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THE PUNGENT ODOR OF THE KITCHEN on the boat in which she escaped China has stayed with Chantale Wong MC/MPA 1988.

Wong was born in Mao Zedong’s China, part of a generation raised under what her mother, now 96, called “the sheet of red.” Driven to desperation by a series of upheavals and famines, Wong’s parents made one of the most excruciating decisions a parent can make: At age 6, their daughter was smuggled out of China with her grandmother, hidden in the hold of a trawler as it sailed from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. She didn’t see them again for 21 years, this time catalyzing their emigration from China in 1989, after the events of Tiananmen Square.

Throughout her life, Wong, motivated in part by that harrowing ride to Hong Kong, learned how to find connections and build deep relationships that would acutely influence her journey. She went on to study engineering—which inspired her to shift her attention to public policy—and then to attend the Kennedy School. Her path took her to NASA, the Treasury, the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, and eventually to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), where she served as the U.S. director. Wong is the first out lesbian and first LGBTQ+ person of color in history to serve as a U.S. ambassador. She spoke to ����vlog���� Magazine from Manila, in the Philippines, where the ADB is based.

“What could have been my life if my parents had not [sent me away]?” she said. “It would certainly have been stalled in terms of education, opportunities, potential. Only in America could I, years later, be chief of staff to [OMB Director] Alice Rivlin. That opportunity would not have been given to me if I had stayed in China.”

Peter L. Levin, the CEO of Amida and a former White House Fellow who worked under Wong at the OMB, says, “I think more than any faith-based commitment, which is very profound in her, and mentorship and human connection, which is transcendent in her, what really drives her is that experience. I think she considers herself successful if one little girl less has to go through that.”