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Hello. Today is Friday, June 9th, 2023. My name is Hannah Son for the Houston Asian American Archive. Hello, would you like to introduce yourself and also let us know when and where you were born?

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Yes. Thank you, Hannah, for the opportunity t–to participate in the archive. My name is Charlene Chuang. It is 莊家玲 [Chaung Jialing] in Chinese. 莊 means village.

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家 means home. 玲 is a popular character used in girls' name that symbolize cleverness. I adopted the—Charlene as my English name because it sounds like 家玲.

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I was born in Taipei, Taiwan, on December 29th, 1957. Great. Thank you so much for sharing that. How would you describe the household you grew up in?

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Yeah. I'm the youngest of four children. My sister Vivian and two brothers, Charles and George, were all born in mainland China prior to 1949. They are 13 years, 11 years, and nine years older than me.

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My family is from a province of Zhejiang, the county of Zhenhai. The village of Zhaungshi. I guess at some point in time, the entire village was occupied by people with my same last name of Chuang.

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My two sets of grandparents were best friends and very successful businessmen in Shanghai, and that is how my parents became a couple. My parents got married in Shanghai's British concession in May of 1943, in the middle

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of the Sino-China War. During the wartime, my paternal grandparents lived in the French concession, and my maternal grandparents live in the British concession. Prior to Communists taking over China.

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My paternal grandpa, pronounced in Chinese as—I call him like Aiya, even though I never met him—owned several luxury clock and watch stores in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hankou.

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Hankou is part of today's Wuhan. My dad ChiChiu was one of seven children, and he was the only one who escaped to Taiwan at the age of 26. It was sad that my Aiya died during the Cultural Revolution, and my

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dad never saw his parents again since he left home in 1949. My maternal grandpa, pronounced in Shanghainese as Na gong, was exclusive agent for Texaco in China for the provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui.

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He owned lumber factory and invested in real estate development. My mom, Jeanne, is one of six children. My mom's entire family relocated to Taiwan in 1949 and left their wealth behind.

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And what were your parents occupations? For my parents—okay, yeah. My dad graduated from St. John's University in Shanghai, majoring in civil engineering.

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After graduation, he joined the Bureau of Aviation in the department that's responsible for airport construction. My mom is a housewife for her entire life. In 1948, my parents, with their three young children,

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went to Guangzhou to build the Baiyun airport and then retreated with the government to Taiwan in 1949. In Taipei, we lived in the Bureau of Aviation Housing. All the homes are Japanese-style, single family house.

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Our neighbors' dads are colleagues in the office. All the kids knew each other and played together. Later on, my dad joined the private sector and was the chief engineer for one of the largest architectural firm in Taiwan.

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This was when I started middle school, and we moved to an apartment building that has—four stories high. We're on the top floor, the fourth floor, so we have to climb the stairs every day. My dad did not retire until he was 74.

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I see. And do you have some favorite childhood memories that you would like to share? [laughs] Of c–of course, love this question. One of my favorite childhood memory was visiting my maternal grandmom's on

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every Sunday. All my cousins would be there, and we had endless food, game, and fun. In the afternoon Grandma would give us a lot of pocket money, and we'd take three taxi to the city center to watch an American

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movie. Although I didn't understand English and couldn't read the subtitle really well, I loved all the movie. Another fond memory was that Grandma had one room in the house that was totally filled with cookie, candies, and yummy treats.

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I'm not joking. The room is entirely filled with snacks. Elementary school was also filled with fun and laughter. I was fortunate to attend the national primary school affiliated to Taipei Teachers' College.

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Since it is an experimental elementary school I benefit–benefited from an education that placed emphasis in four equally important focal areas. The focus w-was on-on morality, intellectual learning,

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physical education, and teamwork. I remember that everyone must learn a musical instrument. Every year, we had elections for school mayor to teach us about civil duties.

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A girl in my session suffered from polio. So, we carry her everywhere, up and down the stairs to the second floor, so she didn't miss any activity. Our class size was about 300, and over 80 of us now

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connected via the popular Asian social media line, and I visited with some of them whenever I was back in home. So it's a loving memories. That's wonderful. And what were some of the values that your parents emphasized in your

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upbringing? I think there are three most important values that my parents instilled in me. The first was the importance of family. The second was the respect for elders and teacher, and third was the

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importance of education. Thinking back, I realized that my parents probably would do anything for us, and it was a given that we must all go to college and get advanced degrees. And so when did you move to the US and where did you live in the US initially?

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I immigrated to the US after I finished high school in the summer of 1976. I arrived in Massachusetts and lived with my two brothers, Charles and George. Charles signed me up to be an Avon lady

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within a couple of weeks of my arrival. So that was a challenge. I rang doorbells in the neighbourhood to make sales with my broken English. Surprisingly enough, I landed on a very nice

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regular babysitting job. I found all the neighbors to be very friendly, kind, and sweet. And can you share any of the other challenges of moving to America as an adult? An-and then also, did you experience culture shock?

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Yeah. Yeah, I think English was the biggest challenge for me moving to US. In Taiwan, I only started to learn English as a second language in middle school officially. So middle school in Taiwan is the

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equivalent–equivalent of seventh grade here in the States. Our compulsory education Taiwan is six years of elementary school and three years of middle school. Fortunately, my comprehension was not too bad

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after only six year of English at school. This could probably be the result of all the American movie and TV series that I watched. My biggest culture shock was that nobody in the school would guard

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against students of the opposite sex in America. In Taiwan, most of the public middle and high school were either for all boys or all girls. If you got caught talking to boys from the other school, you could be demerited.

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I was zoned to the best girls' middle school and was tested into the best girls' high school in Taipei. My high school was the First Girls' High School in Taipei. Our class size was about 1200.

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We had our 30 years class reunion in Los Angeles in 2006. Over 250 of us were there. Even though we were at school in Taiwan, we had our reunion in LA. It is a tradition for our alumni to hold the

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30th reunion in LA, and the event was well attended every year. Since mingling with boys was strictly prohibited in Taiwan, I was extremely shocked by the co-ed bathroom in the MIT dormitory.

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I was placed in Baker House during my orientation week, and I was scared to take a shower when guys would just walk in and out randomly. After that experience, I made an appointment with some someone at the Housing Administrator's office.

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I still remember that there was a gentleman who met with me, and I cry hysterically. At the end, he got me a single dorm room at McCormick Hall, which is very hard to come by. McCormick is the only all-female dormitory at MIT, and I was so

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happy that I spent all my MIT years at McCormick. And speaking of your time at MIT, I see that you earned both your Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from MIT in chemical engineering. Could you describe more about your undergraduate experience at MIT?

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Yeah, I feel extremely lucky to just get into MIT. Although I only scored 360 something on my SAT English, MIT took a chance on me and admitted me. Happy and grateful were pr-pretty much how I felt the entire time I was

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there. I was grateful for the excellent education I received, grateful for the school's open environment, grateful for my wonderful classmate, and grateful for the undergrad research program I participated in. Things that I remember the most about MIT were actually

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the all-nighters we pulled doing homework and preparing for exam in the Chinese club room on second floor of student center. I always remember also vividly flipping textbook pages in a panic and copying down random formulas

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in the open book exam and hoping that I got lucky. Once—most memorable event was the 1978 blizzard. The blizzard happened right after the four weeks independent activity period.

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We got more time off with no classes. The campus was filled with ice sculptures of Star Wars figure R2D2, C-3P3–PO. C-3PO. R2-D2 actually was my favorite.

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I just loved the smart little thing. Charles River was totally frozen during the blizzard. I walk on the river beneath the 0 .4-miles-long Mass. Avenue bridge to go across from Cambridge to Boston.

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By the way, even though the official name of this bridge was Harvard Bridge, it sits right by our campus. And it really should have been named the MIT bridge. [laughs] I didn't use any specific things I learned from all the courses

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I took at MIT in my job, but only later in life I realized that the lesson I was successful—the reason I was successful in my career was because of my MIT training that emphasized on system approach.

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I was a good problem solver because I analyzed system holistically, never only addressing one isolated individual component. So, I didn't know, you know, this system approach was kind of a big thing, but somehow it got drilled into me through my

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schoolwork. And how did you decide to pursue a career in engineering in oil and gas industry? I entered the upstream segment of the oil and gas industry. I could say it was like, totally by chance.

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My education in chemical engineering really prepared me well to work in refineries or chemical plants. But an interview in San Francisco changed everything. I fell in love with San Francisco and ended up accepting a job

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in downtown San Francisco, working with Standard Oil of Ohio. Standard Oil of Ohio at that time was operating Prudhoe Bay, and the company was later–later on taken over by BP, and I spent 33 years there.

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So in San Francisco, I was working on the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska. Prudhoe Bay is the largest oil field in North America. It had about 25 billion barrels of oil in the ground. We frequently travel and work on the

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North–North Slope. The Prudhoe Bay base camp where we live and eat and work is in–is inside the Arctic Circle. And I still remember that we ate so well and they would

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serve us unlimited all-you-can-eat lobsters for midnight snack. Working in the oilfield was not the career path I envisioned for myself originally, but I ended up–I ended up really passionate about addressing the uncertainty surrounding my

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work. So I consider myself extremely lucky to have accidentally landed on a profession that I love. That's wonderful. And over the course of your very impressive 37-year career, I see you took on roles

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from engineering management to commercial and senior director roles. Would you like to share any more about what your first jobs were like? Yeah. My first job was working as a reservoir engineer in the computer simulation group.

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I was in the team that built computer models to predict Prudhoe Bay oil and gas production rates. This was the ancient time when we ran computer program with decks of punched cards, and our simulation job would take a deck of

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command card that stack over two feet long. I remember that I had to guard the deck so well while walking from my office to the computer in fear of bumping into someone or tripping.

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After working in San Francisco for a little over four years, BP closed the San Francisco. Most of the staff left the company or moved to Anchorage. I moved to Houston instead in March of 1985, because

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my ex-husband, Eugene Shen, got a job with Exxon in Houston. And can you describe how the types of roles you assumed evolved with your career, as well as the challenges and rewards that came along with that?

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[laughs] Woah, this is a very loaded question. Okay. I'm going to have, like, a very, very long answer, but I'll try to do it chronologically. I'll share my 33 years of career at BP, and I'll try to be

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clear on my experience and also kind of embed it with all the learning I got through-throughout the times. Okay, so for the first 15 years, I moved around in many positions to enhance my competency in addressing

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all aspects of the reservoir engineering challenges. I placed importance on technical expertise and core competency. I gained experiences for oil field development in different geographical regions like Alaska, Gulf of Mexico

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and onshore US. I also work on oil field project in terms of different time frame in their life cycle: from lease sales, to exploration drilling, to appraisal for discovery, to field development,

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and to production. I established myself within BP as an excellent reservoir engineer. So I—my advice is that you must learn well and be good at something early in your career.

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At this time, I realized my aspiration and what the management planned for me were misaligned. They wanted me to stay as a strong individual contributor on the technical track, but I was interested in pursuing a career on the

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management ladder. I felt that I had so much to offer, and having a team working along my side, the impact and contribution would be much greater than if I worked alone.

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I learned that I had to be my own champion in pursuing my goal. I started to make appointments with senior manager to express my interest. Many of my previous supervisor became my champion.

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Among them are Howard Mason and Barbara Yilmaz. They believed in me the most. Eventually, my hard work paid off. I gained strong support from a network of sponsors.

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I was able to land my first management job for a group of geoscientists. In the group, there were geologists, geophysicists, and petrophysicists.

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I became a cross-functional leader. This is the first time I'm a manager, and I'm managing a group of people that I'm not even in their discipline, and they never have an engineer as their boss, so kind of—it was a bit of a

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challenge. But it was, like, lucky. Because my lack of the geoscience expertise, I ended up spending more energy leading my team by sharing high level

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content and providing clear direction. The clarity of our goals motivated my team members, and they all pulled their best effort together collectively to move our project forward together.

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I was actually end up blessed with this perfect transition to move from technical to management. Because this first official management position was this one, where I don't have the knowledge to micromanage my team,

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this probably was the key success factor for me becoming a good leader. Also at the same time, I learned quite a bit technical knowledge from the staff that set me up for future success.

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The oil industry was quite cyclical. Company changed their organization structure from functional based, to asset based, and then back to functional based, like the swing of the pendulum. I experienced these change and the associated staff

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reduction many times at BP. I personally prefer the asset based structure as it allows decision to be made with the project goal as anchor. All the challenges could then be addressed systematically and

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holistic for project optimization. It prevent the tug of war among various functional teams because of the misaligned priority and target in each function. So, from 1997 to 2003—so, we still have

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many years to go, okay [laughs]—I was the Ursa asset manager. Ursa is a deep water Gulf of Mexico oil field, approximately 130 mile southeast of New Orleans. It is a tension leg platform in 3800ft

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of water. Ursa platform was planned as a $1.5 billion capital project among Shell, BP, Exxon, and Conoco, with a production rate of 200,000 barrels of oil a day. I led a BP multidisciplinary team with reservoir

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engineer, geoscientists, facility engineer, and drilling engineer in my group. We generated and implemented plans to produce the most reserves, with the highest production rate at the lowest cost. For Ursa, Shell was the operator with 40%—45%

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working interest. BP has 23% working interest, and the rest was split between Exxon and Conoco. Since all development decisions had to have over 50% working interest

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approval, the three non-operated partners collectively could overturn Shell's proposal. This made the dynamic of the partnership extremely robust and challenging. The non-operators were not the typical

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silent partner who just signed the bills and pay. We had an active role in all the decision making. I really enjoy the challenge, as my team was instrumental in leading the non-operated partnership to in—to influence the development

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decision. All the decision were very capital intensive. These are decision on numbers of well, drilling location, well perforation strategy, waterfall decision, platform facility maintenance and upgrade, transport pipeline

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issue, near field exploration, and subsea tieback opportunity. It became apparent that our joint venture was effective when Shell's team changed their process flow to share their recommendation with the partner for

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consensus before presenting their own proposal to Shell's management for approval. That was a big win for us. We had regular partner meeting at least once a month in New Orleans.

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One time, after the meeting, a young Shell female engineer approached me to tell me that she admired my relentless dedication [laughs], and I was her role model. I was so happy to be an inspiration for her through my

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effectiveness in working with my three white male counterparts from Shell, Exxon, and Conoco. My tenure as Ursa asset manager was the most rewarding period of my career.

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After Ursa Asset Manager role, I became the exploration engineering manager supporting BP's entire Houston exploration organization. We assessed and ranked the commerciality of our exploration activity in the Gulf of Mexico, deep water,

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deep gas, and Canada. We also supported the exploration and appraisal drilling decision and activity. I then moved to the Atlantis Phase Two Subsea Development Project

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Manager position, working closely with FMC Technip on the design and construction of-of our four well subsea tieback system to the Atlantis platform. At the end of 2007, I turned 50 and

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has several—I served in various lateral management positions within BP as subservice manager, asset manager, exploration engineer manager, and development project manager. I knew at this point that my passion and strength were in the early

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stage of a project where big strategic decisions were made. I enjoy analyzing and making impactful decisions when the situation was complex and there was more unknown than known. The rigid project management role to build the

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hardware with tons of steels based on a fixed design was not a good fit for me. Therefore, in our career, it is important to have clear recognition of your own aptitude and weakness.

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With that clarity, you can get to the job you enjoy and perform to your fullest potential, or to know when to leave and move on. So, at this time, many major life events occurred

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to me, also. I got divorced in 2006. My dad passed away in 2007. And both of my kids, Rachel and Andrew Shen, went away to college in

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2005 and 2007. I contemplated leaving BP and I almost joined a startup oil and gas exploration company. In the end, I took a commercial director position within BP

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in Shanghai. To leave the lucrative oil and gas upstream business and change function from technical to commercial in another continent was a very big decision.

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But the challenges and change was exactly what I was looking for. The job itself was interesting as it-as it crosses organization within BP. It was going to be 50% based in the BP coal and

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renewable energy business and 50% based in BP's China technology and research group. The most exciting thing about the job was that coal conversion is a new area with untested technology and can vastly

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expand my kn-knowledge and skill. Another huge fringe benefit was that my mom could go to Shanghai with me. This move could help her get over the loss of my dad. She was so happy there because she could

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walk the neighborhood street to small peddler to get fresh fruit and vegetables, and she could talk to them in Shanghainese. It turns out that it was exactly the same experience that she had when she was young, so it truly rejuvenated her.

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So, I was so happy that I was ab—I get to take her with me. My job turned out to be amazing, too. I got to learn all about coal conversion technology, visited coal-rich provinces in China, collaborated

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with the brightest researchers in China. I prepare strategy position paper for not only the BP board's approval, but also for the BP external board's approval because BP was significantly increased our carbon

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footprint, even though we tried to do clean coal. The lesson for me from this major job move was that sometime you need to take a chance, be more adventurous, and the reward could be beyond measurement.

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Well, things never happen as planned. The 2008 economic crisis tanked the oil price. All convert–coal conversion ventures came to stop at BP. Fortunately for me, Andy Inglis,

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our Upstream EVP happened to pay a visit to Beijing, and during his visit he told me that I should work on the new 50-50 deal between BP and China National Petroleum Company to revive Iraq's Supergiant Rumaila oilfield

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after the war. It was such a serendipity. I was a Chinese-speaking upstream expert already living in Beijing. I became the perfect candidate for the newly created BP partner relations

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post. The lesson here is sometimes your reward were hard-earned, and sometimes they just fell into your lap. All we can do is to be agile, positive, and power forward.

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Anyway, then, after that job, I returned to Houston from China soon after BP's Horizon blowout disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. Initially, I was assigned to the Mobile, Alabama Command Center,

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and later I was moved to the Houston Command Center. I would like to share a trivia fact here [laughs]. We try so hard to stop the well from flowing, but when the well was finally capped during the evening of July 19,

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2010, I happened to be the Incident Command Center's planning section chief, and I personally sent the historical email to the National Incident Commander, Admiral Thad Allen, about the news. You know, it's like, "Who get to write the email to Admiral," you know

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[laughs]? Well, anyway, my last job at BP was to prepare the bid package for BP's technology offer for the Abu Dhabi onshore concession. BP was awarded 10% stake in the concession after I

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retired. I'm very content with my career at BP. I feel that each job made me more prepared for the next, and I was constantly contributing and learning. So, that's a long summary [laughs].

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Wow. Thank you so much for sharing all of that insight. And so, can you share what you most enjoy about your work? Yes, of course. What I enjoy the most about my work was actually

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the nature of the upstream oil and gas business. In the early phase of an oil and fuel gas—oil and gas field, many major investment decision must be made when the uncertainty was tremendous and information was always lacking.

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I enjoyed the uncertainty analysis and all the scenario plannings that was done to understand the impact of each major uncertainty. Sound uncertainty analysis considering all relevant issue

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were key to good decision making. BP had an internal training course on uncertainties. I like to work on the subject so much that I used to help teach that course in—within BP in hope to train more good

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engineers. The other things I enjoy the most was mentoring and sharing my experiences. I actively mentored during my time at BP. One main reason that I retired from BP to join

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Tiandi Energy was the opportunity to mentor. Tiandi Energy was a company funded by Silicon Valley venture capitals. Its business model was to use the technical staff in China to work on outsourced oil and gas field

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study from oil companies in the US. They recruited me because they had staff with good fundamental technical capabilities in oil and gas, but lacked good understanding of the needs of their US clients.

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Tiandi's major conc—challenges were the language barrier on the technical level and the full understanding of how things work in US oil company. With my 30 years background at BP working on all

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multidiscipline back—teams in the industry and my fluency in Chinese, I was a perfect fit for them. They enticed me with their offer of 5% ownership of the company. This became my dream job.

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I could share my expertise, mentor all the staff in the company, and I even had a chance to become wealthy. [laughs] Dream on, okay? Anyway, I mentored over 50 bright Chinese young engineers and

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geoscientists in Beijing. We did a project for Devon, Marathon, Statoil, Linn Energy and Harkwood Energy. Unfortunate, this ended quickly when oil price dropped from over

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$100 a barrel to $45 a barrel in seven months. So when oil price dropped like that, all the oil companies stopped their contracting work.

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So I left Tiandi in March 2015. With the cash flow difficulty faced by Tiandi Energy, I felt that my salary could be better spent to support many families of our young Beijing staff.

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But then I did get to mentor them while I was there, which was amazing. That is wonderful. And what were your experiences like as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field that's also mostly white?

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Have you ever experienced discrimination? So, interestingly enough, you know, I never view myself as any different from men. This was my true belief and basic mindset.

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I have been described by my colleagues with the funny phrase that meant I had stronger mental strength than men. Self-confidence was not something I was lack of. And I believe self-confidence was an important attribute for

00:37:49.570 - 00:38:07.270

success. While I was at MIT, the male to female ratio was 5 to 1, so probably I was well prepared for the environment of the oil and gas industry. But I do want to share a personal

00:38:08.170 - 00:38:24.640

odd experience that I had at BP. It didn't bother me much then, but it could illustrate the overall environment for female 35 years ago working in the oil industry.

00:38:24.640 - 00:38:42.350

The Friday before my Monday C-section for my second child, Andrew, I was asked to pack up my office. Rachel and Andrew were only 20 and half month apart. My management probably didn't think I would come back after maternity

00:38:42.350 - 00:38:55.140

leave with two young children. When I came back, I didn't have an office. I was placed temporarily in another Asian female reservoir engineer, Alice Tsai's office.

00:38:56.330 - 00:39:13.670

Discrimination towards female did happen at BP. One vivid memory was one of the staff reduction around 1992. At that round, almost all female in the technology group got laid off.

00:39:14.270 - 00:39:31.670

I believe they did file a lawsuit against BP. The situation towards pregnant women and women in general improved tremendously over the years. While these things did not deter me from my passion for my job and the love for

00:39:31.670 - 00:39:46.370

the industry, I still encouraged my daughter to join Chevron after her graduation from Stanford. 14 years later, now, Rachel is still at Chevron and she's doing really, really well.

00:39:47.640 - 00:40:05.930

This was a testimonial that I feel blessed that my career—and my industry—and the love for my industry. So kind of the advice was—to people are for career choices, regardless of

00:40:05.930 - 00:40:21.410

your gender or ethnicity, the most important thing is to find a path that is in line with your innate strength and passion. Of course, you need to also provide you with enough financial security.

00:40:23.030 - 00:40:40.320

Another gift from–from working at BP was that my fellow female reservoir engineer and I created a very strong bond working together. In the late 1980s, our male counterpart called us

00:40:40.320 - 00:40:57.540

with the endearing nickname of Enginettes. When I was pregnant with Rachel in 1986, there was four other white female reservoir engineers in the group. They are Kim Britt, Rachel Deskin, Susan Leach, and Pam

00:40:57.540 - 00:41:16.020

Quigley. Since I was going to name my daughter Rachel, the other three girls protested and said I should name my new baby KRISP: K-R-I-S-P, taking in each of their initial. All of us remain very good friends to this day.

00:41:16.650 - 00:41:36.850

We took vacations together to ski, to resort spa, or just sit around and chat when somebody came back in town. [laughs] That's so lovely to hear about. And so shifting a little bit to talk about your volunteering, I see you were involved

00:41:36.850 - 00:41:52.100

with various community volunteer work that we'd love to hear about. Could you start by telling us more about your involvement with youth and minorities? Yeah, of course. As I mentioned before, I was extremely grateful that I got my

00:41:52.100 - 00:42:07.520

education at MIT. I was compelled to give back to the community and encourage youngster to enter into the field of science and engineering. So, my involvement with the youths and minorities are all centered around

00:42:07.520 - 00:42:22.700

science and engineering. I help with science fair when Rachel and Andrew were in high school. I sat on panel discussions for young engineers. When I—what I'm most proud of was that I placed

00:42:23.210 - 00:42:40.840

over 50 underrepresented HISD high school students before their seniors years in summer jobs at BP over a nine year period. These HISD students finish a tuition-free summer

00:42:41.230 - 00:42:58.240

program at the Kinkaid Engineering, Math, and Science Institute offered by the Kinkaid School. They were admitted to the program after their eighth grade and obtain extra education for three consecutive summers on the Kinkaid

00:42:58.240 - 00:43:15.220

campus. HISD provided the school bus, so no student will be left behind due to transportation issues. The purpose of the program is to help youth to identify their talents and to encourage them to pursue college

00:43:15.760 - 00:43:36.330

education, particularly in science and engineering. After the three summer at Kinkaid, the hope was to place them in the working environment for a six-week summer job prior to their senior year. I learned about the need and took on the task to help.

00:43:36.900 - 00:43:54.500

I went directly to the BP Houston–Houston's top human resource executive with the proposal for his buy-in. The terms were simple. I will find and create assignment in different departments with the

00:43:54.500 - 00:44:10.400

managers who were interested in helping for this good cause. I will circulate their resume, do all the legwork from arranging their drug tests, preparing their offer letter, to running their first day orientation.

00:44:11.090 - 00:44:27.230

The student would even get paid on an hourly basis. I was very proud of this. I feel that I might have made very positive impact on over 50 students. In addition, they might even go back to their respective

00:44:27.230 - 00:44:44.610

school and become role models for other students. Wow. And can you also share about your volunteer work centered around your culture and heritage? Yes. My other passion is to enhance the cross-cultural

00:44:46.230 - 00:45:04.320

understanding of my Chinese heritage in the Houston community. You know, growing up in Taiwan for the first 18 years of my life and living in China as an expat made me realize I am deeply rooted in my Chinese culture and heritage.

00:45:05.670 - 00:45:24.490

In late 2010, soon after returning to US, a mother of Andrew's friend, Lolin, approached me to join the board of the Asian Pacific American Heritage Association. That was a mouthful, so we'll use APAHA later, okay?

00:45:24.490 - 00:45:42.950

I was so honored and gladly accepted the nomination. I was thrilled with the structural—structured opportunity offered by APAHA to share Asian culture and heritage with the community. Understanding and accepting something

00:45:43.640 - 00:46:02.180

you are not familiar with start from getting exposure to it. Using an analogy of how my daughter Rachel and son-in-law Steven Shaffer are raising their 15 month old baby, Alexandra. They are exposing her to peanut powder in the hope that she

00:46:02.180 - 00:46:19.240

will not develop any peanut allergy. So, when you get to know someone, you start the–the ap—accepting process. APAHA's mission is to promote Asian American and Pacific Islanders' culture through education and

00:46:19.240 - 00:46:38.760

celebration. I enjoy bringing the Asian dance, Chinese martial art, and classical music performance to thousands of Houstonians through the annual Asian Heritage Month Kick-off at the Galleria mall the last Saturday in

00:46:38.760 - 00:46:53.310

April. We got to build a stage in Galleria, either in front of Macy's or Nordstrom's. The Asian community came together with parents and performers from different schools.

00:46:53.520 - 00:47:07.830

Everyone was excited with the opportunity to showcase their special talents. The Galleria shopper were fascinated by the unique costume and performances. It was a joyful event every year.

00:47:09.550 - 00:47:25.810

APAHA also hosts the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration at the Children's Museum every year. And that is always a year-to-year hit. I stayed on the APAHA board for five years and was board chair for

00:47:25.810 - 00:47:44.750

2013 and 2014. And then, I guess my longest volunteer involvement is with the Chinese Community Center. Chinese Community Center is a United Way agency that has been

00:47:44.750 - 00:48:00.680

serving the Houston community for 44 years. The mission for Chinese Community Center is to bridge East and West by enriching families with educational, culture, and social services program.

00:48:01.410 - 00:48:20.060

Each year, about 10,000 families were positively impacted by what Chinese Community Center had to offer. I took on an active leadership role as a board member in January 2012 and serve as the board chair for

00:48:20.240 - 00:48:34.840

2018 and 2019. Chinese Community Center provides social services, daycares, youth programs, adult daycare, language school and wellness program for senior.

00:48:35.880 - 00:48:52.590

The ethnicity of people served by Chinese community center are about 65% Asian, 16–16% black, 8% Hispanic, 7% white, and 4% others. So, it's a very, very mixed and diverse ethnicity.

00:48:55.170 - 00:49:12.190

During my board term, the senior center that houses the adult daycare on the first floor and provides space for community events on the second floor was completed. We also converted a storage building to a sports center for

00:49:12.190 - 00:49:30.740

ping pong. I was so proud of this major facility expansion project at CCC. This project is only made possible by all the previous years board chairs, board members, and the staff that worked so hard for it.

00:49:31.430 - 00:49:52.010

Together, $6.3 million were raised from our community members to build this beautiful space for our community and for the senior. I noticed that you also served as board chair for the Interfaith Ministries for Greater

00:49:52.010 - 00:50:09.150

Houston. How did you get involved with that organization? Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston is the organization where I currently volunteer the most. The involvement with IM was actually related to my faith

00:50:09.150 - 00:50:23.730

belief. I grew up in a Buddhist family but lacked the understanding of Buddhist teaching. In late 2010, I joined a reading group on Buddhism literature at the Chung Mei Temple in Stafford.

00:50:24.900 - 00:50:39.500

My exposure to Buddhism only began at this point. Two books that we studied in the reading group had a profound impact on me. One was Bhikkhu Bodhi's book titled, "In the Buddha's

00:50:39.980 - 00:50:54.440

Words," and the other one is a book about Vipassana meditation titled, "The Art of Living As Taught By Goenka." After finish these two books and a ten day transformational Vipassana

00:50:54.440 - 00:51:12.020

meditation treat–retreat, I decided to take refuge in Buddha, in Dharma, and in Sangha. You know, that's kind of the equivalent of getting baptized in Christian. This was October 2014.

00:51:12.980 - 00:51:28.490

Soon after that, Venerable Hong Yi from the Texas Buddhist Association, asked me to join the Board of Interfaith Ministry representing Buddhists. As a newly converted Buddhist, I was very honored to be

00:51:28.490 - 00:51:43.470

trusted. My board term with Interfaith Ministries started in 2015, and I became the board chair for 2022. And I want to tell you a bit about what Interfaith does.

00:51:43.480 - 00:51:58.390

So, Interfaith Ministries' mission is to bring people of diverse tradition together for dialogue, collaboration, and service as a demonstration of our shared belief. IM has four big focus areas of their services.

00:52:00.330 - 00:52:13.550

They are interfaith relations. Meals on Wheels, Refugee Services and Volunteer Houston. During the last fiscal year, we served over 1.7 million meals to homebound seniors.

00:52:14.030 - 00:52:33.600

IM is the largest Meals on Wheel agency in Texas. The meal we serve could be the only meal many of our senior consume in a day. It provides vital nutrition for them. Our refugee services—we served over 6000 refugees

00:52:34.890 - 00:52:52.470

last year and resettle over 1500 Afghans. Many of them have worked with the American troops. For the resettlement, what we do is we find them apartment to live, start up—stock up the apartment with furniture, supply, and food,

00:52:52.800 - 00:53:10.600

pick them up from the airport, help them with various legal paper, register children to school, sign them up for English and trade classes, and match them up for job so that they can become self-sufficient. For Interfaith Relations we reach

00:53:11.650 - 00:53:28.160

over 4000 adult and youth through a diverse array of programs. And Volunteer Houston connected over 11,000 volunteers with community needs. I'm very proud to be able to serve and give back to our community

00:53:28.190 - 00:53:44.750

meaningfully through these three amazing nonprofit organizations. I'm honored to be trusted by each board—that each board instilled in me. The gener-generous donor and the dedicated staff are the true

00:53:44.780 - 00:54:04.160

heroes behind all the accomplishment for all these agencies. It's so great to hear about all of your great work, especially all based in Houston. Can you share with us about your current social and family life outside of your work

00:54:04.160 - 00:54:18.530

and volunteering? [laughs] Yeah. So, as mentioned earlier, one of the core values taught by my parents was family. My mother—her birthday is

00:54:18.530 - 00:54:33.620

September 10th, 1925. She's almost 98. Before you know it, I will have to fill out her birthday on any questionnaire with the four full four digit to be not confused with baby that

00:54:33.620 - 00:54:51.890

was born—that will be born in 2025. I actually moved into her house six and a half years ago as she is getting up in her age. So me, I really want to take care of my mom. Now, I assign her daily exercise routine and she had to

00:54:51.890 - 00:55:07.710

register each activity in a logbook. I act like a drill sergeant, and this has kept her strong and mobile [laughs]. Another person now in my life is Kevin

00:55:07.710 - 00:55:20.880

Chang. Kevin was in the same class as me in our elementary school. We reconnected through the elementary school's LINE group and occasional meetings when I visited Taiwan.

00:55:22.140 - 00:55:37.110

Coincidentally, Kevin was involved with various Interfaith volunteering in the 1990s in Phoenix. We are both very seasoned veterans of the Vipassana meditation as taught by Goenka.

00:55:37.970 - 00:55:54.680

We are together now, making a commitment to advance in our progress in the Vipassana meditation. Our goal are to practice morality, concentration of the mind, and wisdom through the Eightfold Noble Path taught by the Buddha.

00:55:55.410 - 00:56:11.460

As a Buddhist, I believe that Kevin and I were connected–connected in some way in previous lives, and I'm very happy that I found him again in this life. He's now my partner and we will spend the rest of our lives together.

00:56:13.440 - 00:56:30.030

Then, coming back to the joy of my life now is my two granddaughters. They are Alexandra Shaffer from my son-in-law, Steph-Stephen and daughter Rachel, and Ellie Shen, from my son Andrew and daughter-in-law,

00:56:30.030 - 00:56:45.720

Jennifer. I consider them my twin granddaughters, as their birthday were only three days apart in February 2022. They are so precious. It's hard to, you know, describe how cute they are right now.

00:56:46.080 - 00:57:03.710

The Schaffers live in Houston and they are expecting another precious little baby girl in the fall. Andrew works in New York City and they lived in New Jersey. Regarding my friends, I have a group of friends that are like

00:57:03.710 - 00:57:19.160

my extended family. There are now 14 families in the group, and we are all immigrants from Taiwan, and all of us can be traced with a common college or high school in Taiwan.

00:57:20.110 - 00:57:32.920

The group was founded in 1985, and I was one of the founding member. At the beginning, we only had four family, and it grew over the years.

00:57:33.370 - 00:57:50.440

We used to meet every single Friday. Since about five years ago, we reduced our meeting frequency to once every two weeks. That is over 1800 Fridays since 1985.

00:57:51.160 - 00:58:06.190

Our tradition is eating and chatting, and each family hosts based on a rotation schedule. All the children grew up together and have been best friends with other kids in their same age group.

00:58:07.730 - 00:58:20.630

We were only in our 20s when we started this so-called Friday group. We were couples without kids, then baby cames, then children stopped coming when they went to coll—high school.

00:58:21.590 - 00:58:38.450

Now, we met as a bunch of senior citizens 38 years later. We were all away from home and this Friday group has been our supporting group for each other. That's so incredible.

00:58:39.260 - 00:58:53.960

And then, finally, can you tell me about some current hobbies or interests outside of your career? Yeah. Like many non-athletic seniors who like to exercise and move around, my current new hobby is playing

00:58:53.960 - 00:59:10.580

pickleball. I mentioned that Chinese Community Center has many programs for our communities. Pickleball is one of their offers in their wellness program for seniors. They convert the indoor basketball courts to four

00:59:10.580 - 00:59:24.410

pickleball courts during the session. I regularly play 3 to 4 times a week whenever I'm not traveling. I enjoy both playing and socializing with new friends that I met at the court.

00:59:26.050 - 00:59:44.870

Traveling to see the world is a major part of my retirement life, also . I'm excited from the planning stage to the anticipation stage and then to the actual traveling. After my retirement in late 2018,

00:59:44.870 - 01:00:03.230

2019 was filled with travel. I made five big international trips and two US trips. In 2020, right before the pandemic hit, after returning from New Zealand and Australia, I took my mom with me to

01:00:03.230 - 01:00:23.180

Taiwan for March 2020 to May 2021 for 15 months to escape the pandemic in US. I was so afraid that during the pandemic I live with my mom, but if I go out, I have to be so careful not to, like, you know, infect her.

01:00:24.860 - 01:00:40.210

So, it works out perfect because Taiwan, as an island, didn't have any—really cases during the time we were there. During the stay in Taiwan, I got to travel and hike all over the beautiful island of Taiwan.

01:00:40.510 - 01:00:58.010

I experienced and enjoyed the island in a brand new way. Right now. I'm also taking Chinese calligraphy class in Chinese Community Center and an online Chinese painting class using the traditional brush paint.

01:00:58.520 - 01:01:16.510

I love calligraphy since my childhood, and Chinese painting, on the other hand, is a brand new hobby for me. My Buddhism reading class continued to be important to me and are—and we are now reading the Anguttara Nikaya.

01:01:17.770 - 01:01:32.550

There are four major Nikaya that contains the collection of scripture of the Buddha's teaching. Of course, I'm still very involved with the board activities for Chinese Community Center and Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston.

01:01:33.960 - 01:01:49.440

I can honestly say that there isn't any dull moment in my life and I truly enjoy every moment of it. So, well, thank you, Hannah. Thank you so much for everything you've shared.

01:01:50.610 - 01:02:06.990

Those are all the questions that I have. Is there any final comments or anything you'd like to add for the archive? No, I'm just–I'm just so happy that I get to leave this on the archive, and maybe my grandchildren and their children

01:02:06.990 - 01:02:16.030

could listen to it someday [laughs]. It's absolutely our honor and our pleasure to have you. It was so lovely speaking with you. Thank you so much.

01:02:16.210 - 01:02:20.470

Yeah. And the honor is mine. Thank you. Bye bye.