History of The Kohs (finally!)

This post is about the other half of your heritage, The Koh Family (FINALLY – your dad has been bugging me to finish this for weeks now).

Your grandparents, Henry and Shin Koh, were born in Korea. Your grandparents met in Seoul during college. Your grandpa studied undergraduate law at Yonsei University; your grandma studied pharmacology at an all-girls university, Ewha, which was located near Yonsei. Your grandfather was very popular and active in university life – Grandpa Henry was Class President and, apparently, was also quite a ladies’ man until he met your grandma. Henry immediately fell for Shin, and they started to date – in fact, on one of their first dates, your grandpa introduced her to his parents without giving her any advance notice. Your grandma was very upset but eventually she forgave him.

Here is a photo of your grandparents when they came to visit us in Seattle before you were born.

After your grandpa finished his two years of military service in Korea and finished college, they got married in 1966. (They were lucky they did not have an arranged marriage!) Shortly after getting married, they decided to move to America so that your grandpa could study Accounting at USC. Your grandpa arrived in Los Angeles on a student visa with only a few dollars in his pockets; he barely could speak English but somehow he managed to get by. After several months, he found another family (The Hatleys) to sponsor your grandmother to move to the States to be with him.

Your grandparents struggled during those first few years in Los Angeles – imagine living in a new country without knowing the language, without having any family or close friends nearby, and without very much money. While your grandfather went to school, your grandmother worked in various medical labs – using her phamacology degree, they applied for U.S citizenship. A few years later, your grandmother got a great job working at Smith Kline BioScience – Grandma Shin worked there for over 15 years! For the most part, your grandfather was self-employed – you should ask him about some of the odd jobs he did while at USC (especially about one summer job when he worked at a broom factory). After USC, Grandpa Henry spent most of his time doing real estate, but he also owned a hamburger stand, liquor stores and supermarkets.

Here is a photo of your grandparents right after you were born - they flew up to Seattle a week before your due date and were supposed to stay with us for three weeks. Unfortunately, your great-grandmother passed away on the same day you were born so your grandparents had to fly back to LA in order to prepare for her funeral. We didn't know until a few days after your were born though because your grandmother didn't want to upset us.

After two years of living in the U.S., your grandparents started a family. On September 6, 1969, they had their first child, your uncle Chester. Two years later, on May 9, 1971, I was born. We lived in Los Angeles in a suburb of the San Fernando Valley called Sherman Oaks – our house was near a mall called the Galleria which was featured in a movie called “Valley Girl.” (You will probably laugh when you see what the Valley Girls were wearing during the 1980s.)

I graduated from a prep school called Westlake School for Girls (now it is coed and called Harvard-Westlake School) and went to college at UC Berkeley – your dad and I went to rival universities in the Bay Area. I started out as an Architecture major at Cal, but after my first year in studio I decided to switch my major and applied to the undergraduate business school program. I majored in Finance and Real Estate and had a minor in City Planning. I also spent the Spring semester of my junior year studying abroad at the University of Madrid and backpacked all over Europe.

Your uncle Chester also went to UC Berkeley and studied pre-med (Mechanical Engineering). He went to medical school at Tufts University in Boston and completed his Urology residency at USC. After finishing his six year residency, he completed a three year pediatric fellowship at Children’s Hospital in Boston. He is married to your aunt Carrie and they have two kids (your cousins), Sara and Scott.

Here is a photo of your cousins Sara and Scott when I visited them in Los Angeles. We are at a park near Irvine where their parents (your grandparents live).

After graduating from college, I moved to the East Coast to work for GE Capital. After a year living in Connecticut and North Carolina, I decided to change jobs and joined some of my college friends who took jobs in investment banking. I joined Lehman Brothers as an Analyst in the Industrial Group – I spent the first two years in the New York office working long hours (80-100 hours per week) and then spent my third year in Hong Kong working in Debt Capital Markets. I spent most of my time working on deals in Indonesia and Singapore. Though it was exciting to work abroad in the Hong Kong office and to travel around Asia, it was a tough year because I had a terrible boss.

After Hong Kong, I left Lehman to start business school at Columbia in New York City. It was a fun two years going back to school and hanging out in the city. For my summer internship, I worked for an investment bank in San Francisco where the banking lifestyle was much more manageable. I had planned to move to San Francisco after finishing business school but I ended up continuing to work for an internet startup called The Knot after my internship ended. It was an exciting time to work for The Knot – I was hired to manage the initial public offering of The Knot and to work on M&A deals. Within the first year, we acquired 3 small companies and went public in December 1999!

After two and a half years at The Knot, I left New York and finally moved back to the West Coast. I joined the Corporate Development & Strategy Group at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. About six months after I started, I met your dad while working on an Executive presentation – after the project ended in November, we started to date. . . more about our relationship in the next blog since it is our one-year wedding anniversary today!

Here is a photo around when your dad and I first started going out. We went hiking in an area east of Seattle where there are a lot of hiking trails. There is a waterfall behind us. We are standing on a bridge.