A Chinese citizen-turned-American corporate executive told a crowd of about 200 how she never stopped telling the story of her fellow countrymen Thursday night.
Entrepreneur Ping Fu co-founded Geomagic, a 3-D printing and imaging software development company, in 1997, and eight years later she was named Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
The event was held in the Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Koury Auditorium as a part of both the Eve Marie Carson Lecture Series and the Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture Series.
Fu described the early part of her life spent in China during the country’s cultural revolution. She said she was imprisoned for writing and exposing the issue of infanticide.
“I was always the girl whose light never turned off,” Fu said. “They said I embarrassed the country by writing what I saw.”
“We picked Fu because she is a great example of a woman in a field that doesn’t have many women,” said Tita Pena, co-chairwoman of Speakers at Carolina.
“Entrepreneurship is so relevant today, especially at UNC, so we thought that she would resonate with women as well as many different people across many different majors,” Pena said.
Shortly after Fu was released from prison, she was accepted to the University of New Mexico and moved to the United States.
“Sometimes you may think that life circumstances and doors are all closed on you,” Fu said. “But what I learned is that behind every closed door is a wide-open space — if you’re there to open it.”
