competitive advantage.

We see East West Bank as the bridge between East and West. Our mission is to help cross-border businesses—Chinese companies that invested here, immigrants that come to the US from China, as well as American companies that want to establish business in Asia.

Ghaffari: What is your advice to young women starting their careers today?

Gouw: I tell people, “If you love your job, you don’t have to work a day in your life.” I read it somewhere, and I thought it was pretty good.

I am very focused on the goal of building a deep alignment and commitment across the organization. I believe that everyone needs to know, and buy into, the ultimate goals of the organization because many times people just go through the process mindlessly—just do the busy work to stay active.

We’re focused on building a strong team of people—diverse, talented, flexible, confident, collaborative—people who share the same values throughout the organization. Flexibility is important to me because too often people might say, “This is the only way to do things.” But time and circumstances change, so you have to be willing to adapt. We also do strategic alliances with outside companies in those cases where we might not have a particular expertise, our own internal resources, or investment bankers. We always try to improve because nothing lasts forever.

This is something I learned at KPMG where we had to develop expertise in many different industries. Instead of researching everything myself, I learned that people who are experts in a field love to share their knowledge with you. I take advantage of that because I don’t want to have to learn everything myself from scratch. I like to ask people what they know and then from there, I can move on to see what other things that I can research in order to make my final decision.

Ghaffari: Is there anything that you would advise differently if you were talking to men?

Gouw: I think this applies pretty much for both men and women. It’s just a style that works for me. I happen to be a woman, but I’m pretty sure there are so many different leadership styles that it’s applicable to men or women.

Ghaffari: How would you describe the support from your family?

Gouw: My husband has been very supportive. I think that helps a lot, too. We’ve been married for thirty years, now. He never complains if I have to travel. If I come home late, he makes sure that there’s food. He’s very, very supportive.

Ghaffari: When you were young, you heard some negative things about women. How have you dealt with the negative things that might have come your way later in your career?

Gouw: With criticism or people doubting me, I’m not overly sensitive. It is what it is. But, I do tell young people that if you build your confidence, that will help you to be not as sensitive to criticism. You just take everything in as ideas or feedback, and then you make a decision based upon what you think is best.

I just want to make sure that I bring value to the company, to my boss, to my team members, to the shareholders. The nice thing about our shareholders is that we know what they want—it’s a lot easier and quantifiable. They just want you to deliver the investment value to them.

Ghaffari: How do you define success?

Gouw: If you achieve what you dream and are content with yourself and your accomplishments, that’s how I define success.