This year for Women’s History Month, we are highlighting different women each week who, although you may have not heard of previously, have contributed greatly to society.
Third to be highlighted is Thai Lee, CEO of IT provider, SH International.
Lee was Born in Bangkok, Thailand but spent most of her childhood in South Korea. Her father, a Korean economist, traveled the world promoting South Korea’s postwar development plan, so Thai and her family moved around a lot in the early phases of her life.
When she moved to America in her teens, a family friend took her in as she finished high school and then enrolled at Amherst College, Massachusetts where she earned a double major BA in biology and economics. Since her English was not fluent, she ruled out professions that involved writing and speaking. She knew she could be successful as a businesswoman. Lee said, “I knew then that the best chance of success for me was to start my own business, because after I x-ed out all the professions I could not be successful in, that’s what I was left with.”
After college, she returned to Korea. She worked at an auto parts maker so she could earn enough money to pay for her MBA. A few years later she was back in Massachusetts, and in 1985, she graduated Harvard Business School.
In 1989, Lee married Leo Koguan, a lawyer with a passion for entrepreneurship. Lautek, a small struggling software company, had a tiny division, Software House. It had only a few customers, but some of them were big (like AT&T, for example). Koguan and Lee paid less than one million for that business – funding through savings and small loans.
Lee and her now ex-husband renamed the company Software House International, reflecting Lee’s global ambitions. Melissa Graham, the company’s first hire, said, “We had no inventory, very little money, no market presence, no marketing, no promotion. What we did have was someone who wanted to make this thing work.”
There were no ground rules on how to manage their customers. Lee let it up to her staff to make company decisions. She said, “If you are responsible for a customer, you own that. Being empowered that way, it’s very important.” Because their service was so trustworthy, customers had no reason to switch.
After expanding and creating a new division, the company earned six billion dollars in revenue and doubled in size. SHI currently holds $11 billion in revenue and has 20,000 plus customers.
According to Forbes, Thai Lee founded the largest woman owned and minority owned business in America. A study by two economists, found that today’s Forbes 400 were able to access education while young, and apply their skills to the most scalable industries: technology, finance, and mass retail. The share of the Forbes 400 who are self‐made rose from 40% in 1982 to 69% in 2011.
Sources:
- The Modest Tycoon Behind America’s Biggest Woman-Owned Business (forbes.com)
- Thai Lee (forbes.com)
- SHI International (forbes.com)
- Research shows that most of America’s rich earned their wealth – American Experiment