The call came three days before New Year’s Eve while I was in a video conference with my Singapore office. I saw Mom’s name flash on my phone and almost declined it, but something made me answer. “Emma, I need to talk to you about New Year’s.” Her tone was the one she used when delivering news she expected me to accept without argument.
“We’re doing something different this year. Your brother Marcus has been invited to his boss’s estate in the Hamptons. Jackson Reed.
You’ve heard of him? The tech billionaire who founded Nexus Systems.”
“I’m familiar with Jackson Reed.”
“Well, Marcus has been instrumental in their AI division, and Mr. Reed is hosting a very exclusive New Year’s Eve celebration.
Billionaires, tech executives, venture capitalists, the kind of people who shape industries. Marcus has been told to bring family. But Emma, these are serious people.”
I waited, already knowing where this was going.
“So we think it’s best if you sit this one out. Nothing personal, sweetheart, but you’re in academia. These people operate in a different stratosphere.
Someone might ask what you do, and ‘I teach business ethics at a state university’ isn’t exactly impressive enough.”
“Sure, Mom.”
“Marcus will be so relieved. He was worried about having to explain your career to people who’ve built billion-dollar companies. You know how he gets anxious about these things.”
The line went dead.
I unmuted my microphone and returned to the conference call where my team was discussing quarterly performance across my semiconductor manufacturing holdings in Southeast Asia. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was thirty-six years old, and I had spent fourteen years building an empire my family never knew existed.
It started simply enough. I’d gone into academia because I genuinely loved teaching business ethics and corporate governance. Got my PhD at twenty-five, landed a position at a decent state university.
My family had been disappointed but resigned. At least I had a stable job, even if it wasn’t lucrative. What they didn’t know was that my dissertation on corporate governance failures had caught the attention of several board members at major companies.
What started as consulting work evolved into board positions. At twenty-seven, I was on my first corporate board. At twenty-eight, I was on three.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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