‘Two Suitcases, a Humble Heart, and a Strong Will’
To the Top Ping He on a Sydney Harbour Bridge climb.
T
he director of global sourcing and partner relations for Experient — and the first-ever recipient of the Global Meetings Executive of the Year award from PCMA and
IMEX — on her long journey from Mao’s Cultural Revolution to the cutting edge of international business events.
I was born in Shanghai, China. My mother was a judge. When I was born, my parents named me Ping, which means “justice” and “fairness” in Chinese. My parents were busy, so I was brought up mainly by my paternal grandma, whom I consider the most important role model in my life. She was the ultimate embodiment of grace, courage, decency, generosity, and
32 PCMA CONVENE AUGUST 2012
beauty, and taught me a lot of good values and helped develop my high self-esteem.
I believed at a very young age that I came to this world for a purpose. The world fascinated me, and I knew my future would have something to do with this world, even though I had no idea how big it was. Like the rest of the
Great Cultural Revolution generation during the Mao era, I was sent down to the countryside after high school to get my “bourgeois outlook” changed by the peasants. At night I taught myself Eng- lish inside the tent of my little bunk bed, using a flashlight. Three years later the political regime and landscape changed. Under the reformer Deng Xiaoping, China opened her doors for the first time to the West and colleges started to enroll students. I passed the rigorous college entrance exams, and chose Eng- lish as my major.
During the late 1980s, I took a career detour and ending up joining the very first foreign-owned and -operated hotel in China — the Shanghai Hilton Inter- national, where I worked as a training