Navigating Directions at East West Bank

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Navigating Directions at East West Bank
Banking & Finance Quarterly: Julia Gouw

Dominic Ng has served as chief executive of East West Bank for the past 20 years. But the next two top officers at the Pasadena institution are both women, making East West one of the only banks in the L.A. area with predominantly female senior management.

Julia Gouw is the bank’s president and chief operating officer, and also serves on the board. Irene Oh is chief financial officer and executive vice president.

“What differentiates East West is the culture. You make it based upon your abilities and not your gender,” said Gouw, who has been with the bank since 1989. “When the company allows people to excel regardless of gender it allows more women to become top executives compared to some other banks.”

Between the two of them, Gouw and Oh oversee the bank’s finances, operations, credit and risk management, and other areas.

They have presided over a prosperous period for the bank. In the past five years, East West’s assets have doubled to just under $22 billion, making it Los Angeles County’s second largest bank and the nation’s largest Chinese-American bank. East West also recovered from the market downturn to earn a $245 million profit last year, easily its best year ever.

The bank has long been welcoming to women. Besides the executives, the board features Iris Chan, former head of commercial banking for Wells Fargo & Co. and a two-time honoree on U.S. Banker magazine’s list of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking.

Both Gouw and Oh said they were drawn to the banking industry in general and East West in particular because of the apparent opportunities available for women.

Oh, who was born in Toronto, was not initially sure what industry she wanted to go into, though. Math had always come fairly easily to her, but she wasn’t particularly interested in it and instead studied art as an undergraduate before landing a job as a graphic designer.

But the gender dynamics of the industry concerned her.

“There were not a lot of women in that industry, especially over the age of 40,” she said. “So I made the decision at that point that I would like to try something else.”

She went back to school to learn accounting and later went to work as an auditor at Deloitte & Touche before joining East West in 2005.

Gouw, too, faced pressure as a woman in an unfriendly industry.

An Indonesian immigrant, she studied accounting at the University of Illinois and went to work for Texaco in the 1980s. She quickly got a wakeup call, though, from a mentor she worked with at the company.

“He actually told me, ‘Had you been a Caucasian male, you would go very far in corporate America,’” Gouw remembered. “It was well intended, but that was the situation 30 years ago.”

Gouw also went into auditing, working for KPMG before jumping in 1989 to East West, which was one of her clients at the accounting firm.

“At the time, banking seemed to attract women,” said Gouw, who estimated that today more than half of bank employees industrywide are women, though that trend still has not made it to the executive ranks at many institutions.

Do Gouw and Oh hope to move up one day?

Oh said she had never really considered becoming a chief executive.

Gouw said it is not her ultimate goal and she already has her “dream job.” But she’s open to the idea.

“If at some time the opportunity comes about,” she said, “I would consider the opportunity.”

JULIA GOUW, 52 (left)

President and Chief

Operating Officer

East West Bank, Pasadena

RESIDENCE: Pasadena

EDUCATION: B.S., accounting, University of Illinois

YEARS IN INDUSTRY: 23

YEARS IN POSITION: 3

IRENE OH, 34 (right)

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

East West Bank, Pasadena

RESIDENCE: Silver Lake

EDUCATION: B.A., art, California State University, Los Angeles; master’s, accounting, USC

YEARS IN INDUSTRY: 7

YEARS IN POSITION: 2

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