Interview with Irene Hong, Founding Partner of CEC Capital Group
Transcript:
Kiran: Welcome to Woman Who Earn, a podcast dedicated to empowering young girls to thrive in the world of finance. I'm Kiran Bishop, and my interest in finance ignited during my freshman year of high school. However, as I joined financial clubs, I couldn't shake the realization that I was one of the only girls in the room.
Kiran: This effect extends beyond myself, as according to Girls Who Invest, only 1 percent of U. S. financial assets are managed by women. Join me as we dive into conversations with industry professionals tackling topics from breaking into finance to navigating the unique challenges posed by women in the industry.
Kiran: Through Women Who Earn, my goal is to equip young girls like myself with the knowledge and wisdom they need to succeed. I believe it's crucial that no one feels alienated by circumstances beyond their control, and I hope this podcast serves as a beacon of inspiration for all who tune in. So let's shatter stereotypes, defy expectations, and earn our rightful place in the financial world.
Kiran: Welcome to Woman Who Earn.
Kiran: On today's episode, we will be joined by Miss Irene Hong, who is a founding partner for CEC Capital Group and leads the Healthcare Industry Group. Under her guidance, CEC Capital has emerged as a leader in the healthcare banking sector, with the largest specialized team covering pharma slash biotech, MedTech services in digital health care.
Kiran: CEC Capital also has a strong cross border practice having worked in the past with several multinational companies including Zimmer, Charles River, and Teba. With an increasing interest in China outbound investment, CEC Capital has opened an office in the U. S. and Ms. Hong will be leading this cross border effort.
Kiran: Prior to joining CEC Capital, Ms. Hong was a manager for Accenture in San Francisco. Before receiving her MBA, Ms. Hong worked as an engineer for Merck and worked on several plant startups, including a technology transfer project in China for recombatant hepatitis B vaccines and for Merck's launch of Crixivan, a protease inhibitor for HIV.
Kiran: Ms. Hong has both her MBA and BS in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley.
Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me today. We can start with my first question, which is how did you get to where you are today? And what moment are you most proud of in your journey?
Irene: Right. So I think maybe it's good to go through my background so that you can understand how I got to where I am today.
Irene: So I actually didn't study finance. I studied engineering and I studied mechanical engineering. The interesting thing is I look back at when I was in high school, I actually chose mechanical engineering because at that time, I went to UC Berkeley for engineering and it was 5 percent women in mechanical engineering, and that was one of the lowest. I think it was electrical was fairly low, but mechanical was the lowest. And that was the reason I chose the major, which looking back was a ludicrous reason for choosing a major, but that was what was in my head at the time. And I was very good at math and the sciences, and so I thought, okay, I'll just tackle this because there are not enough women in it, which was very intentional at that time. Although I would have to say that as I've gone through my career, I realized how ridiculous that reasoning was. So I studied mechanical engineering. I ended up working as an engineer, The first job I got was with Merck, the pharmaceutical company, and they gave me the opportunity to go to China. At the time I was working on a humanitarian project to donate the hepatitis B vaccine to China. So I jumped on that opportunity, not really understanding what that was going to mean in my life.
Irene: So at 20 years old, I graduated and I moved to China to build this plant as a young engineer. I spent a couple of years in China and then after that, they moved me back to the U S where I worked on an AIDS drug. So that was a launch of one of the drugs that was in the cocktails at that time in the mid nineties.
Irene: So I spent another two years of my life working on that. So pretty much four years of my life was pretty wiped out by my job because those jobs are 24 hours a day when we were trying to build the plants. And then, after that, I spent a year flying around. My next job after the AIDS drug launched was to go and rationalize the plans overseas, meaning I was the engineer that was flying into the different international locations to see what would be required to technically upgrade them. And then I would send all the numbers and all the figures and all the requirements to headquarter, and that's what I made the big switch from engineering to to finance.
Irene: At that time, I had done that for a year, which was working with corporate to give them the numbers. And then they would make decisions about whether to shut the plant down or to keep it open. As an engineer at that point, I felt that I wasn't the one that was making these decisions.
Irene: And so I figured in my mind, if I went and got an MBA and tried to understand the business side of things, it wouldn't hurt me in my engineering. So I figured it wasn't something that was going to hurt me at all, I could only gain from that. So that's when I made the switch to study business.
Irene: So I did. I also went back to Berkeley to get my business degree. And then after that, I went into management consulting for a couple of years because I knew I was going to come back to China. I had met my ex husband in China, so I knew I was coming back. So I did management consulting. And then when I came back to China, my partner and I, he had started the firm, he was a Goldman banker.
Irene: It was an opportunity about 23 years ago. He was starting an investment bank that was working on raising capital, and doing M & A, sort of like a merchant bank. so I joined him. At that time it was ridiculous, in my mind bankers and consultants are sort of sister industries, but aside from the fact their service industries might attract similar people, it was very different work. But in my mind, I thought that it was something that was challenging and so I wanted to work with him. He was very transactional and I was very strategic, so it ended up working out quite well because I was the one that was doing the business plans, looking for targets, helping companies understand how to enter.
Irene: So I eventually, I became a banker just through experience over 20 something years. I wasn't trained in a bulge bracket bank. I just was hustling deals and understood the industry as it was growing in China. Some of your questions are around the path to where I am, whether it was intentional, my path into finance. And I think a lot of people that I work with, especially the women that I work with in banking, venture capital, private equity. Many of them, very few of them actually say, I am going to be an investor, I'm going to be a banker. I think many of them meander their way into it with other skillsets often.
Irene: I some do start off being auditors or being in some sort of financial role, but many come from industry and different places, which is the case for me.
Kiran: Thank you. That was a very comprehensive overview. And so I understand that now you are working with CEC Capital Group.
Kiran: So as a founding partner of this, what aspects of your role do you find most rewarding and challenging?
Irene: I wear a double hat, which is I started a business. I think that the most rewarding part about my job is that I can't cure cancer, but I can help fund the companies that cure cancer.
Irene: Right. So I think what keeps me going and what motivates me in my job. I think the first thing is really, I work with a lot of clients and their success in order to grow operationally is based on my success, right? So if they need capital, I'm the one that helps them find capital.
Irene: If they need an exit or need to be acquired or need strategic resources, I'm the one that helps them find that. So, it's very much like, we're still a service firm and many of our clients rely on us in order to maintain their growth or to have some objective that they need to meet.
Irene: So I think the most rewarding part is when you succeed to help them. The downside is it's very, banking and especially in M&A banking, you fail as much as you succeed often. So it's also very difficult and very challenging in that way. And of course, growing a business in China and watching China's growth over the last two decades has been immensely rewarding albeit challenging as well.
Kiran: Thank you. And what led you to a career in healthcare banking?
Irene: Fact, so when we started the firm in 2000, 23 years ago, there was no healthcare. So we were really working on a lot of internet at that time. So we were working with the CNS and the net eases of the China world when the internet was just taking off. We were also doing a lot of consumer and a lot of media. So I wasn't healthcare banking, I was just general banking, tech and consumer, but in 0 7, 0 8, when we started to see money coming in, because of my health care background, I was the partner that made sense to focus on health care.
Irene: So my firm does not only work in health care, we also work in tech and consumer, but my other partners are covering those fields. And I've been covering health care for the last 15 years. Yeah. Partially just because my background in pharma made sense that I covered that. And as an engineer, oftentimes a lot of the things that we're dealing with are, if it's not pharma, it's medical device.
Irene: So the way that I started off in Merck and pharma though is pretty random. So, when you ask about intentionality, I was working for Procter and Gamble as an intern making diapers in Modesto. And then Merck was like, at that time, it was Forbes number one company to work for.
Irene: So I thought, okay, I'll drop a resume in. Life sometimes isn't always that intentional, and I think, it's like you open a door, and then you go down a door, and then you have other doors to choose from. And so I think life is just not always that planned.
Irene: So that's how I ended up in pharma was Merck was recruiting and it was like the best company. So I thought I'd take a shot, which defined my entire career.
Kiran: So focusing more so on your identity as being a woman in this male dominated space, has there any, has there ever been a time where you were one of, if not the only woman in the room and how did you feel and deal with that situation, and in general, how do you work to navigate that situation?
Irene: This is kind of a complicated question for me, to be honest, because I have a girlfriend who does a lot of woman empowerment, and she criticizes me a little bit because I'm not that, I'm not that active in terms of on her speaker list, and I don't participate that much.
Irene: And I was thinking about this. I mean, clearly I'm woman, clearly I am very supportive of women. But I think the thing is, I've always been one of the few women at the table. even in my engineering degree, when I was working as an engineer in the facility on the manufacturing floor, I'm still the only woman.
Irene: And so I always felt like I had to prove myself. I think women in general always feel like they need to prove themselves. That's a hallmark of women. I've had a lot of experience with working with both my, in terms of employees, my male bankers and my female bankers, very different.
Irene: But the thing is, I don't like to focus on the fact that I'm a woman and I don't like to, because I think that my success is something where it's despite being a woman. And so I think that the more that somebody focuses on the fact that, because I never consider myself less than equal, and I don't feel like I've ever been treated less than equal, to be honest.
Irene: And if I was treated, if anybody treated me less than equal, then I just wouldn't be at that table. So I just wouldn't be present. So when I discussed this also with some of my junior staff, they also said, well, partially it might be because you've always owned the business that you worked at, which is also possible.
Irene: You know, I never really worked. I did work in management consulting. It's not that I don't understand the challenges of being a woman in a male dominated field. Cause that's what I'm always doing, but I don't actually very consciously think about it ever. I think I've just become accustomed to being one of the few women.
Irene: In fact, the funny thing is. I notice when there are a lot of women. It's a very interesting thing. Healthcare banking has more women than other parts of banking and the healthcare industry in general has. I don't know. If this is I've just in my own experience, if I look at the business development heads in China of all the leading multinationals, they're all women and almost like 70 percent women, which I find very startling.
Irene: So I think it's more that I, I, I don't notice that I'm the only woman I notice when there are other women around. But I don't feel, I honestly don't feel like I've ever been discriminated against. It doesn't mean that there's not a boys club. There are many times when, especially in Asia, that the guys will go off and socialize differently, they'll do different things.
Irene: But I don't necessarily feel like that's hurt me terribly. I'm sure it has in certain ways, but I think that you compensate for things. If you have certain set challenges and you want to find certain solutions, you figure out a way. So I don't feel like it's been, I don't feel, I think part of it is, so when I think about it, I spent so much of my time trying to be equal that I just don't feel unequal and because of that, I think then it doesn't give people much room to treat me in a different way, if that makes sense.
Kiran: Yeah, thank you. Like being very confident in yourself so that you don't let people's opinions affect you.
Irene: Right. I think that's just how it is in the boardroom anyway. If you aren't confident or you are weak, then you own the persona that you are.
Kiran: Thank you.
Kiran: I really resonated with your comment about how you always felt the need to prove yourself in any situation that you're in. And I experienced this too, but obviously to a lesser extent because I'm only in high school.
Irene: I think it's not that you experience it to a lesser extent. My daughter also went through high school.
Irene: I think it just carries with you, which is not an easy thing, to be honest. Later on in this podcast, we'll discuss words of advice, but I think what you feel now is that feeling of needing to prove yourself and be good enough and demonstrate your capability is something that I think a lot of successful and ambitious women struggle with.
Irene: And I think that that's something that you need to balance, to be honest. The other end of that is feeling that you're very deserving and you're worthy asking for what you need, asking for what you want, demanding to be competent, like demanding to be respected and getting what you need, that there's a lot of.
Irene: There are a lot of people who are very good at that, and they get what they want, right? Because they ask for what they want, because they think that they deserve what they should get. And there's always a double edged sword. Right to every sort of good person personality trait in it.
Irene: In its extreme. It really hurts. Yeah.
Kiran: Thank you Did you ever have a mentor in your career who helped you and if so What was the greatest impact they had or what sort of impact?
Irene: I did not to be honest and part of that was because I think that I was working in China so early and the industry that I was working in was basically nascent, right?
Irene: Banking didn't really exist at that time. And so there weren't that many people ahead of me that I, could admire. There were, of course, female entrepreneurs that I worked with that were older than me that had a little bit more experience than me that I admired.
Irene: It's not to say that there were not, but there was nobody that I was really close to that mentored me. There's always examples of people you could admire and be role models too but I wouldn't say that I had a mentor per se.
Kiran: Thank you. Looking back at your career journey, is there anything you would do differently or any advice you would give to your younger self at the beginning of your professional life?
Irene: For the younger generation of women, I think being a woman and being in a very demanding career or being very ambitious is quite difficult. The one thing that I advice that I give to my sort of junior bankers is one, you need to work, you need to work so hard in your twenties. I remember, my life when I was in my twenties, I don't know how things are now for entry level people, but, I was working till 2, 3 a. m. I was working and it was pretty brutal, but in your twenties, you can do it because what happens is when you reach your thirties, you have to slow down. And it's not nice to say, but it's just different women have different biology, like having children is something that is very fulfilling.
Irene: I highly support it, but you can't work the same in when you have children than when you don't. So I think that my whole career path would go in different cycles. Right. So it's definitely pre children, marriage isn't an issue, but like pre children and post children.
Irene: And then now that I'm empty nest, it's a different time. And once the kids get older, it's different. So you need to work as hard as you can in your twenties and your life might feel a little bit out of balance. Then once you hit your, when you hit your thirties and when you start having children, then my advice changes. Life is a pie of four pieces, you have your your family, your friends, your work, and your personal life .
Irene: And these four pieces are not, they're not equal in priority, right? You wouldn't say your friends are more important than your children, or your work is more important than your family, but they are equal in importance in balance. So I would say that you cannot neglect any part of it or your life will fall apart.
Irene: And it doesn't mean that just because you spend time, let's say, taking care of yourself versus spending time with your kids or you need to work and you can't go to that play. It's just a matter of if you don't make sure they're balanced, then you'll be in trouble.
Irene: That's a thing that we're always struggling with. and the last example, there's anecdotal story that I want to give is one time I was in the gym and I was working out and there was a guy there and I was kind of showing, you know, the, there were these Instagram models that I thought, Oh, I would really like to have this kind of potty and he looks at me and he's like, Irene, you know, these girls train three hours a day.
Irene: Like you can't aspire for that. and I thought to myself, you know, you can't be the head of Goldman Sachs, be Martha Stewart and be a bikini fitness model. It's impossible to do all three things. Okay. So you just have to like, let go of any idea that you're going to be perfect in any of those things. A person who doesn't have children is always going to be able to be more committed to you than you can at work in terms of time. A mother who doesn't work will go to every event and you can't if you work. So you just have to not beat yourself up when you can't do everything.
Irene: And I think you learn that as you get older. So those are the Mhm. Messages that I would tell the younger ones, like try to fast track your career as fast as you can in your twenties. And then because later you'll have to, you'll have to rebalance. to be happy.
Kiran: Thank you. And what's the best advice you've ever received?
Irene: Oh, the best advice I ever received was actually from, I had a counselor who told me that, and this is across every single thing, and I really thought about it, and I think about it when I hit problems, is that you cannot control what other people do or think ever. You can only control what you do and what you think. So it's a matter of, I might try very hard to try to persuade somebody, but I can't make them think what I want to think. And so it's really just a matter of in life, like whether it's your partner, whether it's your colleague, whether it's your children, you have no, you can't control other people.
Irene: You can only control yourself. And so that really made me understand. I think about that sometimes, when I get frustrated about something, I'll think about that. Then I'll be like, okay, so what should I do about it? And other people can respond based on your response, but you can only control you.
Kiran: Thank you. My next question is also along the same vein with advice, but what advice do you have for girls who are interested in pursuing your career?
Irene: So it's hard to say because I don't know how you describe my career like there's I have the engineering part, I have the finance part, I have the entrepreneurial part. I would say so one thing, I know that you're studying math which is good. One thing is when I was in engineering my third year I really wanted to drop out I thought to my dad, Oh my God, this is because Berkeley is fairly theoretical and when you're doing thermodynamics, you're like, what am I doing? This is not fun. I'm not interested in this. I was like, I want to quit. This is like after my sophomore year, that's when they're trying to weed everybody out. You're taking math and physics.
Irene: My dad said, Irene, you can always go to law school, business school, you can even go to med school, but you can't go back and be an engineer. You can't go and get your PhD in engineering if you don't go through this. So he said, I suggest you stick it through. And I, I did, and it was the best thing I did.
Irene: Because I think that in some sense, and my son is also thinking about this as he's thinking about his major. Many things in life you learn later in life, or you learn along the way. I think that in college, it's very important to get an education within... I don't know how to explain what I'm trying to say, you know, like you can be in finance, you could have studied finance or you could study math, right? And math is a tool that will help you. It will give you a very strong foundation for other things. And really college is about learning how to learn. It's actually not about what you learn in college at all. Like nobody, I know very few people use what they learned in college in their job.
Irene: Unless you studied a PhD and you're actually doing research. Very few people did. So it's not about, you don't have to think, oh, if I want to go into banking or finance, I need to study economics or finance and the path doesn't have to be then I have to go and get the job, the internship at Goldman. I know a lot of people go down that path, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the only path.
Kiran: Right, it's a very restrictive way of going about college.
Irene: Yeah, and I think that it's easy. Well, I should say I ended up going down a very typical path, right?
Irene: I studied engineering, went to business school, I went into management consulting, I went into banking. So it also sounds like I did go down the good the good Asian child path, which was, always go for the bankable job. Always try to go and do the prestigious thing.
Irene: But I don't think college is the same. I don't think education is the same. And so I think, in the next 10 to 20 years, fundamentally, our jobs are not going to be the same. So trying to figure out the path that is so rigid and so direct is not going to work now because the paths are going to shift very quickly.
Irene: So I think it's more important to really try to get certain tools in your life, which is understanding, certain fundamentals, learning how to learn, learning how to be flexible, understanding how to be solution driven, being creative, right? It's not like whatever you study, whatever content you're studying, it's going to be probably not that relevant.
Irene: So I don't think you need to worry so much about, what it is that you're doing right now. Yeah.
Kiran: Thank you. My final question is looking ahead. What are your hopes and aspirations for the next generation of women and how do you envision contributing to their success?
Irene: Yeah, I think that when you look at the arc of women in the workplace and in society, there's still many societies where women are very unequal and don't have access, still, in the world.
Irene: If you look at the U S, I mean, I think the U S has come a long way. And then if you look at China, you know, women have come a long way. I haven't lived in the U S for a long time. I've lived in China. But I know that there are a lot of things going on in China about diversity and equality and all these other things.
Irene: I think it's really important just to focus on being successful as you, right. And being competent and I've never liked to focus on the fact that I'm a woman because I want to believe that I'm successful, not because I'm not a woman, not because I am a woman, just because the things that I've done equal to my peers who are men and women is valuable.
Irene: Right. Well, I should say, you know, back in the day, it is true that with, because there's so few women in certain sectors, women actually get an advantage, right. Meaning there'll be more easily hired because. Frankly, no one wants to work in a workplace that has only men, even the men or women don't because it's just not pleasant and it's not balanced.
Irene: So, this, this gender debate. People can say, well, it's not fair because a woman can get a job more easily than a man in a certain field because there are less women. And then the woman can say, oh, but you know what, because there are so few women the men crowd out the women and we don't have the same opportunities.
Irene: I think all those arguments can be taken, but really, I don't think it's productive or constructive to try to think about that too much in terms of when you're actually in your job or in school. What's really most important is, am I doing the things that I need to do, am I successful in accomplishing what I'm supposed to accomplish in terms of my annual goals and my KPIs. It's not that I'm dismissing the fact that there, there may be discrimination in certain places, and it might be difficult.
Irene: But I think that one really has to be very balanced. So it's very hard. I mean, I'm very supportive of women and trying to make sure that women succeed in fields where there are a few women. But at the same time, focusing too much on that is also very counterproductive.
Irene: In a way, I think it just means that if you hold on to it, and you remind yourself all the time of that, then you assume that role. The more conscious you are of it, I feel the more it becomes an issue.
Kiran: Kind of like imposter syndrome in a sense.
Irene: Yeah. and honestly, imposter syndrome, I have that all the time. The funny thing is the interesting thing about imposter syndrome is there was one time, because I wasn't a trained banker, right? I didn't get trained in a bank and I was sitting in a. In a meeting with a lot of I mean, actually, they were probably all men, but a lot of senior people.
Irene: And the guy was explaining something that I didn't understand, the lawyer. And finally I said, you know, so and so I don't understand what you're saying. Can you explain this to me? Right. Because, you know, it's very hard to admit that you don't understand something and look like you're not knowledgeable.
Irene: You always want to present yourself as knowledgeable, right? I mean, that's just human nature, but I basically said, I have no idea what you're saying exactly. Can you explain it to me? And he tried to explain it to me. I had this aha moment. He was the senior partner at a law firm and we were talking about a regulatory issue and it became clear to me that he didn't really understand it either. So what I understood, meaning things were shifting so fast that nobody really could understand what was happening at, in that particular time was that, I've suddenly realized I'm just, I'm the most knowledgeable person. Cause I've been doing this for now 10 years.
Irene: Just because I wasn't say classically trained but in China at that time I had been doing deals for at least a decade and so there wasn't there weren't that many people that were more knowledgeable than me because I had a lot of deal experience. So then I realized you know at some point you feel so insecure about what you don't know or what you think you don't know but in reality you always feel that you, there's somebody that knows more than you or will do better than you or people are judging you. And then eventually you realize that everybody else, when you're working the hardest and you're hustling the hardest, there aren't people that know more than you. So, yeah, almost every professional woman that I know will have hit that at some point. At some point in your life, you'll mature to the point where you'll realize, oh, actually, I don't have to feel this anymore. And hopefully you hit it earlier than later, right? Otherwise you don't get what you want and need because you're not feeling confident enough to ask for it.
Kiran: Thank you.
Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Women Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.
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