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Case Studies
Team members:
Judi Rhee Alloway (PHL): Founder Emeritus
Sheila Sun (PHL): VP, Strategy
Natalie Fong-Yee (Toronto): VP, Strategy
Natalie Victoria (ATL): VP, Administration
Sarah Hawk (ATL): VP, Programs
Parita Patel (ORD): VP, Programs
Gil Gido (SEA): Director Social Media
Eric Kalinka (SEA): Director, Website
Keywords:
Founder, Community, Feedback, Survey, Research, Conference Calls, Problem Statement, Solution Statement, Mission, Vision, Brand, SEO, International Programming, Grant Program, Business Cards, Postcards, Brochures, One-Pager, Best Practices Guide, Internal Website, External Website, Financial & Time Constraints, Conference in a Box, Diversity Leadership Conferences, Sponsors, Sponsorship Funnels
4th Leader in Relaunching an International Asian Women’s Leadership Program in 4 Months
Women of color hold just 4.6% of board seats in the Fortune 500, yet they represent approximately 18% of the US population.
In 2009, I was coming out of a time period that seemed like it would never end: my disability, my divorce and debt. I couldn’t walk without the assistance of a cane or wheelchair and eat solid foods for a few years.
It was one of the greatest challenges of my life healing myself.
I was ready to set the world on fire again and share what I have learned with others. I just didn’t know how I would do it.
I was sitting on the beach wondering what’s next, when I received a call from a friend asking if I could take charge of a new initiative, an Asian women’s leadership program. He had major problems, the last leader had resigned due to the team personality clashes on the brink of national conference. It was the third leader in 2 months.
He called me, because he said that he didn’t know anyone who could manage the fighting on the team. He wanted me to be Sa: the fourth leader to attempt to launch a women’s leadership initiative.
In Korean, Sa from Sino-Korean numbers means death. Either I could take on the daunting task of launching this women’s leadership initiative at our next national conference in August at Denver or it would die in it’s ideation phase.
.
From Top-Down to Bottom-Up Approach
Despite my hesitations of working with the team that hadn’t resigned, I took on the challenge working with 2 Senior Advisors with a top-down vision. It was a challenge to recruit 20 leaders (2 from each Chapter) to come to our launch workshop. At Denver with many mishaps including one Senior Advisor not ordering enough books for our participants and then not paying for them, I had to run to a local bookstore to last-minute find Career Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. From our participant feedback that was compiled by April, it was a mild meh.
The problem was our Senior Advisor WIN leadership plus there was so much distrust of local Ventures, Chapters vs. National team. It was a us vs. them mentality that sabotaged any efforts.
I had 4 months to relaunch the initiative until our next National Conference in August.
It was crunch time.
So I started a bottom up approach with a series of initially monthly international conference calls to discuss the mission and vision of the initiative for the next 4 months and recruited 2 new Senior Advisors. In May I was in a Macy’s fashion show in Flushing for Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, where I was introduced to Macy’s representatives.
With the Staff on Strike, And the Show Must Go On…..
With Macy’s I started discussing sponsorship and the relaunch of Asian women’s leadership initiative as an epic event at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, CA. I closed Macy’s as our first- ever National Conference Diamond Sponsor for $50,000.
Speakers from the White House confirmed, appetizers, and decorations were picked, everything was perfectly planned for Palace Hotel Ballroom with glass chandeliers.
Except the Palace Hotel workers were on strike.
And the White House speaker stood in solidarity cancelling last minute. I lost my keynote speaker in less than 24 hours before our Community Reception launch.
With the help of a new Senior Advisor, I had recruited 7 new speakers from 7 different Asian cultural groups around the Bay Area to even fly in from Las Vegas.
It was a gorgeous 5-star launch with a full fledged fashion show.
Events, Membership and Sponsorship Success
After many sleepless nights, I had pulled it off distributing business cards, postcards, printed Best Practices Guides, and other materials as launch kits for representatives. Digitally I created an internal website, NAAAP website, Grant program to launch more Programs, local to National membership, other strategies implemented including a new local to national sponsorship funnel.
And when the feedback arrived in April, it was a smashing success!
We started launching regional conferences first in Atlanta to Seattle to Dallas to start with another National Convention in Boston. We created a regional Conference in a Box template. Our Conferences were featured on Clear Channel highway to subway billboards across the country.
Our multicultural women were in tears of joy to be invited to our first of many events.
Our numbers included 25% men, too. And the sponsorship dollars were rolling in to over $350,000: Macy’s, JCPenney, Buick, Wells Fargo, McDonalds, Coke-a-Cola, UPS, Microsoft, State Farm, Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. military, U.S. Secret Service, gas and utility companies, golf clubs, restaurants, and universities.
I had broken the 4th leader curse by creating the largest membership to sponsorship money maker!
5 years later, I transitioned myself off the leadership team to the next generation.
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