Trading a career on Wall Street for acupuncture needles and Chinese herbs is a move few would have expected from the daughter of one of Hong Kong’s best-known surgeons – least of all Winnie Chan Wang herself.
For Wang, who grew up in Hong Kong, medicine centred on operating theatres, scalpels and science. Her father, Dr Patrick Chan Ki-wing, now in his early 80s, is still practising as an honorary consultant and specialist in general surgery at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital.
“I grew up on antibiotics, vaccines and Western medicine,” Wang says. “I have a really positive relationship with it. If my [TCM] patients are nervous about surgery, I always tell them, ‘Trust your doctor.’”
Wang left Hong Kong at the age of 15 for boarding school in the US at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, before earning degrees – first in electrical engineering and computer science, and then in business management – at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She got her third degree – a master’s in marketing – at New York University.
She worked in fixed income and credit derivatives at Goldman Sachs in New York and eventually returned to school once again – this time to study traditional Chinese medicine. She is also completing a doctorate in acupuncture and herbal medicine.