Rebecca Kuei has a resume like a string of pearls. Head of the advertising sales department at Commonwealth Magazine, head of the MSN portal at Microsoft Taiwan, international product line manager at the Handspring company of the US, and special assistant to the CEO and senior director at Taiwan Mobile, before finally landing at the brightest star in the Internet sky, Google.

Google vice president Lee Kaifu (who is also president of Google for Greater China), has had high praise for Kuei's "extraordinary professionalism, superior skill at business development, and outstanding leadership ability," adding "she made a strong impression on me with her confidence and talent from the very first time we met."

Besides being approachable on a personal level, her attire is also very down-to-earth. A very high-ranking corporate warrior with very progressive thinking, she puts a five-kilo backpack on her back every morning when she goes out, packed with reports, her computer, and two bottle of mineral water.

Time to say goodbye

Rebecca Kuei admits, "I really liked my team, they were so capable, and I believed that the open Internet platform they were promoting would be a new opportunity for Taiwan's industrial upgrading." However, before she had spent long at the career summit, an unexpected event occurred that forced her out of the fast track and fundamentally transformed her life plans.

It was on a day last August, and Kuei was giving a lecture on Internet sales-ironically titled "Survival Strategies When the Going Gets Tough"-to a hall of 500 people. As she stood at the podium blazing away, she suddenly felt a warm stream running down her hip. It gradually soaked into her black slacks and then flowed down the inside of her leg to her knees and calf.

She held on without complaint until the end of the meeting. But when she got back to her office she began to weep. Even then, it was only after explaining things to her co-workers that she rushed to the hospital. The diagnosis: bleeding caused by Stage 4 (the worst) hemorrhoids. Her problems were worsened by low blood sugar and anemia, and her recovery was slow and painful.

"Laying in my sickbed, I was really torn over what to do. I couldn't bear to leave the team at Google, so I just took a leave of absence without pay. But then I saw a colleague of mine who had recently had the same operation go back for a second surgery within six months. That decided me, and I thought 'it's time to say goodbye.'" She was strongly supported by her husband and family.

Compulsive achiever

Before then, Rebecca Kuei's firing-on-all-pistons style was already legendary in the industry. Two years previously, she had published her autobiography in which she described herself as having "compulsive success syndrome" ever since childhood. She had classic symptoms-she always had to finish in the top three on exams; her brain would go non-stop, even when she was brushing her teeth; she averaged six meetings a day; and even on her way to the bathroom she was "usually doing six other things along the way."

Why so demanding of herself? It's got a lot to do with what happened to her family. Back in the 1970s, the two oil crises bankrupted her father's toy export firm, and he even ended up in jail. After getting out of prison, he became deeply depressed and eventually jumped to his death from a building. That year Rebecca turned 11. To take care of the three children, Kuei's mother did housecleaning, industrial piecework at home, dishwashing, and babysitting, prompting Kuei to vow to herself that one day her mother would be able to take it easy.

Kuei's older brother relates, "My sister was not intimidated by the embarrassment that comes with poverty. On the contrary, she rejected the social pressure that said, 'poor people have no right to dream.'" Kuei herself simply says that she inherited her father's entrepreneurial spirit and her mother's optimism and persistence, and also came into contact with Christianity at quite a young age because of her straitened circumstances.

However, the 45-year-old Kuei admits that running at full speed for a lifetime was definitely too much. "It was only when I was hit with this illness that I understood the meaning of 'moderation in all things.'"

She gained even deeper insight from faith. "It was not easy for me to leave the feeling of security I got from material things and social status. But when I was in my sickbed I read the biblical story of Exodus again and again, and realized that my situation had to be changed, from being a 'prince' served by others to being a 'priest' who serves others, from a material state of 'lacking nothing' to a spiritual state of 'wanting nothing.'"

During this period many companies sought her out and offered her jobs, but she refused them all. This May, she and two old friends who, like her, had gotten MBA degrees at Stanford University-Eric Wang and Alex Chang-founded an organization to promote the green economy in Taiwan, which can be found at sinogreen.org. The goals of the association, which is still in the planning stage, are to "encourage development of green professions" and "promote green entrepreneurship."

"I chose to go into a non-profit organization in hopes that I can give both society and myself an opportunity for 'transformation.' This is because I was in the corporate world for 20 years, and I have seen the negative effects of the incessant profit maximization that is part of capitalism. Even if right now we are still groping for direction and strategy, I really have high expectations and high hopes." Recently Kuei has visited several executive directors of major firms, and the reactions she has gotten have encouraged her to keep plowing ahead.

Another reason that Kuei has been able to accept the sudden redirection of her life and say goodbye to her old life with equanimity is connected to an event that happened to her six years ago: After her mother fell into a coma following a traffic accident, Kuei consequently had a chance to "face my father anew."

"I finally understood"

"For a long time, I could never forgive my father for having left us back then, leaving my mother to bear so much hardship on her own. I always thought it was cowardly." But after her mother's accident, as she sat by her mother's side in the hospital, Kuei had a chance to have heart-to-heart talks with her elder brother, and she found out that "on the morning of the day that he killed himself, my father walked my brother to the bus stop, hoping to have this last journey together with his eldest son, so in fact it was really very hard for him to leave us."

A wound decades old healed after being set in this context, and, Kuei says, "I finally understood my father": "Even if he did decide to end his life, he still did what he could to leave us a way out. He deliberately chose to leave around the time US president Gerald Ford was visiting mainland China, and left behind a 'last testament' protesting against the US betrayal of Taiwan, so that his wife and children could apply for government compensation for his death."

Having come back to a more simple life, Rebecca Kuei has turned the tears of the first half of her life into pearls. Standing at the entranceway to the second half of her life, she will give more completely of herself and follow her spiritual compass. What won't change is that she will always remain modest and open-minded, and believe that the world can become a better place.