Shirley Young (May 25, 1935December 26, 2020) () was an American businesswoman. She was an executive at
Grey Advertising and later at
General Motors
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
(GM). She was also a cultural ambassador between the United States and China.
Biography
Young was born in
Shanghai. She was the daughter of Clarence Young, a Chinese diplomat, and
Juliana Young Koo, who was the long-term mistress for the diplomat and politician
V.K. Wellington Koo
Koo Vi Kyuin (; January 29, 1888 – November 14, 1985), better known as V. K. Wellington Koo, was a statesman of the Republic of China. He was one of Republic of China's representatives at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
Wellington Koo ...
, while her father was still living.
Young received a BA in economics,
Phi Beta Kappa, from
Wellesley College
Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...
in 1955 and attended graduate school at
New York University from 1956 to 1957.
Career
She started at Grey Advertising in 1959 where she led an internal
market research division until 1988; she was among the only women and Asian-American employees at the firm at the time. In 1963, when Young was pregnant with her first child, she forced Grey to rethink their maternity leave policies as she didn't leave the company or take the severance package they offered.
She was the president of Grey Strategic Marketing, a research subsidiary of Grey as of 1983. In 1988 she was hired by General Motors.
GM had been a client of Young's at Grey Advertising since at least 1985.
At GM, Young led an initiative to help the firm regain
market share
Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those units would have a ...
, as its reputation was suffering in the early 1990s.
Young left GM in 2000 to found her own consulting firm, Shirley Young Associates, which advised US companies interested in Chinese opportunities.
Young helped to found the
Committee of 100 and served as a chair of the organization, and used classical music to bridge divides between the United States and China.
Personal
Young was married to George Hsieh. They had three sons, David, William and Douglas. They divorced and Young married Norman Krandall. That marriage also ended in divorce.
Publications
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References
Further reading
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Shirley
1935 births
2020 deaths
20th-century American businesswomen
20th-century American businesspeople
American advertising executives
General Motors executives
Wellesley College alumni
21st-century American women