Saigon refugee to CPA CEO.

• Position: Final entry - Interview

CalCPA recently presented Kim Le, CPA, CIA with its Trailblazer Award at the recent Women's Leadership Forum. This award recognizes an individual with a story so inspiring, it deserves its own category apart from the other awards handed out that day (see Page 10 and Page 26). We talked with Le about her journey from Vietnam and her secrets to success.

Talk about your journey from Vietnam to Arizona. In the dead of night, my baby brother, mother and I were sneaking out of Saigon, Vietnam, on a rickshaw. Our rendezvous point was a fishing village along the Mekong River. It was 1978 and I was 6 years old, so, for me, it was just a great adventure. We slipped onto a tiny fishing boat and sailed into the South China Sea. I would sneak up onto the deck and listen to the rumors about pirate ships trolling the seas. We spent five days on the boat and ran out of water and food (rice with salt and pepper). On top of that, the boat engine died and we were just drifting. We were hungry, thirsty and desperate to find land. Finally, we spotted something ahead. We were so ecstatic that everyone jumped off the sinking boat.

Refugee camp: We were living under a plastic tarp with dirt floors, and walls thatched with tree branches. Mosquitos and head lice were everywhere. The lice were so bad that we shaved my 4-year-old brother's head to get rid of them. Mom was depressed, and rightfully so. She had left behind three kids and everything she knew. So it fell on me to wait in lines to draw water from the nearby wells and to wait in lines for food rations. I was one of the lucky ones. We were living in a refugee camp in Malaysia, waiting for any country to accept us. After a year, a generous family from a church helped us come to the United States.

Arizona: We had no money. We didn't know anyone or the language. We rented a tiny room in a house from another Vietnamese family. My little brother, mom and I lived in one room, sharing one bed. My mom worked a minimum wage job as a dishwasher, even though she owned a large restaurant in Vietnam.

When did you decide to become a CPA?

Front my experiences growing up in poverty, I knew the only way to break out of that cycle was to go to college and get a well-paying job. And so, with just $500 to my name, I left for college in Phoenix. I went to school full-time and worked part time. I shared a two-bedroom apartment with four other girls. I volunteered to sleep on the floor for lower rent because we didn't have room...