From Corporate Life to Venture Capitalist
Kelly’s story on leaving a cushy, stable corporate job and the road to eventually founding her own VC firm
By 30, Kelly had already been climbing the corporate ladder for almost a decade. She reached a level of success that would make her 11-year-old self proud, the age she moved from Macau to the United States.
Yet, there was this nagging feeling that she was not fulfilled. Like there was more to life than this. What was missing? Or, rather, what was there that she didn’t want?
“You know the saying “climbing the corporate ladder” but sometimes we don’t realize that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”
Day in, day out, Kelly would dutifully report to work at her latest role at Raytheon doing sustainability management. She found the impact she wanted to make, but she knew the core of the company is not about sustainability, which felt out of alignment with her values.
In conversation with her boss one day, her boss remarked, “You could have my position if you want in a few years, but I don’t think that’s something you’d want”.
And that was true.
After all these years, it dawned on Kelly that she actually did not want her boss’ job. Nor her boss’ boss’ job. Nor the CEO’s, for that matter.
For a while now, Kelly had been going through the motions at work. She was increasingly feeling like the culture was not a good fit anymore. All along, Kelly was optimizing ways to achieve a goal, but didn’t stop to think what kind of success she really was after. She was just looking for ways to get promoted and get ahead faster. External validation played a lot into her choices in goals and career, and she realized maybe that’s not what she wanted anymore. You know the saying “climbing the corporate ladder”, but sometimes we don’t realize that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
What got Kelly to where she was was not unlike many other Asians’ stories of singular-minded focus and immigrant mindset of how they should live their lives. Partially through nature, partially through nurture, they just do as told; they don’t really question the system.
She found out in her high school years her academic strength was in math, so when she went to college, she declared her major in computer engineering. That was what she was good at; she knew that would be the fastest, most optimized way to graduation and success.
After college, Kelly started at Raytheon, then jumped around a bit, taking different positions in different organizations and cities, ultimately making her way back into Raytheon. The second time around, Kelly was very active in extracurricular activities — starting DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives and groups for minorities. She loved that aspect, but the more she gained knowledge about herself, the more she started to question if Raytheon, or even corporate life, was for her.
So she started to plan her escape. She wanted it to be by the time she got married, she would be able to move and quit her job. She was engaged then and planned on being married by the next year.
Kelly realized what was really helping her build wealth was not her salary, but rather, her real estate investments and her 401K. Her paycheck was merely taken in and then handed out as payments to life’s expenses.
“It is you, and not the money, that decide whether you are free or not.”
Kelly knew she didn’t like investing in stock market; she’s not good at following news. But with real estate, she can go deeper and look into trends. All around, she saw what she thought were undervalued properties. It didn’t make sense to her how a property can be less than $100k. She started researching online and learned for about two weeks how others flipped properties and then just started doing it herself.
Looking for more leverage, she then founded a real estate investment company called Glocal Network. She partnered with a lot of others to flip and invest in properties for both long and short term rentals. A year after that business settled into place, Kelly finally felt it was the right time to pull the trigger. She took a leap of faith and quit her corporate job. Glocal Network afforded Kelly the path to financial freedom. She was able to spend more time with family, as she just gave birth to her first son. She relished the control she had over her life, and reached financial milestones she couldn’t have if she stayed with her job.
Glocal Network is still operational and performing well to this day. But after a few years, Kelly came to the conclusion that it wasn’t fully right for her, either.
While doing tax returns one day, looking at assets and net worth, Kelly realized she achieved what she set out to achieve with real estate, but her life didn’t change in ways she thought reaching financial goals would suggest. Put another way, she didn’t feel any freer than when she was back in corporate. That’s when she grasped that freedom is all in the mind. It is you, and not the money, that decide whether you are free or not.
This thought was further solidified in the form of a bad closing.
She and her family were on vacation at the time, and the sheer amount of stress that came from that transaction made her lose sleep and affected her ability to enjoy the present moment, the antithesis to being free. She knew she could not do this long term.
“You have to listen to your own body and feelings; there’s no other way around it.”
Slowly, Kelly let go on the definition of financial freedom equating to money, and explored ways to use money to help her take on projects that really fulfilled her being.
She was in contact with her old high school math teacher, who encouraged her to come teach the same competitive math program that she excelled in almost a decade ago. She decided to give it a try, and moved back to Miami, coming full circle back to where her journey in the States began. This was one of the first decisions Kelly made under total freedom; she chose to do it because she wanted to, and not because of money. To her, that’s the true sense of financial freedom.
Coaching math led her to learn about coaching and mindset. Along with other projects she was working on, she soon realized that although she enjoyed teaching math, she more enjoyed the intersection of coaching and business. Teaching is a passion for Kelly, but teaching high-level math was more esoteric than what she preferred; she wanted to impart skills and methods that allow people to apply them for everyday use.
And that is how and why Finclusive Ventures, a venture capital firm, was founded, where Kelly focuses her energy today. In the VC world, she finds that she is connecting the dots with investing and coaching. Not only that, she gets to be a solution of the DEI issues through Finclusive. It’s a problem she didn’t know existed before. Only 2.5% of VC funding go to women and about the same for Black and Latinx founders. With Finclusive, she is combining everything she’s done before.
Kelly believes entrepreneurship is the highest form of creativity in business, and it is also where she seems to find the highest calling of herself, if not forever, then at least for now.
It has been 20 years since Kelly has left high school, where she was first introduced to computer engineering, and 7 years since she’s left her corporate role at Raytheon.
Her journey taught her that no one is here to save you. You have to listen to your own body and feelings; there’s no other way around it. The question isn’t what should you be doing; the question is what do you want to do?
Kelly and her family are now looking to start a new chapter of their lives by immigrating to Taiwan. She feels grateful for the trajectory of her life thus far, and wants to pass that along to her sons by giving them a worldly education as possible, letting them know there’s more to life than just school, work, and linearity.
It would be interesting to see how this turning point plays out in the next decade of their lives.
Coaching and blog: Delivering Happiness — Kelly Lei
VC funding: Finclusive
Clubhouse, Twitter, Instagram: @kellyclei
