How Ketty Hsieh Left Corporate America to Revolutionize Senior Care for Asian Elders

[0:00]  So language barrier is a big issue. Uh oftent times seniors don't know and don't have a community they can feel comfortable with. They they do feel isolated. And um I have heard stories that seniors at other more um Asian seniors and more conventional um facilities they they can't communicate with other residents or even the staff. So they're not getting the care that they need or the the the care that they deserve. They feel isolated. They kind of sit in the corner. Nobody talks to them. The food, you know, like again, I use my parents as an example, like, well, it's fun for them to eat spaghetti once in a while, but if you ask them to eat that every day, that's probably not going to go well. So, that's also a big part of our culture um is the food as well. So um all this what we want is

[0:48]  that that like I said we want seniors to we want to help Asian seniors to age well whether it's age out at home and they have we have actually have two community centers where a lot of programs that can come and join and meet friends and um and prevent that social isolation and we also have the residential care services the nursing home assistant living and so on that we can help them age Welcome back to another episode here on the hard and hustle podcast. Just imagine you're leaving corporate America and your whole life just the career just

[1:36]  flips upside down. But then you become the face of culturally rooted senior care for the Asian elders. And that's the story of today's guest, KDY, CEO of Keen On. Hopefully I said that correct. Welcome to the show. How you doing today, madam, on this beautiful Tuesday? Yeah, I'm doing well. Thank you very much. Thank you for the introduction.

[1:54]  Thank you. I appreciate it. I want to get straight into it. What really pulled you towards something bigger? I mean, so many people, you know, they think paycheck, but you said, I don't want I don't care about paycheck. I just think about bigger impact. what pulled you into it? Well, it actually really all started during COVID. Um, so in 2020 during COVID when um quite honestly there were a lot of um anti-Asian sentiment in the community um and and I felt like I needed to get more involved with my community. So I started looking for an organization that I can volunteer my time with and then I was connected with Kenan. So, Kenon um is an organization here in Seattle that provides culturally and linguistically

[2:44]  appropriate care for seniors in the community. And I can get into a little bit more later about exactly what we do, what does that mean, but it really serving my community and having elderly um parents myself that just a mission that resonated with me. So I joined the Kino board at in January 2021 and then um about a year and a half later when the CEO position for Keno became available. I just thought kind of thought long and hard and kind of like well I I am at a career where I uh fortunate enough that I can make the leap and go leave corporate America um paychecks whatever that's aside I have the um opportunity um to to just kind of jump in both feet and lead this organization.

[3:32]  what what are some of the things that surprised you the most coming into the you know to the space of because you really went from transportation to backing banking to healthcare um what was that moment like what was that that journey like for you especially now that you're in the space what did you learn from the past that allowed you to be here today present right so my career has uh as you mentioned um I've worked in different industries and my background is corporate finance so in all those other areas or other companies I work for I was in a finance capacity and taking on you know um increasing um leadership roles right so um throughout my career one of the things I always enjoy even in finance was being a partner with operations to make sure that we make the right decision to make

[4:20]  sure that um we run a tight business um providing actionable input um to operations and partner with them to help us improve. So from that perspective I felt like I have um pretty good insights into operations as a finance person and I also you know I've been by the time I joined Kenan I've been in um healthcare for more than a decade. So um so I felt like I was pretty well equipped to come.

[4:48]  But what I did not realize was that um um the actually running operations is a whole different a whole different ball game especially when you have 247 nursing home um operations and on top of that um we were when I joined in um June 2021 uh 2022 we're still just coming out of the tail end of co there were still a lot of um um you know co related um things that we have to deal with. Um and also nursing home is highly highly highly regulated. Well, rightfully so for many reasons because we do serve a very vulnerable population. So there are a lot of government regulations that we have to deal with. There's constant pressure from um state surveys and compliance issues and so on. So those

[5:39]  are probably my biggest surprise is the how regulated you know because in healthare healthcare is pretty regulated already you know hospitals and so on but nursing home is even more regulated which is kind of a surprise to me but it's all good and I totally understand why we need to protect the very vulnerable seniors that we serve and a good leader like yourself you know you'll figure it out you'll pivot you'll make it happen but I would ask you what did you find easier or I would say harder was it climbing that corporate ladder or taking the step down to go do what you're doing today. Um I well that's a really good question. I think they both bring on um different um stress. So in my earlier career as coming corporate lighter a lot of

[6:28]  distress comes from quite honestly corporate politics right um and um and just the the constant pressure from usually from your boss from the organization from Wall Street when I was working for publicly traded companies um here the the pressure comes from I do I really care I keep I keep going home and telling my husband that I cannot let Kenan fell under under my watch, you know, we got it. We have to do this, we have to get through this. I can't let it fail because it's so important in our community. Um, so that's I think that's the the big difference is like I truly emotionally feel like I'm attached to the organization and that brings the stress that I want Kenan to success and do well because it really does serve the

[7:15]  community that I care deeply about. I like that. And for people that who that don't know Kenan like what what is so different from every other senior care center that exists tell them a little bit different what's yeah so Kenan um so Kina healthcare center we are um an organization that specifically serve Asian seniors like I mentioned earlier we u we provide culturally and um appropriate care for seniors we do have a 100 bed um nursing home so we provide long-term care as well as short-term rehab for our um Asian seniors. Um our staff here, they speak um different dialects of Chinese, Vietnamese, um Filipino and you name it. So um it's very diverse and and we serve Asian

[8:04]  food. And so we have is a place that where the seniors when the time comes they need to be um living in the facility. This is a environment they are comfortable with and they have um the language um they can communicate with our staff. Um and we serve Asian food. Our kitchen is amazing. Um and then we also have assisted living similarly is um providing culturally linguistically appropriate care for seniors and we also have home care as well as a lot of community based programs. So we have expanded over time. So Kenan, let me look back a little bit. Kenan was founded 40 years ago by uh the community but group of community members who wanted to unite the Chinese community in Seattle and um every the one theme, the one concept everybody could agree to was

[8:53]  we want to take care of our seniors. And we know that a lot of new immigrants have language barriers and um are not comfortable in a conventional um nursing home facility. So that's how Kan was formed about 40 years ago. So over the years we have expanded like you say we now also provide a lot of community based services health related workshops, family caregiver supports, home care um and we want to help senior to to age well at home and but when the time comes and they have the need to be in a facility, we also here to serve them. I love that one thing you just topped on and I want to kind of touch a little bit on it was the language barriers, right?

[9:36]  But we also have isolation, discrimination. Those are such heavy words. How personal do those challenges actually feel to you. You talk about making sure it doesn't fail, but you also have all these different things to think about, right? Right. Absolutely. Yes. Um definitely. Um there's like I like like I mentioned when I I first was connected with Kenan and back in the co that kind of um it was a time where there's a lot of heightened Asian um um anti-Asian sentiment in the community and discrimination and and and you're you're absolutely correct. So language barrier is a big issue. uh oftentimes even seniors don't know and don't have a community they can feel comfortable with

[10:23]  they they do feel isolated and um I have heard stories that seniors at other more um Asian seniors and more conventional um facilities they they can't communicate with other residents or even the staff so they're not getting the care that they need or the the care that they deserve. They feel isolated. They kind of sit in the corner. Nobody talks to them. the food, you know, like again, I use my parents as an example, like, well, it's fun for them to eat spaghetti once in a while, but if you ask them to eat that every day, that's probably not gonna go well. So, that's also a big part of our culture. Um, is the food as well. So um all this what we want is that that like I said we want seniors to we want to help Asian senior to age well whether it's age out at home and they

[11:11]  have we have actually have two community centers where a lot of programs they can come and join and meet friends and um and prevent that social isolation and we also have the residential care services the nursing home assisted living and so on that we can help them age well. I I I truly love the space that you're in and and it's very um until I spoke to you last time was something I didn't even really think of, right? When people because we all go through it at some point. We're going to be in a nursing home. We're going to be in the care of others and and not realizing that we don't have a space where people see somebody like them or can relate. And I think that's what we need, right?

[11:48]  Because then at the end of the day, they're still human. And if they're in a space where there's a language barrier and they're not really getting the attention they need, are they in the best place possible? And the answer is is no. Right. Right. But you you you're guys are creating something that is like, hey, we see you. You know, we are one of you and we want to make sure that while you're still here on this earth that we can care for you the way that you should be cared for. You talked about food. You talked about lang. Like there's so many different things that people are accustomed to and you guys kind of bring that within the organization. I think it's cool. I think also healthc care is one that moves slow, but when I spoke to you last time, you you mentioned, well, tech moves fast and I want to jump on board. Um, what made you decide? Yeah, it's time to bring um AI into this space of health care that a lot of healthcare organizations are not utilizing it yet.

[12:32]  Right. Right. Well, as I mentioned earlier, healthcare um that we are highly highly regulated especially in the front line um from the care direct care perspective. Um so, you know, we're probably not known as the most innovative um organizations, but um there are a lot of the a lot of opportunity in the back end. So operations in the back end kind of the support um operation overhead what you people call as overhead operations. So what we recently did is that we have an amazing accounting team. They actually built the um accounts payable process based on AI. So now we can just um upload the invoice from a vendor and the AI will read the invoice and we'll spit

[13:22]  out where how we should um co code the invoice into the different line items and even though every invoice every vendor send us the invoice in a different format but we have trained the AI so we have this tool that you can actually read the invoice and and help us do that. So re it really really really reduced the operation the the manual time where an accounts payable cler had to go through the invoice and and literally line by line figure out okay this thing goes to this account this thing goes to that account now the AI can do the first cut and then the accounting um the accounts variable just have to review it um and of course AI is not perfect right there's still some training of the the tool so we can kind of continue to make it better but it

[14:09]  really really cut down the time so our account cannon team can um take on other projects and and eventually I'm you know I feel like that's area that we can gain a lot of the efficiency um I love it I love that you you say AI is just going to save me time you know it's not replacing anybody but it's allowing us to do more with the a little bit amount of time that we have when you think about impacting the world we only have but so much time how can we make such a big impact and AI is really helping in that space was was there fear here when you've mentioned you know AI um because so many people think that tech is just replacing humans. How do you keep that soul in Keon while adding speed but also adding something different that people have a fear of? Yeah, that's a really good question. Um so here like I say we had to free up our accounting team to do

[14:57]  other um higher level work that's more interesting for um for the team instead of just going on the clerical line by line you know coding the invoice um so I think it's actually well received we have there's there's always projects in in our any any organization any system any process that's always projects and process improvements that we can work on. So what happened is that we just um give the accounting clerk who used to be doing the manual coding now he can actually have time to work on some higher level work um which I think is a win-win for everybody. So we never have anybody with kind of fear that um oh you know this is going to replace my job because we know that we have this long

[15:45]  list of projects that we want to tackle. So they allow us to get better that way. If the Heart and Hustle podcast has ever sparked any idea or made you think differently, do us a favor. Make sure to guys share this, post it on LinkedIn, or even text that nonprofit friend that you just have. Whatever works. This is what keeps the conversation going and allows us to just grow this community together.

[16:10]  Seriously, we appreciate you. I love it. I love it. And and I can imagine there's times where you have to pivot, right? where there's times maybe you have to double down and there's times where you really got to focus and pivot. Um, how do you do these things? Like I can only imagine sometime it may feel like a marathon, but what are you doing to stay sane, to stay, you know, just in the game? Wow, that's a really million-dollar question, right? Um Um, so it is a marathon, right? in um I think part of it just understanding that um there's you know um how do I put it, you know, you can't do it all and you can do it all in one day. So I think you

[16:59]  have to take on a pretty good perspective that um you can solve the world's problem in one day all by yourself, right? So step by step. So we have um we do have a lot of opportunity to get better. I think um you know in general Karan really does take good care of our residents. I can put in a little plug. We have a resident who's been with us who um was admitted who came in in 2009. So it's been 16 years and she just turned 105. So we do take really really good care of our residents and to me that's kind of the the north star, right? like you know that's my that's that's the end result like we want to take care of our residents. Yeah. And um that mission and the end that kind of

[17:48]  continue to drive me personally and and then just kind of understanding um the I can do it all in one day. Um I also try to you know I I do exercise and and and you know that's kind of like clear my head. I do run every day. Gotta keep the mind right. Yeah. Like that's that's my attitude adjust adjustment hour. Like afterward I go run for an hour and then that's like my attitude adjustment. I love it. I love it. No, I had to really implement that this year as well earlier this year. It's like you know what with how busy leaders can really be and moving all over the place. Sometimes just working out could be the difference, right? Because it allows you to separate from everything. Yeah. And allows you to really take care of the body. And I think that's the most

[18:34]  important part. Not just the mind, but also the body, right? because when you start to see yourself in a different light and you start to feel good about yourself, you'll also continue to give that back to your staff, you know, as a leader. So, I love that. And you're really building something for the next gen generation, right? Uh what's one thing you hope that Keon uh Kenan will will stand for um 40 years from now?

[18:57]  Well, first of all, I hope Kan still be here for 40 another 40 years. We are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. So which is a great a big milestone. We are um the only we were the first Chinese nursing home in the country and I think there are a few around the country now in some of the other uh states with high Asian population but we are still the only u Asian focused nursing home in Washington state. Um what I hope in 20 in 40 years I hope um I mean I think that Kenan there's still going to be needs in the community um a lot of the immigrant immigrants continue to come into this country or even immigrants like myself who's been here for a while but

[19:43]  oftentimes when you get older um people do re um the their language skills do do regress a little bit they revert to their mother tongue they want to have um in they want to be in an environment where um they're comfortable with right they're familiar with. So uh my hopes is in 40 years when I need that service Kina still here.

[20:06]  Uh but I think you know continue to what one of our goal this year as our 40th anniversary is that we wanted to bring in more supporters who are um the younger kind of maybe younger professionals who um maybe start to realize that their parents might start to need service or kind of start looking ahead and thinking about the importance of senior care. So we do want to expand our reach um to get our name out there for um two two or more kind of the younger professionals um who can become our supporters, our volunteers or you know be associated with us. Let's talk to those young leaders. I believe that we do need some young leaders in this space and let's say they're listening right now. What's one lesson you wish that you knew earlier so that maybe they

[20:54]  can actually pick up from that? Well, I think the one lesson I learned from my career is that don't be afraid of if you feel like your career is taking a random walk because I think I in my career I took a couple um changes and they some and and that might people might look and go why did you do that and um it turned out some some of that um those random walk actually all built it built up your your capacity it built your experience it it might be something totally different and And um you know five years later you might run into something go like oh I know how to do this because I took that job that seemed kind of weird at the time but it taught me all these skills and now I can apply. So one of the things I what they got to the early asked me early about this job here kind

[21:42]  of switching from being a finance executive to the CEO and running the operations is that I do draw back to was like oh I do know that I did that even though at the time it seems like why would I do that as a finance person? Why did I get my hands involved in this other thing? So I think that's just my advice is don't be don't be afraid to take uh risk and and try something new and you know if your career looks like a random that's just fine because it's all gonna come together 100%. Yeah, I was just talking to another leader and he left the restaurant business after so many years, right? And and no two weeks just he know he needed to change, right? And sometimes it takes that. Sometimes it really takes and I ask him what did he learn from because I think there's something to learn from every job.

[22:27]  Absolutely. I'm a big believer when you go somewhere it's like what did I learn? What what was in it for me, you know, because there has to be something in there for you. Um I've taken jobs where I was a facilitator. Never knew I'll facilitate but you know what I took so much. I mean, look what I'm doing for a living, right? And it allowed me become more confident in just my voice, speaking and and meeting people because you're in front of different people and understanding nationalities and how to talk to people. So, I do believe I do believe that life really led you to this space where now you're making such an impact and it's not like you're just making impacts for your ordinary individuals. These are people that look like you that that you may have grown up with at some point in time, right? You may know these moms because it's so communitydriven. And when you think about how you're catering to the a certain niche, right? I think that's

[23:13]  beautiful. You know, I think that's a beautiful thing to do. And to know that you found something where you're like, man, I I feel I feel what I'm doing is not even a job. Do you feel like that? Do you feel like this is just a job nowadays or is this? It's a job. Yeah, it's a job, but it's also a passion and it comes with like I say, it comes with stress, but at the same time, it also comes with a lot of pride. I love it when I go to the community and I talk to people. Even when I first took the job as at Kino and I, you know, post it on LinkedIn and then I have all these people came to me and go like, "Oh, my grandparents stay there.

[23:49]  Congratulations. I'm so glad you're going to Kan. My, you know, my in-laws stay there. My like these people were coming out all over the place and I didn't even know that they have this connection." And then I continue to meet people that um they tell me that they want to volunteer, they want to be involved with Kenan because either their parents, grandparents, um aunts, uncles stay here and just really appreciate what we do for the their family. So I think the pride um really is also one of the big surprise actually you asked me earlier that was one of the big surprise that wow I didn't realize I can actually have touched so many lives in this community and people really really do appreciate that and that's another driver for me to I can't let it fail. I have to make sure that it's I have to

[24:38]  make sure that it's it's here for another 40 years. And it will it will I think your leadership and all life experiences will definitely um you you'll leave that legacy. You know, it doesn't look like you're going anywhere soon. So, you still got a lot of years to really build and you know, let allow the next person, you know, as you said, that young leader to maybe step in and take it into the direction you've always wanted to, but maybe you have to move on to other things. But I I do love that you found something that really touches your heart and resonates with you cuz a lot of times people will stay very comfortable. You never stayed comfortable. Okay. You always felt like listen uh okay I'm done here. Let me go somewhere else. And you're willing to take risks. You're a risk taker. So I know that for the next 40 years this organization is good because of you.

[25:22]  Okay. Because you really do care. Appreciate that. Absolutely. Absolutely. How can people get more involved into what you're doing? And I'm not saying just monetary wise, but is it spreading the word? Is it volunteering? Like if someone wants to really make a difference and they see what you're doing, they want to um be a part of it.

[25:39]  How could that be possible? Well, um there are many many opportunities. Thanks for asking. Obviously, there's the money monetary support. Anybody can go to ken.org and pick and and press that big donate now button. But other than that, we do have um a lot of volunteering uh opportunities here. We are constantly looking for um volunteer to come in to interact with our residents to enrich their lives here. So we have volunteer positions such as playmates who uh can come in and play simple games and or teach them um arts and crafts and we have uh for example we have a volunteer who comes in regularly to te to do painting water um the watercolor painting with the the residents. Um we have um also companionship with sitters who come in

[26:29]  and just keep our uh our residents come in company and in the community like I mentioned before we a lot of community based programs and in our two community centers and we're always looking for um you know people can participate you can come in and participate but you can also be an instructor. We're always looking for instructors. You have something you can teach. Um we have instructor teaching Tai Chi or yoga or calligraphy or um different arts and crafts and you name it. Um so there there I think that's probably the best way um for you to get involved or anybody who want to get involved is to um check out um to our volunteer opportunities and they're also one-time volunteer opportunities as well. if you feel like oh I can't you know I can't do this every week or every

[27:17]  month but we have events right so this year for example um every year we have a senior's day one day event we need a lot of volunteers for that and then we have this year we'll have 40 anniversary gaya we also need a lot of volunteers for that so there are plenty of volunteer opportunities and I love that you shared all these because um first of all people may not know how to get involved in this space as a volunteer Um but in general, you know, people think all, you know, organizations, nonprofits, um just need money, but sometimes it's no. We need your your expertise, right? We need your resources. We need your talent. We need your time if you could just give us a little bit of time. So, I like that you you gave me all so many ideas on how someone can be involved with our elders,

[28:05]  too. Like, they're still humans. They still were creative. They still have a passion, right? They're still breathing. So, I love that you guys do all these different things for the Yeah. And if you're a senior, um you can definitely we are always welcome more participants in our programs. We have everything from, you know, like I mentioned before, health work, help related workshops like chronic disease management or aging mastery. We have um line dancing classes. It was really fun. I It's just in the community center down the hall from our office and I always see them every week. They come in and dance. and there's karaoke, there's ma, you name it. So, we really want to create that community where Asian seniors can feel comfortable and um can come and and meet others. And I, you know, we really want um to provide that space for the for the

[28:54]  seniors to gather and to to have fun. And so, the real question is, are you out there karaokeing with them? Huh? I'm sorry. Are you doing karaoke with them? Uh I don't personally sing. to set it up for them. You don't want me to sing. I think they all like like high tail out of there in like two seconds. I'm a terrible singer.

[29:16]  Same, same, same. Um, yeah, you don't want me to do any karaoke, but no, that this is this has been a really fun time and and thank you so much for just giving us this insight on what Keon is. is, you know, it's really been, I would say, a groundbreaker for other organizations that now look like this organization, but you guys were that that foundation and will continue to be that foundation for everyone to kind of look at like, oh, look what they're doing. So, we definitely thank you on it. But, as as always, we got to kind of start wrapping things up. And I I got a blind question for you. This one here is from u Jill from Joyful Connections.

[29:48]  Okay. And she asked, "When things get heavy, what's your go-to mantra that always helps you power through?" Uh, everything would work out at the end. Wow, you said that too easy. You You have some of these moments, huh? I have way too many moments. Everything would work out in the end. Things always work out in the end. I do believe it. Just got to have faith. Just got to have some faith. Yeah. Yeah. No, I do agree. Um, yeah, I've been through those experiences as well. And it's sometimes you got to tell yourself exactly what you just said, right? Like it's going to work out. It's going to work out. You got to keep going. Keep going. You got to talk to yourself. You talked about it's like going to the gym, right? When you don't want to do something work out, you don't want to lift these things, but it's like I got to do it. It's, you know, it's going there's going to be a benefit, you know, here. So, I got to keep pushing into it, but I love it.

[30:35]  What was your blind question to the next leader we have here on the hard podcast? Uh, my blind question for the next guest is that if you had the magic wand, what would be the one thing you would change about your current organization or your current job? Okay. All right. I love it. I love it. Well, we thank you so much for being such an amazing leader and really making a difference in in your community, but not only in the community. There's so many people that may watch this um through our our different social media platforms that even know something like this exists. And now they know, but they also know there's a leader that is truly making a change and not just so much for our community, but for the world, for people that look like her, that grew up like her, and letting them know that they don't have to be alone uh for the end of days, right? That they can actually be in a home with people that understand them a little bit more. And I I'm so happy. I'm I'm telling you when

[31:22]  you told me that the first time I spoke to you, I'm like, "Wow, that's very smart." Like, that is very very smart. I don't know. It's crazy. But we thank you so much for sharing it, guys. If you guys are here and you really been inspired or you really been touched by the story that we were able to get with another amazing leader here on the the Heart and Hustle podcast, we we expect that you share you tag a friend. Um but Ky, we thank you so much for giving us your time, your knowledge, and we hope to do this again, you know, another 10 years. you tell me how you've elevated another 10 years, right? But we thank you. We thank you. We thank you. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate the conversation.

[31:56]  Absolutely. Guys, this has been the Heart Hustle Podcast. We'll catch you guys on the next episode with another amazing leader. Thank you guys so much. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Laders.