A Heart for Freedom (36 page)

After I quit my job and took on substantial student loans, my dad finally came out of China. His second marriage had ended, so he had closed down our home and converted his life savings into US currency—two thousand dollars.

A few days after my dad arrived, I started at Harvard Business School and my brother-in-law started at Yale. My sister had passed her medical licensing exam and had a job at Brown University, and my brother was still working at Panda Express and working on his English.

My dad did some volunteer work here and there at places in Chinatown. At one point, he cleaned toilets in a nursing home. That was a hard transition. When I came home one weekend to be with him, he looked depressed.

“I’m thinking of going back to China,” he said. “I did not know how much I would miss it. Before I came, I still had patients chasing after me, ‘Please finish one more surgery for us. Please finish one more surgery.’ Here, I am nobody; I’ve become like your grandma. It was fine for her, an old lady from the countryside without much education, but not for me. I want to go home.”

This announcement was like a clap of thunder. After I’d tried for years to get my dad out of China, a week later he wanted to go back. I could bring my family to America, but I couldn’t provide a sense of identity and accomplishment or build the support network they needed. If I lost my dad back to a country I could no longer visit, I would feel defeated again by China. It was hard for me to concentrate on school.

A week later I saw my dad again.

“I gave it some thought,” he said, “and I’ve decided not to go back just yet. For you and my other children, I will give it a good try to adjust to my life here.”

A smile came back to my life.

* * *

At the end of my first year at Harvard, I went to New York to start a summer internship at one of the top investment banks. It was a competitive situation, and they worked us hard. But I thrived on the pace and the challenge. Every morning as I walked downtown, I felt I was part of a big life force. I thought if I could master the skills of an investment banker, I could regain control of my life.

Before I left for New York, I had visited the consulting firm to say good-bye to a few friends. We’d been taught never to burn bridges. I saw Bob Maginn and told him about my summer plans.

“I’m going to New York this week,” he said. “I’d like to have lunch together.”

“That sounds good,” I responded politely, not really expecting he would call. But he did. On a Sunday afternoon he met me in Manhattan, and we took a walk through Central Park.

As we strolled along the lakefront, he told me bluntly, “I’ve been attracted to you ever since we met, but I couldn’t ask you out—both because I’m a married man and because we worked at the same place. Now I’m free from both situations. My wife and I are officially separated, and you’ve left the firm. I would like you to give me a chance to get to you know better.”

I was surprised by his directness and by his interest in me. The culture at the consulting company was strictly hierarchical. We were there to work, not to form personal relationships. I was comfortable in that system because I had grown up in the hierarchy of the Chinese military. I had kept a professional distance from everyone in the firm, including Bob Maginn, who was two rungs above me on the ladder. I didn’t know him personally, nor had I ever thought about getting to know him.

I couldn’t break down the barriers between us on the spot. Besides, after my experiences with Feng, I had not been able to fully trust men. I kept my heart under lock and key. I didn’t think I would ever find someone who could truly love me—the real me, with all my imperfections, not the media Chai Ling or an idealized notion of who I am.

Still, there seemed to be no harm in getting to know Bob. As an experienced consultant, he is a master of analysis, even when it comes to romance. “Let’s look at the facts,” he said. “We come from two cultures, yet we both went to the same kind of school. I think we’re compatible intellectually. I sense you have a big and tender heart, even though it’s sometimes hard for me to read. But one thing concerns me: Do you believe in God? Because faith is important to me.”

I answered honestly, “I don’t know much about God. But I’m willing to learn.”

“That’s good enough for now,” Bob said. “We’ll both learn.”

* * *

Just as my personal life began to move in the right direction, my career was struck another devastating blow. At the end of the summer, I was not given an offer. Though it was subtly disguised, it was “the China problem” all over again. Once again, my heart was broken. I loved New York City and the job. I cried all the way back to Boston.

Though the setback in New York made it more difficult to focus on my second year at Harvard Business School, I continued to work and apply for investment banking jobs. I received an offer from another bank in New York. Though the polished and professional senior vice president who made the offer assured me she really liked me and what I stood for, I had been hurt so often by opportunities that hadn’t panned out that I wasn’t sure whether she would stand by me if she found out that hiring me might negatively affect the bank’s China business. I was too afraid to tell her what had happened the past two times.

In the back of my mind, I had always had the idea to start my own company. Now I thought if I started my own business, I would never have to worry about someone deciding not to hire me because of my past. I took a class to learn how to write a business plan, and I soon discovered I loved it. When I was researching my plan, my heart leaped with joy, and I had so much energy. I could stay up all night researching and writing. But whenever I thought about the banking job, my stomach began to ache.

* * *

On my birthday in 1998, Bob came to my dorm after I finished class and took me on a tour of Boston. At each stop, he left signs and clues for me to follow—from the Freedom Trail, to Paul Revere’s house, to sitting in the pews of the historic Old North Church, and eventually to Bob’s new home in Harvard Square. There he held up a ring box, knelt in front of me, and said, “Ling, will you marry me?”

“Do I need to say yes now?” I asked.

A look of disappointment came across his face. “That’s usually how it works,” he said. “But you can wait if you want.”

“Oh—
yes
. I meant to say
yes
.” I was overwhelmed by his love and commitment, but I had my fears. Would marriage work this time? Compared to the last time, when I had worked so hard to earn Feng’s love only to be left heartbroken, this seemed so easy, undeserved, and unconditional.
Will he wake up tomorrow morning and regret it? Will he still love me once he gets to know the real me? Will I fail again?

Despite my fears and self-doubt, I reached out my hand to Bob, and he reached out his hand to me. Two people with issues and regrets from the past made a lifetime commitment to each other and to our ancestors and traditions. Our word became our bond. Out of that bond would come a company, three beautiful little girls, and a home full of love and laughter. As we journeyed together, we would learn something new about each other every day, and every day our love and respect for each other would grow stronger.

* * *

At the time we got engaged, Bob was running for state treasurer of Massachusetts. He asked me to postpone my move to New York so I could stay in Boston until after the election. The bank graciously allowed me to delay my starting date for a year and keep my signing bonus. While I was waiting, I decided to try my start-up. If it didn’t work out, I would join the bank in New York the next year.

I had no experience in starting a business, just as I’d had no experience in leading a protest movement, escaping from China, or surviving in a new country. Little did I know, my start-up Internet business would soon be swept into another revolution—a technological revolution that would transform how we interact across our entire society.

My idea was to build a turnkey intranet portal and learning management system for universities based on an integrated calendar that pulled together course information, lecture schedules, homework assignments, campus news and entertainment, and e-mail—all the must-have information for students, which they could personalize and access from anywhere on campus: the dorms, library, or student union. Unlike most university websites, which tended to serve the interests of the admissions department and alumni groups, my system would create a central hub for students and a pathway for the development of online teaching and learning tools—opening the experience of an elite school, such as Harvard, to a broader audience.

One of the more popular features of the Harvard system was a module like today’s Facebook, which included a student’s picture, profile, interests, etc. Students could use this feature to find the name of someone they’d seen on campus. The professors tended to use it to identify cold-call targets for their next day’s classes.

To make the business work, we wanted to use this must-have content to attract users in the coveted eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old demographic, which accounted for eleven billion dollars in marketing spending each year. If we could direct a small portion of those marketing dollars to sites the students used, it would be a win-win situation: The school and students would have the best learning system, and advertisers could cost-effectively reach this young, affluent demographic. It was an exciting possibility.

My start-up year, 1998, was the front edge of the dot-com boom. Things that could only be imagined in the past were becoming reality as the Internet expanded at lightning speed. The revolution was filled with excitement and creative energy—and everything seemed possible.

With the dot-com boom in full swing, every imaginable name was appended with
.com
. Our first choice, CollegeNet.com, was already in use. Our lawyers suggested we come up with a name that was original and unique and could be trademarked.

Bob and I went skiing one weekend, and as we sat in the lodge in the afternoon, we talked about what this unique name could be. I said that every mother in China hopes her child will grow up in a
. Bob heard what I said and wrote the word
jenza
on a slip of paper.

“Is that what you said?” he asked.

“Close enough.”

Then, because we were dealing with higher education, we added the Chinese word for “class of”—
bar
—and it became Jenzabar. We informally tested the name with some people at the ski area and later with friends and investors. It was accepted positively, evoking images of warmth, such as the sun rising over the island of Zanzibar! That was good enough for a girl from the City of Sunshine. The lawyers gave us a big thumbs-up, as this name was easily trademarked and protected so no one could appropriate it. So Jenzabar, our first baby, was born.

At first it was just me working day and night in the loft at Bob’s house, with my faithful dog, Tara, under my desk. Then we added more people and moved into the basement. When we hired our nineteenth employee, we outgrew the basement and moved into a space in the back of a church. I interviewed fifteen software development firms before finding one that would code the first prototype of the system within my small budget. Then I got a few colleges to try the prototype.

It’s hard to capture the months of hard work, running a seven-by-sixteen shop in Bob’s home with two shifts coming and going—some working full-time and others coming after hours from their day jobs. As the founder, my job description was—
everything
. One minute I was CFO, speaking to potential investors; the next minute, I was administrative assistant, running to Kinko’s for business cards and brochures. Someone told me they’d never seen anyone work quite so hard, but I had been working hard my entire life. At Tiananmen Square, we had worked around the clock without much food or sleep. The start-up came close to that level of intensity.

After I used up all my savings, part of my signing bonus, and charged $50,000 of equipment on Bob’s credit card, I needed to raise money to sustain our momentum. I talked to Bob about formally investing in the company, but he wisely replied, “I’m fully supportive of what you’re doing, but it’s not good for me to be your sole investor. If you can find two other people, I will join in.”

I accepted Bob’s challenge, and through some fortunate breaks I met the CEO of Reebok, Paul Fireman, and Steve Perlman, the founder of WebTV, and they became the first round of angel investors, in addition to Bob.

By 1999, investment bankers were pursuing Jenzabar to go public. Following a two-hour meeting in November about our business strategy with then-Microsoft president Steve Ballmer, we decided to acquire several enterprise software companies that had applications for use on college campuses. Bob stayed up many late nights working through the details of the buyouts. We called these businesses “the pipe” because they connected students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others to the colleges and universities through software systems for admissions, registration, grading, fund-raising, and billing. We had a banker lined up for the initial public offering, and our initial valuation was one billion dollars, but the bank wanted evidence that our business strategy would work and that we were on a good pathway for high growth.