Even superwoman needs help

Fifteen-year-old Grace Park, a willowy Korean American, was daunted when she first took a look at a brochure of the prestigious United States Military Academy at West Point — which featured tall, buff, blond-haired and blue-eyed men from cover to cover.

“I told my parents (I remember very clearly), ‘I won’t fit in. Look, I’m Asian, I’m female, I’m only 5 ft 4 (1.62m). These are 6 ft 2 guys’.”

But her immigrant parents, who left for the US after the Korean war, told her not to judge a book by its cover and that leaders come in all shapes and sizes — an axiom that Ms Park has gone on to prove by example, as an army captain, Fortune 500 company managerial executive, philanthropist and successful Singapore-based entrepreneur.

Now 41, she is Chief Executive and co-founder of DocDoc, the leading online medical-appointment-booking and health-information portal in Asia, whose heavyweight backers include the likes of former DBS and Singapore Airlines Chairman Koh Boon Hwee, leading Silicon Valley venture-capital fund 500 Startups, Singapore-based fund Jungle Ventures and angel investor Michael Brehm.

But at that pivotal point all those years ago, she was just a high-school student and student-body president looking for something “more than just academics”.

Her parents had actually picked up the brochure for her younger brother, Tom (generals who graduated from West Point, she explains, were “heroes during the Korean war” and left an indelible mark on people like her parents).

But in the end, it was Ms Park who wrangled a nomination from Senator Ted Kennedy and got into West Point at 17.

114 PUSH-UPS IN 2 MINUTES

Only one-tenth of the 1,400 new cadets were women; and there were only 20 Asians at the 211-year-old academy, which takes in the cream of the crop across the US and transforms them into army leaders who are knowledgeable in military affairs and academically and physically adept.

But Ms Park had long ago become used to being a part of the minority (“the only Asian in the classroom”) and refused to let that be a handicap.

She graduated with honours in the top 3 per cent, coming in second in physical fitness — losing out to a male classmate by a mere 0.001 point. She went on to lead a platoon of 46 soldiers at 21 and did a one-year stint in Korea.

At her peak, she was hitting 114 push-ups in two minutes, 109 sit-ups in the same time and a 3.2km run in 12 minutes 36 seconds.

What was it like matching up physically against the men? “It really is about breaking it down into bite-size chunks and not seeing the magnitude of ‘wow, I’ve to compete with you’, but just chipping away on a day-to-day basis,” she says, trying to convince me over tea at The St Regis Singapore that I, too, could do 100 push-ups in two minutes if I tried.

Her attitude, she says, also kept her away from sexual harassment. Sexual-assault cases in the US military have made the headlines in recent years, and a Bill to tackle the problem is soon expected to reach the Senate floor.

Ms Park says: “There were a few comments here and there, but it was nothing major. The best I could do was prove that women can do it and it speaks volumes. They just said (something) like, ‘Wow, Grace beat all those guys.’ And it diffuses the whole situation of why women shouldn’t be in the military.”

She never downplayed the part about being a woman; in fact, she wore light makeup, which was allowed at West Point.

“There are some women who feel (the) need to be like a man, and I think the key is being authentic to who you are, but really kick major butt in the physical fitness test.”

FROM CAPTAIN TO PRIVATE

When she left the army at 26, Ms Park was a captain in the Pentagon, part of a special task force to re-engineer army intelligence for the asymmetrical warfare of the 21st century.

It was at the Pentagon that she met mentors who nudged her towards the private sector — disrupting her original plan of serving in the army for 20 years and becoming the first Asian-American general officer.

One mentor told her there were more ways to serve the country than doing so in a green uniform; another encouraged her to learn how the private sector does things well, then use that knowledge to improve the US military.

So why private-sector healthcare? “I wanted to (join) a company I felt really proud of. The meaning and purpose behind the mission were significant — creating value for society — and that’s why I (chose) healthcare.”

At global pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb, she started in sales and marketing — the bottom rung — which was not easy for someone who left the army as a captain.

“My managers and colleagues had a hard time understanding how to translate the work that I’d done into marketing or sales ... So they gave me little projects and (realised), ‘Wow, Grace can do that!’ Then, they gave me more and more. It required a lot of patience for people to get to know me, that I’m committed and … have skills that (can be translated) to the private sector.”

She later served at Medtronic, the world’s largest medical-technology company, as Managing Director of its ASEAN operations, after completing an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

PIVOT TO SINGAPORE

In 2004, she came to Singapore as a Fulbright scholar — and never moved back to the US.

“I just fell in love with Singapore. It was so dynamic ... and I wanted to be where there was opportunity. Also, I (hadn’t the chance) to visit all the countries in Asia yet; I wanted to continue having an adventure in this part of the world.”

Her boss then at Bristol-Myers Squibb urged her to stay in Asia and help launch a new drug for hepatitis B. “I just said, ‘Yes I’m on board!’ No questions whatsoever.”

She broke the news to her then boyfriend Cole Sirucek after she’d accepted the job . “I said, ‘Cole, if you love me, you’ll move to Singapore ... I’m sorry, it was impulsive, but you’ve been saying when we were in (graduate) school that Asia is an amazing growth area’.”

So, turning down job offers in the US, Mr Sirucek bought a one-way ticket to Singapore in 2005, with US$500 in his bank account and college debt.

One of the adventures in Asia they couple shared was the punishing Gobi desert race to raise money for the needy. As she told him, if they could survive the 250km run, they would survive marriage (they went on to tie the knot in 2008).

But the training — doing 10 loops at MacRitchie Reservoir — got “really boring”. That frustration set the stage for one of the couple’s first major philanthropic deeds: Raising funds for young children in need of heart surgery but unable to afford it.

With the help of family, friends and their employers, they raised US$75,000 for a heart surgeon and his team to operate on children in Vietnam. The couple followed that up by climbing Mount Fuji in winter to raise money for diabetes research and scaling Mount Kilimanjaro to raise US$300,000 for the Make a Wish Foundation.

MEETING, GIVE BIRTH, MEETING

After about a decade in healthcare, Ms Park decided to start the DocDoc portal, believing in the impending intersection of healthcare with information technology. Ms Park’s family and friends were asking her for doctor recommendations, given her knowledge of the sector, and it felt right to seek to empower patients through DocDoc with such information that they could look up on their own.

Here, the relationships and network that Mr Sirucek built over seven years of working at Temasek Holdings, in its telco, media and technology investment team, came in handy. For instance, Mr Koh Boon Hwee, who served on Temasek’s board, came on board as DocDoc’s lead investor when the company was “just in its idea stage”, according to Ms Park.

“A lot of it is through family and friends, really. And they believe in us.”

The birth of a new start-up is all the more impressive, given that Ms Park was expecting her first child.

“It’s funny! When I went into labour, I was in a meeting … and I said, ‘Okay, I’ve to go to the hospital now’.”

She was in hospital for four days after giving birth. “The day after I was discharged, I had a four-hour meeting with an investor and my helper got sick. So, I basically had to take my five-day-old baby into the meeting. Thank God, she was sleeping!

“So, I don’t know if I’d have done that if I was in an MNC or Fortune 500 company — I don’t know how that would work,” says Ms Park, whose daughter is now nine months old. The couple also have two British bulldogs.

TAKE ME AS I AM

Motherhood seems to have rounded out the picture for Ms Park. It has helped her become “a lot more authentic, a lot more empathetic and a lot more integrated”. It has also helped her realise there is no one-size-fits-all approach to defining success.

When she was younger, she used to compartmentalise who she was as an individual and as a professional — identities which were often not congruent.

“I always dressed up and spoke or prepared myself as if I was two levels higher than I really was. I had to act the part, then I would be seen as a good fit for a future promotion,” she says. “I mean, I rose up the ranks really fast — I worked super hard and made things happen.

“But, right now, because of so many demands — being a mother and running this company — it’s just: This is who I am, take it or leave it.”

This authenticity, she says, has allowed her to be vulnerable and depend on others, such as her spouse and her colleagues. Whereas in the army, her independence was what won her respect. “I never needed someone to carry my rucksack,” she adds.

Her current, perhaps wiser, perspective: “Often, I feel like I’ve to be (a) superwoman all the time. Growing up in an environment where (I was) self-sustaining, and in the military where I couldn’t show any weakness, that had become (my) default mode. Before, I saw asking for help as a sign of weakness but, now, I see it (through) a very different lens.”