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In 2015, I spent a year at home in Los Angeles, working for my parents’ company in construction management. My parents, who immigrated from South Korea in the early 1980s, have been active members of the Korean American community throughout my life. When I started working in the office at KOAM Construction, my dad taught me basic business operations, including how to fill out a balance sheet and how to estimate materials for project bids. We had conversations where he wanted me to understand not only how the business was run but why.
I remember the thrill of a big project win and the anxiety of litigation battles, but most importantly, I saw how my dad always had a sense of connection and service to his community. It’s an influence that I carry with me today as a business journalist. Seeing the work it took for my parents to run a successful company gave me a reason to be a writer. After that year, I returned to journalism with an interest in reporting on how industries were transforming.
As millennials, innovation in the workplace often feels integral. But I became curious about what lessons other young people have learned from working for their immigrant parents. Here are three such stories:
It taught me the value of hard work—and passion
Jacqueline Horani, 30, launched her legal consulting company, Horani Law, PLCC, in March of last year. Based in Nebraska and New York, Horani’s goal is to offer affordable legal advice to small businesses and nonprofits by offering her services on a sliding scale. Horani says that growing up in her parents’ businesses made her think about how to help entrepreneurs create sustainable communities.
Her mother, born in Germany, and her father, born in Jordan, met at the American University of Beirut. They immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s where her father completed his PhD in animal nutrition. By the time Horani was born, her family had settled in Nebraska, where her mother eventually opened an antique shop. By the time Horani was eight, she was helping run the register. When Horani was 10, her father opened his own restaurant and gourmet grocery store stocked with Middle Eastern foods, and she bused tables and restocked shelves.
Horani says that having these sorts of responsibilities at a young age gave her insights into the hard work and passion that goes into running a small business. “There is a lot of stress in creating everything yourself,” Horani says. “When I went to law school, a lot of my passions kept coming back. [I asked myself] ‘How do I give myself the ability to do something I love but also feed back into this community of family-owned businesses?’”
It taught me the value of compromise
Rudy Patel, 28, works with his father and younger brother in their family-owned company, beyondGREEN. Based in California, they developed their first product in 2016—a biodegradable bag for pet waste called bioDOGradable.
Patel was born in India, and his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was 7. His father had a master’s degree in chemical engineering and worked in plastics manufacturing. Patel received his bachelor’s degree in finance, and took a job at a healthcare analytics company while living at home. In 2016, his father asked him about what kind of product they could launch from a plastics-substitute material he invented and planned to patent. Patel remembered a job he had in high school at a pet store, and they came up with pet waste bags.
Now, the company is growing to create a variety of biodegradable plastic-substitute products, including trash liners, grocery bags, injection moldings, and even medical products. Patel says there are cultural and generational differences in working with his dad but that they also have provided learning opportunities. “It’s old-school versus new-school,” Patel says.
His dad has to keep an open mind about the fun, startup culture that Patel and his brother want to create for their team, he says. Patel helped decorate the office, and in the lounge, he put in a TV with Amazon Prime and an Xbox. For Patel, working with his dad means learning how to adjust to a traditional 8-to-5 workday and to have more flexibility with the issues that arise in manufacturing. “If you’re going to work with your parents who come from a different culture, both parties have to meet in middle,” he says.
It helps me maintain perspective
Vahe Kuzoyan, 36, cofounded ServiceTitan, a California-based software management platform for the home services industry, in 2012. Kuzoyan had immigrated from Armenia with his family when he was 6 years old. After graduating from college, Kuzoyan partnered with Ara Mahdessian, whom he had met on a ski trip through the Armenian Students’ Association. They used their backgrounds in computer science to build software that helps tradesmen like their fathers manage their small businesses.
In running the company’s day-to-day operations, Kuzoyan remains motivated by his parents’ story of perseverance. “Like most immigrants, the goal was to come to America and put ourselves in a position where we could have a better future,” Kuzoyan says.
His father had a background in music, and in the U.S. worked numerous odd jobs before he found a job as a plumber. He eventually bought the plumbing business from the previous owner. As a high school student, Kuzoyan tried to help his dad on plumbing jobs but felt that he had no mechanical aptitude. His dad told him to work in the office, where Kuzoyan discovered his interest in computers.
When business challenges arise at ServiceTitan, Kuzoyan says he’s able to manage stress and maintain perspective by remembering his parents’ story. “I saw my parents give up everything and take their kids to a place where they had no idea what was going to happen. If they were able to make it through, [I can say to the company] ‘it’s all right guys, we’re going to be fine.’”
When Gina-Marie Madow started working for a surrogacy and egg donation agency, she felt the pull to donate her own eggs. While she considered the decision, Madow’s dad posed a question: Was it really about the money? “The financial component was there, of course, but it wasn’t my primary motivator in any way,” Madow says. “When I told my dad about the compensation, he said, ‘Okay, what if I just gave you that amount of money right now—just handed over a check to you so you wouldn’t do it? What would you say?’ And my response was ‘Dad, I’m not doing it for the money.’”
For Madow, becoming a donor was more about helping the families she worked with day in and day out. But the hefty compensation does drive many women who donate their eggs, most of whom are in their twenties and looking for a way to make money fast. The act of egg donation is frequently advertised as an altruistic act that can also earn you a few thousand dollars. Notably excluded from those ads are the potential risks or side effects of an invasive medical procedure. Egg donors fetch a high price because they have to take injectable hormones that stimulate egg growth, thicken the uterine lining, and trigger ovulation. The egg retrieval itself is a transvaginal procedure during which donors are sedated.
That helps explain why for one round of donation, egg donors can earn anywhere from $3,000 and $10,000. For donors that are rarer to come by, such as Asian or Jewish women, the rate can be even higher. “I don’t think you can dangle thousands of dollars in front of somebody and then say that’s not, at least in part, a motivation or factor,” Madow says. For some, egg donation can be a means to fund an education or pay off student loans; for others, a way to supplement their income or help support family. Three women—two of whom donated more than once—told us how they spent their compensation and how they feel about the experience of egg donation now.
I donated my eggs to help pay for school
Shani Le Roux Bell, 21, admits the initial allure of egg donation was the money. “I always knew about egg donation,” she says. “I thought it would probably be something I would do to help out with college or school.” Bell knew her parents wouldn’t be able to help support her after high school, so when she decided she wanted to be a pilot, donating her eggs seemed like a quick way to help fund her schooling. The pay from her existing job just wasn’t going to cut it.
“There’s not really many ways to get money for flight training other than taking out a loan, and that’s something I really wanted to avoid doing,” Bell says. “So that’s what ultimately pushed me to [donate].” Bell was 19 when she filled out an application for egg donation, and she was matched with an intended parent just a month later. She was offered $5,500 to donate her eggs—about half of what she had to pay for two years of flight school, which cost around $11,000.
Without that money, Bell wouldn’t have been able to afford flight school at the time. “I was pretty much just flying paycheck to paycheck,” she says. “Every time I got a paycheck, I would go to a fly lesson. So if I hadn’t donated, my plan was to just not fly and save my money—then maybe a year or two down the line, pick it up again with some money I had saved. So it helped me get there faster.”
After actually going through the process, Bell found she was invested in the outcome—so much so that she wanted to donate again and not just for the money. She also isn’t keen on having children of her own. “I felt like I would have no connection to what was going on, but I got very invested,” she says. “It was a lot for my body to handle, but I definitely wanted to do it again.” But because her body didn’t react as well to medication as the clinic wanted, Bell was told she couldn’t go undergo the process again.
Even now, a few years later, she says she would still donate if she could, and that despite not having the smoothest experience, she doesn’t think the act merits compensation any higher than what she received. “People just want a child,” she says. “I’m not that greedy.”
I donated my eggs to help pay off debt
Kelli Miller, 43, was first introduced to egg donation through a public relations gig at a hospital, through which she worked for a fertility clinic. “I was the right age and demographic,” she says. “And the stories that the director of the clinic had to tell about the families made from people that donated eggs kind of spoke to me. It was more about heart strings than purse strings.”
Miller only found out about the compensation after she decided she was willing to donate, but it ended up helping her pay for her wedding. “I was in my late twenties,” she says. “Any extra income was going to be helpful.” She donated her eggs twice, each time for about $3,000. But she admits the money was more of the appeal the second time around. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do it the second time because of the compensation benefits,” she says. “It was more just trying to dig myself out of college debt. It barely made a dent, but it made it a little easier for a little while.”
Like many women, Miller didn’t feel like she could really prepare herself for the experience during her first donation. When she opted into donating a second time, it was with an acceptance of what the process was like the first time around. “It’s easy to go into something when you’re kind of naive as to how it’s going to affect you, and that was certainly the case, although it was a relatively easy process for me the first time,” she says. “The second time around, I went into it with eyes wide open, knowing what to expect. It’s not unlike pregnancy, I guess, having given birth now twice. The second time around, it’s easier to know what you’re getting yourself into.”
What she couldn’t predict was that her body would respond differently to the treatment—specifically after the eggs were extracted, which typically causes cramping and other symptoms associated with PMS. In some cases, the reaction is more extreme. “My understanding is it doesn’t happen very often, and I don’t know if it was a reaction to the extraction or the medications,” she says. “But there was a lot of cramping and pain, and I had to get on some heavy duty painkillers.”
At that point, Miller was 29, which meant she was “right on the edge of not being an ideal candidate,” though she likely wouldn’t have donated again regardless. But more than a decade later, she has also realized just how many unknowns there are—that there are no comprehensive studies on egg donors and the potential long-term effects of pumping hormones into their bodies.
“I feel like they did not really inform me of the risks very well,” she says. “And recently I found out it’s because they really don’t know. There aren’t a lot of studies out there on the short-term and long-term effects on egg donors.” Over the past few years, Miller has dealt with a number of hormonal issues, including polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and had miscarriages both times that she was trying to get pregnant.
A number of egg donors report facing similar issues, though there isn’t enough data on the risks of egg donation to prove causation one way or the other. In terms of short-term risks, some egg donors are prone to ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, the result of taking injectable hormones to stimulate egg growth. (It’s a potential side effect of fertility treatments, as well.) “They’re adding all of this compensation for these girls to come in and [donate],” Miller says. “They need to understand the risks.”
I donated my eggs to help support my mom
Liz Scheier, who now works with We Are Egg Donors—an advocacy organization and community for egg donors—donated her eggs three times while living in New York and working in publishing. “The compensation was 100% my motivation,” she says. “I was working a full-time job and four part time jobs and just barely covering the bills—and then my mother got sick. I had kind of run out of ideas for how else to drum up money.” She looked into egg donation after seeing what she describes as “one of those soft-focus” advertisements with copy like “give a gift” and “be an angel.” “At the time, although I had some qualms, I definitely accepted that view of what the results would be,” she says.
Scheier made $8,000 each time she donated, which she says came to about $5,000 after taxes. (Many donors are now paid less per donation, Scheier says—more like $3,000 on average—because more women are willing to donate.) At the time, Scheier says, donors were really encouraged to remain anonymous. That anonymity is harder to maintain now, when donor-conceived kids can turn to any number of DNA testing services to find their biological parents—or unintentionally find out they are donor children.
“After the first time I did it, I was very secretive about it and ashamed, so I didn’t tell anyone,” Scheier says. “Until a colleague of mine told me her daughter was the result of an egg donation—I came clean about it, and she burst into tears and threw her arms around my neck and started thanking me. And at the time, I did not have any interest in having children and didn’t have a strong sense of the pain of infertility. That humanized it a little bit for me.” And so Scheier went into the second and third donations feeling like it was a win-win: She could pay her mother’s rent, and somebody who wanted a baby could have a baby.
Now, she says, the stigma is less pronounced, as more people discuss egg donation openly and as organizations like We Are Egg Donors shed light on the lived experience—good and the bad—for many egg donors. But like Miller, she worries there is still scarce information on the toll egg donation can take on women’s bodies. “It is definitely a great thing that the stigma of infertility is being addressed in some way,” she says. “But there’s still a lot of misinformation around egg donation and a lot of obscuring of the facts.” Scheier also points to the dearth of longitudinal studies of egg donor health. “What every single egg donor hears from a doctor is, ‘There are no known risks to egg donation,’” she says. “There are no known risks because no one has looked.”
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