Nurturing Asia’s female leaders

Kim Young-joon, chairman of Asian University for Women Support Foundation

When Jack Meyer first asked Korean-American lawyer Kim Young-joon in 2011 if he could succeed Meyer as the chairman of Asian University for Women (AUW) Support Foundation, Kim declined.

The chairman’s job is to raise funds, and Meyer is a legendary former manager of Harvard University’s endowment who started with $4.8 billion in 1990 and grew it to $25.9 billion by 2005 when he left.

“I told him that I wasn’t a hedge fund billionaire but a full-time lawyer. Meyer would bring up the question again every two or three months. I ended up taking the job last July,” said Kim, a partner at the international law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy.

What eventually changed his mind were the students of the AUW and their dedication to causes such as improving healthcare for their hometowns. Instead of talking about their future careers, the students told him they want to make a change. Kim said he felt the words came from a genuine passion and gave him goose-bumps.

The AUW, located in Chittagong, the second largest city in Bangladesh, has more than 500 students from 12 countries.

“They come from the places where people wouldn’t wish to be born as women. Some students come to the university at the risk of not getting married,” Kim said.

The lawyer believes in the importance of education for women. “Educating women has a multiplier effect as they pass down their knowledge to children. In impoverished countries, men would spend a dollar to buy alcohol but women would spend it on their children.”

The location of the institution also mattered. If Asian students study at prestigious schools on a scholarship, they will likely get absorbed into wealthy societies upon graduation and the outcome of the support may be limited to a few people’s personal success. At the AUW, living and studying together throughout four years, students will understand problems and come up with solutions that can benefit where they come from.

Kim got to know the AUW in April 2007 when Jack Meyer visited Hong Kong with the university’s founder, Kamal Ahmad, a Bangladeshi-born lawyer.

Kim, a graduate of Harvard Law School, organized a meeting to introduce the university to potential donors in Hong Kong. Hundreds of people gathered, and one woman who so far remains anonymous contributed $6 million.

As the saying, “No good deeds go unpunished,” goes, Kim was asked for more help and later became a trustee of the university.

As the chairman of the support foundation, Kim has immense tasks to undertake. The Bangladeshi government donated a 400,000 square-meter piece of land for the campus, but the construction project, estimated to cost $40 million, has been delayed because the university lacks funding.

Worrying about the campus, however, may be a luxury. All the students at the AUW are on scholarships, and the school has an annual budget of around $9 million (9.5 billion won). Since the global financial crisis, collecting that amount each year has become increasingly difficult to the extent that the school’s continuity is in question.

Various U.S. entities and philanthropists contributed to the school with the biggest donors including Jack Meyer, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IKEA Foundation, Packard Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The pipelines have dried up through the crisis, and the AUW is surviving on money donated from earlier days.

The AUW has about 30 professors, many of whom used to teach at prominent Western colleges and put a halt to their careers because they believed in the cause. The contract lasts only a year due to unstable funding. Kim said that professors hope the school can guarantee them a three-year contract because moving all the way to Chittagong is a huge commitment.

As a Korean-born American based in Hong Kong, Kim travels the region to persuade more business leaders, especially Korean corporations, to support the school.

“Korea is now among G-20 nations and is known as an education power. We shouldn’t just focus on what would benefit us but what we can do proactively as a global citizen,” Kim said.

Kim will visit Korea again at the end of the month with Cherie Blair, the AUW chancellor and the wife of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Ahmad, the university’s founder. He organized a fund raising event in which Cherie Blair, a renowned barrister, will deliver a speech.

Kim’s family emigrated to the U.S. in 1974 when he was in the second year at the prestigious Kyunggi High School. He went to Yale University and Harvard Law School, and has worked in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. A globe trotter himself, Kim believes in the international experiences the students get at the AUW.

Kim remembered two students from Sri Lanka _ one Tamil and one Sinhalese. The Sinhalese girl met a Tamil for the first time in her life.

“She said that she grew up thinking all the Tamils are terrorists, but learned in Bangladesh that the Tamil student was just like her,” Kim said.

“Imagine women from various religions, ethnicities and tribes study together for four years, go back to their countries and become leaders in 10 to 20 years. That’s awesome. I hope their dreams are kept alive.” <The Korea Times/Kim Da-ye>