Dr. Lee - woman pioneer
Gachon Gill Foundation Chairwoman Lee Gil-ya / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
Leading gynecologist builds network of hospitals, research centers
This is the third in a series of interviews with prominent women leaders in the country’s financial and business sectors. Sponsors for this series include the Industrial Bank of Korea, Women in Innovation and Korea Network of Women in Finance. - ED.
By Kim Da-ye
Entering the Global Campus of Gachon University in Seongnam on the outskirts of eastern Seoul, one is stunned by the size.
Twenty buildings stand clustered on the hill, one after another. A mini bus painted like a ladybug cruises around. At the center is a large square below ground level surrounded by bistros, cafes, shops and a modern, glassy landmark called Vision Tower.
Gachon has two other smaller campuses in Incheon near the international airport.
Until earlier this year, the Seongnam campus was Kyoungwon University, established in 1982 and acquired in 1998 by the Gachon Gil Foundation. In a decade and a half, the private foundation dedicated to public services merged it with three other institutions and turned into the third largest university in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, according to student enrollment. Gachon has around 30,000 students enrolled and admits nearly 4,000 each year.
While investments made by large conglomerates have driven the growth of Korea’s major universities in the past years, behind Gachon’s expansion is an 80-yearold gynecologist, Lee Gil-ya.
Lee, who set up and chairs the foundation and its affiliated universities and hospitals, comes from a middle class family that owned a rice mill in a village in North Jeolla Province. Born as the younger of two daughters to a strictly Confucian family, Lee grew up being told what not to do as a woman rather than what she could do. Her grandparents did not even appreciate her birth.
She clearly didn’t care. Now dubbed as Korea’s most successful female CEO who made an independent fortune, Lee says there is no secret formula to success, but that she has always dreamt of success.
Interviewing Lee face to face and perusing her autobiography leads to a conclusion ? once she set a goal, she did not see any obstacles to reaching it. For her, naturally, there was no such thing as a glass ceiling.
“I’ve never thought in my life that a glass ceiling exists in the medical and educational fields. I didn’t think even once that I couldn’t make it,” Lee said in an interview with Business Focus.
As the disadvantages of being a woman barely occurred to her, Lee only saw only its brighter sides.
“If I were born again, I want to stay as a woman and a doctor and not marry,” Lee said.
Determination
Many female leaders talk about how they broke through glass ceilings and what it took for them to do so. In contrast, Lee believed she could achieve anything if she strongly desired and worked toward this goal. Traditions and prejudices weren’t on her way. Earlier this year, Lee was among the world’s 50 fearless women chosen by U.S. weekly Newsweek.
She recalls the Korean War during which she got to study with students from Kyunggi Girls’ High School and Ewha Girls’ High School, the then country’s elite secondary school for women.
The girls fled from Seoul to the southern part of Korea and took refuge in Iri Girls’ High School. When they found out Lee was the highest achiever at Iri, they often asked her which university she planned to apply for. Lee firmly stated, “The medical school at Seoul National University.” “The way they looked at me was telling, ‘How could you, a village girl, be admitted to the medical school of the prestigious Seoul National University?’ Whenever I was laughed at, I solidified my determination,” Lee said.
She studied by candle light in an air-raid shelter and never slept more than four hours a day, she recalls. Throughout most of her life, she slept around four hours a day until she heard on TV that people should sleep eight hours to remain healthy. When people ask her how they can do well at school, she still advises them to stay in bed for no longer than four hours.
She got into the medical school of her dream and spent the first two years in a state in war. She later became the chairwoman of the medical school’s alumni association for five terms lasting 10 years.
When asked if male alumni disapproved of her leadership, she says, “Maybe I am insensitive, but I never felt it. Some may have wondered how a woman can take that position, but I was good at the job. I ended up doing it for five terms,” Lee said.
Her go-getting spirit rarely waned as she aged. In the mid 2000s, she travelled the world to convince international experts on cancer and diabetes to lead the Lee Gil Ya Cancer and Diabetes Institute that opened in 2008.
She had already succeeded in recruiting leading neuroscientist Jo Jang-hee as the head of Gachon’s neuroscience research institute which is among the world’s largest and is known for having the cutting-edge brain scanner, 7.0 Tesla MRI.
In 2005, in order to persuade the late Yoon Ji-won, then head of the diabetes center at Chicago Medical School, she once arranged a meeting with him at Chicago O’Hare International Airport because Yoon was too busy. She left Incheon at night, arrived in Chicago in the morning, and after a brief meeting, departed in the evening for Seoul. She was in her mid 70s.
Yoon, unfortunately, unexpectedly died of cancer in 2006.
“I think her generation who survived the Korean War has a different DNA. They are much stronger and more passionate than us,” said Lee Hee-sung, a managing director at Gachon University.
Being a woman
The chairwoman of Gachon Gil Foundation, in many ways, is the antithesis of a woman which society has stereotyped for centuries.
She pursued a higher education and studied in the United States and Japan at a time when women were encouraged to marry early and support her family. She never married or had a child. Her autobiography describes one brief romance with a Korean-American businessman while working as a resident in the U.S. When he proposed, she realized she couldn’t live as the wife of one man.
Ironically, however, it was her feminine side that made her outstand.
An interview with Lee was arranged on a Tuesday evening.
She entered her office in a navy pants suit with a bright magenta top with flower prints as though she had just walked out of a university brochure. Her signature short curly hair seemed to have just been blow-dried. It is now almost a cliche to marvel at her wrinkle-less skin. One cannot find in her the androgynous qualities that many female leaders share. She is more of a mother figure.
The key aspect of her leadership has been warmth and as a result, attention to detail. There’s a famous story of how she keeps her stethoscope close in her bosom in order to keep it warm so that her patients don’t feel uncomfortable.
In treating women’s reproductive organs, she was more careful.
Before she examined her patients, she would place her hand in a warm antiseptic solution while reading their medical records. Her eyes through the rimless glasses shine the most when she reminisced her days as a gynecologist.
“It didn’t occur to me that warming up the medical equipment and my hands was something special. It was only natural to me,” she said.
In the late 50s and 60s, Lee says there weren’t medical chairs designed for gynecologists, so she built one on her own. By sitting on it, she learned that women getting on it and spreading their legs in front of a doctor was actually very difficult and even humiliating for her patients. She told her nurses to try it as well.
Lee said that her consideration for others was something innate.
She recalls how her mother who was devoted to her education used to feed the homeless in her village. She would treat them with a full Korean meal with rice, soup and side dishes on a portable dining table instead of doling food out into a bowl.
Doctor’s brain
Lee describes herself as two sides of the same coin, being a woman on the one side and a medical doctor on the other side.
Her leadership style is thus a combination of both the attributes of a woman’s warmth and a doctor’s tactfulness.
“In order to be a good leader, one should have good judgment skills. Doctors have to make swift decisions if their patients are in critical conditions,” Lee said.
“The same applies to management.
I saw the necessity to merge four institutions, and I now believe it was a timely, intelligent judgment.” The merger of Kyungwon University and Gachon Univeristy of Medicine and Science earlier this year was probably the boldest decision Lee has made. Back in 2007, she had already merged Kyungwon College, a two-year polytechnic, into Kyungwon University.
In 2006, Gachon Gil University and Gachon University of Medicine and Science became one institution.
“It is relatively easy to manage colleges. Students get employed right after graduation. Because they do little research, it does not cost much to run them. Sadly, this is a narrow conception, given that talents cannot be unearthed under such conditions, but my calling was to nurture global talents,” Lee says.
The synergy created by the integration of a medical school into a university was particularly appealing to Lee. “It is practically impossible to break into the nation’s top 10 private schools without a medical school. After the merger, Gachon has a medical school, an oriental medical school and a pharmacology department.
The chairwoman faced resistance when she decided to replace Kyungwon with Gachon, her pen name, especially from the school’s alumni who were not amused by the move that had the cherished name of their alma mater fade into oblivion. Lee used her tactful skills to resolve the rancor. She also believes that prioritizing love for the organization is her most outstanding leadership skill, one that is best attributable to her feminine warmth.
Talking about her team members she said“you should treat them like their own families. Regularly remind them that they hold the key to the success of your vision. Without that, you can’t be a leader. That makes you forgive, trust, chide and encourage your colleagues,” Lee said.
Looking back, Lee has no regrets for remaining a spinster because that has not in any held her back from being a mother figure to many.
Behind her on a desk, this reporter noticed two unusual objects ? a glass jar filled with folded-paper cranes and another with small pinwheels. One of them contained 2,194 foldedpaper cranes, given to her by her Gachon’s students serving in the military. Offering paper cranes is a traditional practice used by children to express affection to their loved ones.
This reporter wondered how many leaders in the world would have a jar of folded-paper cranes on their desks. Lee was right. She has her families in different ways.