Fellows mentioned in this story: Yunji de Nies

From Hawai‘i Business Magazine:

How raising children strengthened their resilience and redefined the way these women show up in their careers. Profiles of two women in Hawaiʻi who found that parenting and family life were the superpower skills on their resumes.

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When Yunji de Nies was a young girl, her mother would not let her into the kitchen at all. She wasn’t allowed to cook or even wash a dish. She was constantly ushered away and told to go study instead. Her mother grew up in South Korea under martial law, and because she was a woman, college wasn’t an option for her. Since she wasn’t afforded that opportunity, she insisted on it for her daughter.

As the daughter of two immigrants, de Nies was the first native-born American in her family, and she absorbed her parents’ strong work ethic. A quotation she tacked to her corkboard in college was her mantra: “Busy as a bee, results as sweet as honey.”

After graduate school, she moved to New Orleans. A year later, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused the levees in New Orleans to break, flooding most of the city. Amid businesses shutting down, rampant looting, a communications collapse and food scarcity, de Nies was working as a TV reporter. She was suddenly doing regular live updates over the months as New Orleans slowly recovered. Circumstances forced her to learn her craft at a relentless speed.

Continue reading at HawaiiBusiness.com.