Why Asian Americans don’t have more positions at the top
The Old Navy presidency almost sailed right by Jenny Ming. About two years before she took the helm of the now 900-store division of the Gap in 1999, then CEO Millard “Mickey” Drexler asked Ming if she was interested in heading the fast-growing clothier with 2004 revenues of $6.7 billion. She said no.
“Another person in my place would not have done that,” says Ming, 50, who was born in China’s southern Guangdong province and arrived in San Francisco at age nine. Before she graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in clothing merchandising, she pondered a career teaching home economics. “As Asians and women, we tend to underestimate ourselves,” says Ming. “We were taught to be humble, instead of tooting our own horns, to stay more in the shadow.”
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