Film Dope
Shirley Young
Saturday, 25th May 1935 - Saturday, 26th December 2020
China
| Chinese-American businesswoman who broke barriers in the corporate world before starting a second career as a cultural diplomat, using classical music to bridge the ever-widening divisions between China and the US. Young rose to prominence as an executive with Grey Advertising, where she began in 1959, standing out as one of the few women and one of the few Asian-Americans at the firm, then a power in its field. With a degree in economics from Wellesley, she challenged the conventional wisdom that the best marketing was driven by gut instincts. Instead she pushed her firm to invest in quantitative market research, a standard practice today but one that was pioneering in the ‘60s. She died of breast cancer on December 26, 2020. |