WIM Scholorship Winner Continues to Shine!

Written by Beverly Lieberman, Co-President
with Sally Dickter, WIM Scholarship Committee

November 10, 2003

As Co-President of the WIM Scholarship Committee this year, I wanted to meet a past recipient to get a feel for the kind of person we supported and what impact our scholarship had on her. I had the pleasure of meeting past WIM Scholarship winner, Irene Choi, who I found to be a very impressive and unusual young woman. She comes across as a friendly, gregarious and high-energy person. She has been in the U.S. since 1996, having come with her parents and younger brother from Hong Kong. She started high school at age 16 at Westhill High School in Stamford and did not know a word of English. She was scared, but determined to overcome this obstacle. She said that she intentionally repeated her junior year of high school when she moved to the U.S. in order to make sure she was well prepared for college. She described the intense studying she did for her first biology test. She spent an entire day looking up every word in the dictionary in order to translate into Chinese. Many terms were not there! Then, she used the next day memorizing and studying the materials. The night before the exam, Irene stayed up all night preparing for the test to make sure she fully understood the materials. Even with this limitation, Irene got an 88 on the test! Looking back, Irene sees those challenging days as the life-altering experience that has made her a stronger person.

Irene and her family are very tightly woven. Her parents started out working at Caldor's for $5/hour. When Irene was accepted at the University of Connecticut (UConn), she went to the Stamford campus in order for the logistics to work out with being near home. She quickly decided at UConn that studying business was the best route for financial stability and growth, and became an accounting major. She had to work at a number of part-time jobs all through college, including babysitting and working as an accounting clerk at UConn and three years in the mailroom at Pitney Bowes. She did not receive assistance nor expect her parents to help her out financially because she did not want to add to their already heavy burden. She did very well scholastically, graduating in May of last year, with a 3.99 GPA out of a 4.0. She was also class valedictorian, an honor scholar, and received numerous awards from UConn and outside organizations (not bad for someone who did not speak a word of English six years prior to her graduation!). In 2002, Irene was honored in the State Capitol for her outstanding academic achievements and extracurricular activities.

While carrying a very full load of courses and working at multiple part-time jobs, Irene said it was a big help when she was able to qualify for and receive scholarship monies. She received them during her last two years of school.

Irene said the WIM Scholarship was significant. It was three thousand dollars, and she truly needed the money. This money, combined with other scholarship awards and her income from working, allowed her to finish on time with her classmates. Irene said the WIM Scholarship Award was very special because it was from a women's organization. She thinks professional women can do anything they aspire to do, and it is very impressive to her that such a resourceful and caring group of women in WIM have organized such a program for other emerging professional women. She was touched, honored and is truly grateful. As a payback, Irene is joining WIM this year to support programs that help women achieve their goals. I have encouraged her to come to one of our dinner meetings this year so we can re-introduce her and have our members get a chance to meet this special young woman. WIM should be proud of our achievement in having a scholarship program and in having it make such a difference to a recipient.

Today, Irene works as a tax accountant in Stamford for PriceWaterhouse-
Coopers. She credits her accounting professors at UConn, especially Dr. John Phillips and Dr. Amy Dunbar, for developing her passion in accounting and tax. She already has her master's degree in accounting and is sitting for the CPA exam in November. After obtaining the CPA, Irene is planning to return to school to pursue either an MBA or a law degree. There is no stopping this woman. She is hungry to achieve and be able to make her family proud of her! Irene is engaged to her high school sweetheart, Robert Louth, and plans to get married in the summer of 2005. She still lives with her parents and younger brother, supports their household both spiritually and financially and said she always will. Her parents gave her the opportunity to achieve great things by moving to the U.S. and giving her a loving home, even though they were struggling financially. She receives tremendous emotional support from her family and wants to pay them back so they can live more comfortably over the years. She said she intends to be her parents’ 401K plan and will try her best to take care of them. She also fancies opening her own business some day, being married and traveling throughout the world. Most of all, Irene wants to make a difference, in her family, in her workplace, and in her community. She feels so fortunate to have received all this support over the years that she is now ready to give it back. Irene wants to contribute through volunteering and joining great organizations like WIM to assist others to achieve their goals in life.