How a Stint in the Peace Corps Planted the Seeds for a Career in Leadership Education

ENTRY LEVEL

J.D. Hokoyama

Age: 56

First job: Peace Corps Volunteer, Gore, Ethiopia

Current job: President and chief executive officer of Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Los Angeles

I went to school at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I studied English, and my plan was to be an English teacher. One day, a Peace Corps recruiter was on campus, and I helped him to set up his booth in the student union. This gave me an opportunity to ask questions without a lot of other people around. You didn’t want to sound like you were afraid, in front of other people, even though they probably wanted to know the answers to these questions, too: What’s it really like? Do you miss your parents? This was in 1967 — remember, there were no computers, no cell phones.

It sounded intriguing to me. I’ve always been a person who liked to try new things and take new chances. It was the first time that I had the opportunity to do something that I really wanted to do. When you’re going to school, you sort of get programmed by your family, and the Peace Corps was the opportunity to do something different. I had no skills, but the Peace Corps wasn’t about having skills. I ended up teaching English as a second language.

Originally, I was supposed to go to Nigeria, but there was a war in that country and there started to be a lot of anti-American feeling. It was too dangerous, and so we got canceled at the airport. Some of us went instead to Sierra Leone, some to the Virgin Islands, some to British Honduras, some to Liberia, but I wanted to go to East Africa. I wanted to see the sun rise and set on the Serengeti Plain — and over the two years, I would get to see it.

I went to Ethiopia, to Gore, in Illubabor province. Once I got over there, I found out that you had to come to terms with why you were there. For me, I came to the realization that we were giving hope to people, and giving hope to people under any circumstances is one of the most powerful things that you can give somebody, because you never know what they can do with that hope. When you give people training, you are giving them hope. That, to me, was a powerful lesson.

I also learned that movements always start with just a few people — that’s how Gandhi started, that’s how Jesus started, that’s how Lenin started, for crying out loud. That’s how the United States started, too, with just a few people. That was a very important lesson for me to learn, and it has carried through for me in my work here at Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics. Because we’re doing leadership training, we feel very strongly about the power of the individual. Before individuals can learn, they have to feel like they can learn.

The other lesson I learned was to have a global vision. You don’t get that when you live in the United States, you get the opposite. When you live in one of the most powerful nations in the world, you think that other people revolve around you, you don’t revolve around them. We think that we have all the answers, we’re the best. You go over to another country and you find out that you know very little.

I thought that I was very sophisticated, but I found that I knew very little about how the Ethiopians lived, and how they thought, but they knew so much about our country. It forced me to see the world in a different way, that there are different viewpoints, different ways of looking at the same issue. And in today’s world, isn’t that what diversity is all about — accepting people for what they are, and accepting that their points of view are as valid as yours, and figuring out a way for us to get along?

When I’m doing leadership training, I often use my experience in the Peace Corps as an example. For instance, many people think you have to give up your values to be successful. They have a hard time understanding that you can keep your values but develop new skills, that even if I am a shy person, I can learn to be loud and aggressive when it’s necessary. When I went to Ethiopia, I had to learn the operating values of that society. But this didn’t mean that I had to give up my identity as an American.

In the Peace Corps, I also found out that the bottom line is that people are all the same around the world: People want to be happy, provide for their family, they don’t want to be sick. You get down to the basic things, no matter where you are, who you are, what country you live in.

I was there for two years, and when I came back, I pursued my career goals of teaching. I taught for a number of years, and then I got a little burnt out from teaching. When I needed a break, going into the community seemed natural to me after my experience in the Peace Corps. Going into the corporate world just didn’t seem right to me. So I turned again to nonprofit work, taking a job with Japanese American Citizens League, in San Francisco, eventually becoming acting national director. I, along with other individuals, started Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics in 1982, and took over the presidency of the organization in 1988.

When you change careers, it’s pretty scary, but that wasn’t a problem for me. One of the other greatest lessons I learned in the Peace Corps was adaptability and flexibility, not just to survive but thrive in a different situation. As soon as I landed in Ethiopia, I had to make all kinds of little decisions totally on my own. Here at home, it would be so easy: If I was going to have to rent a place, I could have just called up my folks and asked for advice. Over there, I learned that you have to just make decisions, and go with your gut feelings. So I’d think, if I could do it in the rain forest, then here in L.A.? That’s a piece of cake.

How did your first job in the nonprofit world shape your current career? Tell us about it at entrylevel@philanthropy.com.