Poet Khalil Gibran once said “To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what [he] has achieved but what [he] aspires to.” But when she is a person that has a love of laying a path of opportunity for others to blossom who’ll inspire many more, it’s evident that her heart is made of gold.
Diana Wong, an Associate Professor in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship, makes an extraordinary impact in every aspect of her professional and personal life.
The fact that she is multi-faceted with many responsibilities that would stress the average person, all with focus and good energy will make you wonder, “How does she do it?”
Wong is a member of the Honors College Advisor Counsel, Faculty Advisory Group, mentor of the Honors Leadership Program and Eastern Michigan University Graduate Counsel – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“Things that I really like to be involved in have to do with leadership, it has to do with global initiatives and graduate programs,” Wong said.
Wong and her husband, Wayne R. Millette enlightened audiences at TEDxEMU with a global initiative
that they both identify with: interracial relationships. Their topic entitled “D.A.R.L.I.N.G.” an acronym meaning “Dating Across Racial Lines and International Groups.”
It was created as a student group at the University of Massachusetts to help raise awareness about managing and embracing healthy relationships.
“We wanted to raise awareness about how to manage and engage in healthy relationships. When we’re dating cross culturally or when we’re dating across racial heritages and being able to have that valued intimately in our relationship,” Wong said.
“Part of being able to have a student group able to have conversations with other students that deal with other issues about dating across lines.”
It was praised by audiences for its honest and inspirational story about loving beyond the color of one’s skin, including EMU senior Antonia Moses who felt proud of her parents’ interracial marriage and being biracial.
“This topic always attracts a lot of attention amongst students because I think that is something of concern. And we’re pretty open about how we share what goes on in our relationship. So we often learn about things and talk about issues like racism, or discrimination of prejudice,“ Wong said. “But it’s very different to deal with these issues up front, close and personal within relationships. And so we’re pretty open about sharing some of the stuff that we have to work through and untangle.”
Wong has a lot on her plate, but what keeps her smiling through it all is her 13 year marriage with Millette, whom together have two children Quinton, 13, and Maya, 11.
Though they have educated and supported others who have dated cross-culturally, their love and determination to continue to strengthen their relationship is genuine.
The love they have for one another exists 365 days out of the year and not only on Valentine’s Day, believing that in their motto: “when everyday is Valentines, why celebrate just once a year?”
“You know when you ask God for something in particular but you get stuff that’s a hundred times better then what you could’ve ever ask? That’s who my partner is,” Wong said. “I only asked for one thing in my partner and that was the ability to value other human beings regardless of their station in life.
So regardless if a person is poor, rich, educated, not educated, white, black, Asian, that he is able to connect with and value the whole human being.”
To her happiness, 40 years after the Loving v. Virginia ruling that discriminated against the marriage of whites and minorities, the number of interracial marriages have greatly increased in the United States.
“I think that it allows people to see and build common grounds and see beyond the skin color, to create shared paths of culture. I find that I am learning to be more Chinese as a result of marrying someone who is not Chinese because in order to be much more conscious of who I am and how to pass on heritage, I need to know,” Wong said.
Her interests are community based, such as her program Michigan Shifting Gears that assists the unemployed with creating new jobs in the economy and helping to grow entrepreneur and small businesses.
Her involvement is also with organizations such as Michigan’s Children and Golden Courage, which serves the most impoverished children of China suffering of AIDS.
Though she enjoys quilting and staying active with her husband and children, she wants to
continue living and connecting with people around the world. She dreams of living on each continent for one year and has so far traveled to Cape Town, Africa where she visited Robben Island — the place where Nelson Mandela was once imprisoned among other sites.
“One of my wishes, if someday I win the lottery, I would love to create a program for African American students to spend anywhere from a month to three months in Africa,” Wong said. “There is nothing like feeling the grounding, the richness, the diversity, the wealth of culture on that continent.”
With her wisdom, motivation and spirit to change lives by her faith that “thy will be done; be the change you want to see in the world,” there’s nothing this woman cannot do.
