For Justin Choi, senior vice president, general counsel and secretary of Andrew Corporation, the Westchester, Ill.-based global leader in communications systems and products, his current position is a challenge to be savored.
“It’s one thing to say you can run a legal department, and it’s another thing to do it,” says Choi, who joined Andrew in March. “I enjoy the day-to-day workings of a multinational corporation with 11,000 employees (over 3000 in China alone) and revenues of about $2 billion, interacting with people and establishing close relationships with colleagues. I’m a firm believer that the journey is as important as the destination.”
Prior to Andrew, Choi served as vice president—law, corporate and securities at Avaya, a global provider of communication systems, applications, and services. Before that, he was chief counsel of the New Ventures Group at Lucent Technologies and corporate counsel, mergers and acquisitions law, also at Lucent. He began his career at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in New York doing telecommunications law, but the seed for Choi’s philosophical approach to leadership was planted long before he entered the legal profession.
“My parents don’t really fit the Asian immigrant stereotype,” says Choi, whose family left Seoul, Korea for Queens, New York when he was seven years old. “They never pressured us to excel in academics. For them, education was absolutely important, but as serious Buddhists, it was paramount that my brother (now a vascular surgeon), my sister (who is in the fashion design industry) and I become balanced people, so they strove to establish a values system within us that stressed not only an appreciation for hard work, but also for treating all people equally and fairly, regardless of ethnic, gender, social, or economic status.”
Each night, the family gathered around the table to eat and discuss universal topics not tied to any particular creed, such as how to live a good, happy, useful, life. Choi credits those evening talks with prompting him to pursue a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from The Johns Hopkins University, and also with creating a template for open communication that he now enjoys with his wife and their two young sons.
According to Choi, in-house counsel is the right fit for him. At Andrew, he has been able to strike a balance between the demands of career and family in an environment that actively fosters diversity and acceptance.
“Ordinarily, when women and minorities enter corporate America, the lack of diversity becomes glaringly clear to them,” explains Choi, a 1990 graduate of Northwestern University School of Law. “At Andrew, under CEO Ralph Faison, that isn’t the case. In fact, three people on our ten-person board are women and minorities. The senior officer ranks and executive tier can also boast pretty good numbers.”
His great respect for diversity and minority bar associations and the advancements they bring about notwithstanding, Choi prefers to advocate for diversity in one-on-one, work-related settings. “It’s here that I’m able to make a meaningful difference even, if it’s with only one or two lives,” says Choi.
“Whether or not diversity has made a financial impact at Andrew, we’re still not certain,” adds Choi. “Ultimately, we’re hopeful that our commitment to diversity will affect the bottom line, generating profits and creating greater shareholder value, but in the meantime, it makes getting there so much more pleasant.”
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From the September/October 2006 issue of Diversity & The Bar®