Background: Carolyn Woo heads one of the most influential and active faith-inspired organizations, Catholic Relief Services (CRS). In this interview she traces the journey that brought her to this position. Her upbringing in post-war Hong Kong, education in a Maryknoll school, the example of very different women who were part of her early years, and her deeply held Catholic faith have all marked her approach to life and to development. Educated at Purdue University, where she was also a long-time faculty member, she took an unanticipated route into strategic management and emerged as a leader in a new and growing field. Service as a board member of Catholic Relief Services introduced her to development work and led eventually to her current position. Her development perspectives are thus shaped by her Catholic faith, her understanding of what it takes to make organizations succeed, and by the remarkable and positive example of Hong Kong’s transformation before her eyes. She sees the strengths that business can bring, provided that it is guided by clear moral values. It is an essential part of the path to development. These themes emerged during a conversation between Dr. Woo and Katherine Marshall, on April 25, 2013.
What brought you to CRS? How did your own journey begin?
My early years growing up in Hong Kong, my Catholic faith, especially schooling with the Maryknoll sisters, and the example of several women in my life have been powerful influences throughout my life.
I was born in Hong Kong, in 1954. My parents were from southern China, Fujian, on the southern coast facing Taiwan, and had grown up there. They suffered through and were marked by the tumult of long years of war and finally came to Hong Kong as immigrants, bringing nothing with them, as they had to leave everything behind. Hong Kong was then an underdeveloped place, and I grew up with this initial awareness of its humble beginnings but above all witnessing and living Hong Kong’s transformation into a prosperous and successful society.
My parents were very different. My father was trained as a marine engineer and naval architect. His own family background was not strong or close: he was the purchased son of his father’s third wife, and he spent much time alone, essentially raising himself. He was sent away to Hong Kong to a Catholic boarding school when he was nine years old. That is how he became a Catholic; his family was not Christian. He then went to school in Europe, in Scotland, in the years before the outbreak of the Second World War. My mother was from a very traditional Chinese family. She never went to school, as she was tutored at home. She never took an exam. Thus she was essentially raised in a greenhouse. She and my father were married with neither of them knowing much of the other.
I was the fifth of their six children. I was the fourth daughter. They wanted, in the traditional Chinese way, at least two sons (an heir and a spare) and it took them six tries to achieve that. I am grateful, therefore, to my younger brother for not appearing sooner.
My father was Catholic but did not practice. However, he wanted his children to be raised in the Church. So we were all baptized, and every Sunday he would drive us to church and wait outside for us to come out. We were all enrolled in Catholic schools.
Why did he not practice?
That’s a good question. I think that he did believe in God, but felt that his own life fell short of what the Gospel taught. The last thing he wanted was to be a hypocrite. Since he felt that he did not truly live the Gospel message, he did not want to go to church. But he wanted to start his children off on the right path.
How did your Catholic education affect you?
The school I attended for twelve years in Hong Kong was run by the Maryknoll sisters. That was a great blessing for me. They are a wonderful order, founded and based in New York (that is where the mother house is located), and now celebrating their one hundredth anniversary. There were many Maryknoll sisters in China. When they had to leave (like my family), they expanded their apostolates in Hong Kong. Not enough sisters could speak and read Chinese well (they were all Americans then, with no Chinese sisters), so we were taught in English. They were really incredible, full of joy, and entrepreneurial. When they saw the poor quality of education, they started schools. For one school, they gave up public transportation and walked instead, and that money became their seed money. They founded hospitals and clinics and worked on many aspects of social justice. These were women who were remarkably adventurous. They left behind comfortable homes, faced yellow fever, and violence. They gave us a first rate education, with the special benefit of learning good English. And above all their love for learning came through to us. They are such a “can do” group: the spirit is that they, and therefore we, can do anything with God’s help. That spirit rubbed off on the girls. We worked in clinics, with the Legion of Mary, and in the factory district. I was involved, as an example of the diversity of our service work, in a project to translate filmstrips into English, most of them religious.
So, after 12 years with the Maryknoll sisters, I emerged with a clear sense of being a person, with a will and can do spirit, full of joy, love of fellowship, and friendship. God became real to me because God was real to those sisters. He was so real to them because otherwise, for them, giving up everything would not make sense. So that is an important part of my journey of life. The Maryknoll sisters are still very much a part of my life; I see them often.
How did your family react to your ambitions?
My family background and history were also important influences. My father never really knew his birth mother and thus I did not know my grandmother or grandfather. His father had four wives. On my mother’s side, her father also had four wives. I grew up with one of them. The families were very much in the traditional Chinese model.
But my mother came from a tradition that was quite distinct, where being refined was a value. She learned to sew and to plant flowers and continued to do both all her life. She was in many respects the opposite of the Maryknoll sisters. She was terrified of everything. The main language spoken in Hong Kong was English, and my mother never learned to speak or read English. She could not read a lot of documents, utility bills, for example. If she had a problem or complaint, we children had to intervene and speak for her. She was in many ways the product of a greenhouse. And I decided when I was very young that I did not want to be like my mother. Television was becoming popular in Hong Kong at the time and I saw American TV as a teenager. I wanted to go to the United States. I wanted to be self-sufficient, and above all not dependent on a husband like my mother.
Beyond our home, I saw the way that Chinese women tended to take a back seat, dependent on their husbands, and on an allowance they were granted. Some were treated well, but some were not, yelled at and subject to all sorts of discourtesies. I decided early on that Chinese marriage was not what I was interested in. But I also was able to see some strengths and advantages in the traditional ways. I saw that my aunt and my mother had their way of getting things done. They were part of small savings groups and would pool their savings. But they were really part of a traditional Chinese pattern in the way women were viewed: my mother’s mother had bound feet: thus my mother was the first generation whose feet were not bound. But she was still imbued with a sense that she was dependent on other people. In short, I did not see many happy Chinese marriages; only a few.
These traditional values were part of our family. My father had clear plans for his sons: he wanted one to be a doctor, the other a lawyer (that happened for both my brothers). But for the girls, anything we did was okay. He loved us but had no plans or deep ambitions. My three older sisters did not go to college. Two became secretaries, another an airline stewardess. My father wanted us to be close by to him and wanted me to stay in Hong Kong.
I had other plans, however.
What took you to America?
I set my heart on going to college in America. I was able to collect enough money from my savings and my older siblings to go to America to college. I collected exactly enough money for two semesters: $800 plus $800, not a penny more or less. And my brother the doctor paid my dorm fees. So, off I went to college at Purdue. Why Purdue? It was by chance. I met a professor through my sister who was then working at the airline TWA (Trans World Airlines). I was helping out on a Saturday, stapling documents. He suggested that I apply to Purdue, I did, and was accepted. It was 1972.
That first year I took on an absolutely impossible program. I took 42 credit hours, because I thought this was my only chance, that I would never be able to come back. It was almost impossible then for a foreign student and especially an undergraduate to get a scholarship, but I applied nonetheless. I was worried, because I did not have a perfect record. It was a very lonely time, and I cried every day at the beginning. I was very homesick. But then I would ask myself what I had learned that day and that heartened me because I was always happy that I could answer yes, I was learning new things each day.
One habit that was very important to me was daily mass. After one year, the scholarship results were about to be announced. I had class that day until 11:20 and mass was at 11:30. But the scholarship office was open only until noon. I had to make a choice: go to mass or pick up the results? I went to mass. I figured that I would postpone any bad news. During the mass I tried to settle with God why it was so much harder for a girl. I had a one hour conversation with God on the subject. But then I went to the office, and I did get a full scholarship for the next three years. I immediately signed up for summer hours. Not long after, I decided I might as well pack in a graduate degree, so I stayed first for my master's, then for my Ph.D.
During this time I met my future (and current) husband. He was an American, from Delaware. We met at the Catholic Church we attended, when I was a freshman and he was in a masters program. We were both deeply involved in the church activities, and were both elected to parish council. He was wonderful, and took special care of me. We knew each other over seven years, and were married in 1979. We have two sons, one a doctor, the other teaching theology at a Catholic high school.
I was at Purdue for 23 years. After I got my degrees I joined the faculty there and was very happy, until I moved to Notre Dame in 1997.
Looking back, what gave you the verve and determination to venture so far from home?
I was very determined to shape my own life.
That came in part from a keen awareness of how dependent my mother was. What I have come to understand subsequently, saw only dimly when I was young, was how far she was caught in a world that was changing rapidly around her. She did not begin to know how to change with it. She had little capacity for change, as she was raised almost like a princess. She was the favored daughter of her father’s first wife, protected from every external influence. Then she found herself in a situation of war, where she had to escape and was then a refugee. She married a man who did not really understand the old China she was raised in. She had no tools to be autonomous. And Hong Kong was a British colony. Protocol, so important in traditional China, simply took a back seat. And in the traditional society, identity was based on protocol. I initially thought of her as simply helpless. But looking back, I realize that in a turbulent period she was simply not equipped to cope with change. That included, besides lack of protocol, a revolution in technology that was taking place around us. But above all I did not want to be unable, incapable of shaping my own life.
Besides that important influence, the Maryknoll sisters were critical in shaping my values and character. And so was my nanny.
My nanny was with my family for most of her life, from eight years before I was born. She was beautiful. Her father died of tuberculosis, and she was sold at 9 years old as a servant. From then on she had to be on her own and earn her own living. She had no formal education, ever. She decided she would never marry. She carried the school bag of the girl of the family she worked for, and would stand outside the classroom and listen to the classes. Thus she learned to read but never to write. She had the highest standards of cleanliness, and was always efficient. She was a Buddhist. Every morning, she would kneel at the kitchen window to pray, thanking heaven and earth. She had very little, but she always felt she had enough. She gave away whatever she had to anyone who needed it, for example to her sister who had 12 children. She was and is an incredible woman.
What has become of her?
She is still living in Hong Kong, and I am very close to her. I was closer to her than to my mother, who died in the year 2000. My nanny never left our family. When my mother died, my nanny and I went through an “adoption” ceremony. I became her “god-daughter,” and that changed the relationship from servant to part of family. She worked until she was in her 80s. She is now in an elderly living situation and everyone there loves her. She still loves life and is always cheerful, thankful, and considerate. She is full of joy and thanksgiving.
How did you decide what to study when you were at Purdue?
At first when I began at Purdue, I was like other Chinese and I wanted to study everything. The Chinese do that. I was an economics major, primarily because I had an excellent professor. I also took 12 credit hours in theology from Notre Dame through St. Thomas Aquinas (Catholic Center at Purdue) and I grew to love that.
I never thought of myself as a risk taker but when it came to my Ph.D. I took a risky and improbable route, as I chose to study strategic management. In 1975 no one had heard of strategic management. It was a brand new area in the business school. But when I was done with economics, I was dissatisfied. I thought the economics I had learned was only about equations and modeling. I did not understand what I was modeling, however. It was just about assumptions. But what, I asked, is the opposite of the assumptions? You cannot really make assumptions about the real world, which is too complex. So I went into strategic management hoping it would help answer some of my questions and doubts. It was, however, the last thing a kid from Hong Kong was likely to be good at. I found myself fascinated by how organizations adapt to their environment, to their real experience. And I have no regrets. I taught in that area until Notre Dame recruited me to be the dean.
How did you become involved with CRS? What drew you to development?
I had a strong sense that God was part of my life and that drew me towards the role I eventually had as a member of the CRS board. That was the beginning of my exposure to the development world. All my colleagues in CRS have more experience in relief and development than I do. What I brought then, and bring now, is knowledge about organizational development and strategy. That is a thread that has continued. Until about 10 years ago the CRS board members were all bishops. They decided then to open the board to lay members. I was part of the first class of six lay members.
Before I joined the CRS board I had not traveled much, and my travels were mainly to the usual places where conferences and the like are held. My first trip as a CRS board member was to Banda Aceh and India. It was an eye opener. We were there when mass graves were still burning. In the southern part of India, we stood with fishermen along the coast. They had fashioned a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with flower petals and we recited the “Our Father” together. I got a real sense of the meaning and power of the global Church. After that I traveled to many places Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and so on. It removed my fears and introduced me to the CRS world.
Another important way that I came to understand development was through Hong Kong. What I gained from having grown up in Hong Kong was an extremely successful model of development. I grew up on an island that overflowed with refugees, a barren rock with no natural resources, but it grew into a city that today supports seven or eight million people living fairly well. It absorbed so many refugees. It stands as the most impressive model of development for me.
What lessons do you draw from the Hong Kong experience, for example in governance and corruption?
I was very much aware of corruption and very conscious of how successful the Hong Kong government was in fighting it.
My uncles worked with the Hong Kong government. One worked in a hospital and I remember the pride he took in talking about how squeaky clean it was: no one could or had to pay to “expedite” a service. Among my parents’ friends were a couple. The husband had a great job in a major government department that was responsible for the inspection of buildings. Quite suddenly they had to move to Canada. It turned out that he was found to have accepted a payment. So I realized how serious the British were on the subject. Another lesson came from how well civil servants were paid and the fact that they were respected. It was a good thing to work as a civil servant.
What the British were able to do, consciously, was to change important aspects of the culture in Hong Kong. For example, the Chinese had a habit of spitting. It grossed me out because people had no qualms about it, they just spat wherever they felt like it. Then there was a TB epidemic and the government needed to stamp out spitting. They were very successful, working through a campaign and using information to end the practice. Later they took a similar approach on litter. Among other things that stick in my mind, if a person was caught littering they were dressed in the suit of a very dirty person and a picture was taken. The potential shame played an important part in stopping the practice.
It may not be democracy but it works.
How do you see the role of your Catholic faith in this remarkable journey and how does it relate to your focus on business during your academic career?
My family is Catholic, some members very Catholic, some “Easter” Catholics. I have one sister who is very devout, others less so. For me, my Catholic faith is the most important defining characteristic of my life. My husband shares my faith and values and we work together for our church. I am deeply grateful for the heritage and support and want to help in furthering the formation of faith for the next generation. I also draw from my faith a strong wish to do a good job in serving the poor, in accordance with the Gospel.
I am aware that there are two pieces of my life that seem very different: my commitment to the Church, and my focus on business. I spent many years, at Purdue and Notre Dame, focused on business. I see business as a very important agent in society. I also see many links between business and the Catholic faith, and several encyclicals acknowledge the role of business. In Hong Kong, the whole future became possible because of business. It has a great potential to do good. It can also do great harm and can exploit. Which of the two prevails depends on the moral energies of people who run it. I had the chance to work on the question of moral energy in a practical way at Notre Dame, and draw attention to the ethical way of succeeding. With that you can do a lot of good for a lot of people so I see above all the positive potential. But I do not deny that business, like all professions, has a potential to exploit. I believe deeply that it has the power to do good and that the key is to form leaders with ethical values.
How have you come to see the role of interfaith work in development?
Working in interfaith settings is very central for CRS, if for no other reason than the fact we work in many countries where the majority of the population is not Catholic. We are guided and motivated by need, not creed. Many who work for CRS have a faith life outside of the Catholic Church and we need to respect that, relate to and collaborate with people of all faiths. CRS has 70 years of experience and much of it has been, as I noted, in non-Catholic majority communities. Some CRS employees are not Catholic. And in the places where we work, if CRS is not deeply respected and trusted, it puts our staff and our beneficiaries at risk. It is that basic to us: a matter of survival.
I also grew up in a multifaith country and family. In Hong Kong, only three percent of the population is Catholic. My nanny was a Buddhist, and converted to Catholicism only in her 90s. My mother was baptized only when she was in her late 70s. So we had an interfaith household.
We are aware at CRS of how important interfaith collaboration can be. For example, we are working to eliminate early marriage in some parts of Kenya. But if we just go in and say it is wrong, we cannot succeed. So we work with interfaith councils, elders, and educators to communicate the problems that can happen when girls marry too young. We start with education, and look for joint projects with religious leaders themselves that can move action.
How do you look at changing roles of women in society? You spoke of the influence of your mother, nanny, and the Maryknoll sisters. And today you are a strong woman leader at a time when there is fresh debate about tensions between rights and family. These tensions have special importance for development and religion is an important factor.
These are complex issues. In our work we work towards girls having access to school. Without that, few programs can succeed. Many farmers are women, and they will not benefit from improvements and new opportunities without education and literacy.
I was visiting a project in Afghanistan and we asked a group of men how they saw the benefits of a new well. They had many things to say. They saw less illness, less fights among people trying to get water, less tussles, fewer injuries. Men and women were both happier. The men also noted that they could wash more easily before prayers. Their daughters and wives could go to school more easily because getting water was less work. And they were happy that their wives could go to school and learn to read because it allowed them to know the holy book.
We also see women taking special interest in our savings and lending work. Women make up 75 percent of the groups, and we are, with groups of 20 or so, reaching a million people. When they have some resources, the women will have a stronger voice in the family, and can take better care of their children. It is an essential part of development.
Not all these changes are comfortable or easy. But education is a great enabling force, as is dialogue and debate. Transformation is taking place all over, if in different ways.
I agree with you that the secular world has some important biases against religion. They tend to see religion as setting rules for non-thinking or oppressed people, who do not or are not allowed to think for themselves. This is clearly a very biased, almost hostile view, wrong in many situations. Much of the tension turns on the issue of contraceptives, which are seen as an indication of suppression of women, denying them choice. For us though, life is not a problem, it is a gift.
