Today we’d like to introduce you to Greer Swiston.
Greer, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born in Manhattan, NY. In short, I’m a number loving geek who was blessed to not only make a living doing what I love, but also make a life around things for which I have a passion.
Family, numbers and community. For me, that is what makes the world go round. I am what you would call an ABC. American Born Chinese. My parents always made sure we had the best of both worlds and I can only wish everyone were so lucky! Key to being able to tap into those two worlds involved being a part of some strong Chinese American communities. We moved to New Jersey when I was three and eventually, we moved to Massachusetts when I was in high school.
My parents made sure that my sisters and I had a clear understanding of where we came from and who we were so that we had the foundation to pursue who we wanted to be. I realize that currently there seems to be a Chinese Community organization in every suburb. Most high schools these days even offer Chinese as a part of their standard high school foreign language curriculum. But 30-40 years ago, there really wasn’t any significant concentration of American Chinese outside of Boston Chinatown except maybe Lexington and Quincy and Chinese was certainly not offered in the public schools. All we had was the GBCCA and it supported and enriched my family for four generations!
We moved to the Boston area on the South Shore in 1980. Canton had the appeal that it had an undefeated high school Math team for the tenth year running. My older sister and I loved math, so it seemed like the perfect town despite the fact that we were THE Chinese family in town. We were introduced to the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association by some college friends my parents had in the area. My father graduated from 台大 (National Taiwan University) and my grandfather was a 清華大學（Tsinghua University) alumnus. As it turned out, there was a strong NTU and Tsinghua alumni presence in the area and they seemed to all socialize through the GBCCA.
Numbers and engineering are as much my heritage as being Chinese was. Both my parents were civil engineers. My uncle was a chemical engineer. I had an aunt and a second cousin who were computer engineers. One grandfather was a civil engineer and the other was a mechanical engineer. My older sister is an aerospace engineer and works with NASA. Seemed inevitable that I would end up in engineering. I discovered a love for computers at Actuarial Science camp, which led me to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where I also met my best friend, the love of my life and father of my children. We bonded over multi-variable calculus and fried circuit boards.
Bonding through one’s colleague alumni was a family tradition, I guess. My sisters and I grew up around my father’s college buddies and most of my closest childhood friends were the children of those college friends. So it was natural for me to eventually become President of the Chinese Alumni of MIT.
I started my career also working JPL/NASA. A friend lured me back to New England with a start-up company which then led to a string of start-up opportunities where I truly learned my passion for organizing chaos. The last start-up I worked for got bought up by then, Merrill Lynch who, after a few years, wanted to relocate us all. It was at that point that I decided to leave the high tech career. I spent a couple years doing some independent consulting, but spent more and more of my time becoming a full time volunteer. I was already on the little league board, the girl scouts service unit and teaching at the cultural center as well as coaching soccer and baseball. Upon retirement, I took on tutoring math, teaching a toddler class at the YMCA and getting appointed to various state agencies and serving public office. It was my husband’s idea to throw real estate into the mix.
Back in the early 90’s, Governor Weld had appointed me to the Asian American Cultural Commission. So, I guess governor appointments wasn’t exactly a new thing for me. Once I’d retired from engineering, Governor Romney first appointed me to the Public Educators Nominating Committee. I had been touted as the “rocket scientist candidate” during the last election cycle when I had campaigned for a seat in the state legislature. I didn’t win, but apparently gained some attention. Eventually, he would also appoint me to the Judicial Nominating Committee (I may have been the only committee member that had not studied law or public policy to be on that committee) and the Commission on the Status of Women (for which I eventually served as Chair). I can even claim to have bipartisan appeal since Governor Patrick eventually appointed me to the MA State Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights (on which I still serve). During this time, I also ran and was elected to be an Alderman in the City of Newton. I was re-elected twice before I opted not to run again. It was an edifying six years.
My children are now both grown. I do continue to invest in real estate as well as help others buy and sell their homes. But I’ve turned my attention to the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association who has always be like an extended family. GBCCA was an integral part of my childhood and I credit them (along with my parents, of course) for my clear understanding and grounding in my identity. My generation refers to ourselves as ABCs, American Born Chinese. We are American and grateful for it. We are Chinese and we embrace it! We had the best of both worlds and we had our parents to thank for it. I am particularly grateful to the strength in self-identity the GBCCA has given my kids. They may be biologically half Chinese, a quarter Italian, an eighth Czechoslovakian, and an eighth Polish, but they clearly identify as Asian American and are very grounded in their Chinese heritage without ignoring their Italian Catholic lineage and otherwise typical American mongrel mix. That says a lot because their identity has been a bit more challenging than it had been for me when I was growing up. No one ever questioned my heritage, but my children’s names and appearances gave little indication of their Chinese heritage. My daughter often joins me in my GBCCA activities, helps me run an Annual Dumpling making party, paddled in my Youth Dragonboat team, attends the annual Banquet and even participated in this year’s traditional Chinese Cheongsam fashion show. People often express their surprise at her comfort and familiarity with the Chinese Culture and she calmly responds “Well, I’m Chinese after all.” This statement is typically met with disbelief to which she is quick to respond “You don’t have to believe me. It is simply the truth.”
The Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association was the “village” that raised me. I volunteered as a youth leader when I was in high school, I served as a member of the Executive Committee when I first came back as a young professional, I taught in the Chinese School when my kids were growing up. Now, I am a retired software engineer and High Tech exec who occasionally invests and sells real estate. GBCCA was always there to support my immigrant grandparents, parents, me and my kids. It is an honor that I have been elected to be the first American born Chinese to serve as the President of GBCCA.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I know my family didn’t start out with much. My parents told me that they had to borrow money in order to come to this country and get married, so they started out in debt. But to me, everyone I know started that way. I was still paying off school when I got married too (granted it was my younger sister’s school and not my own, but that was the deal we’d cut with my parents who had given their all for my older sister and me to attend MIT). My Mom made a game of bringing our red wagon around our neighborhood in the Spring to find things we could salvage. I thought Spring Cleaning was an actual holiday when I was little. We so looked forward to it each year! The wonders my father could do with some simple tools and paint. My mother was a whiz with the sewing machine. There wasn’t a couch she couldn’t reupholster or an outfit she couldn’t refit. And the garden she could grow! We had fresh tomatos, berries, scallions … every year! My mom was composting, reducing, recycling, and reusing way before it became fashionable to do so.
The challenge of growing up ABC was in having to react to others thinking that I had challenges when I felt no different from anyone else. My hometown was predominantly Irish Catholic though we had the occasional Jewish family or Italian family. My family was ostensibly the only Chinese family. But on the weekends, my friends all either went to CCD or Hebrew School or Sunday School and I went to Chinese school. It didn’t seem all that different from what everyone else was doing.
Being a woman in engineering was supposed to be a challenge too. But, I was always a tomboy and from school yard rough housing to playing little league baseball, being the surrounded by boys was so natural, I barely noticed it.
My family is the forever source of light and support in my life. If one were to define a challenge as something from which you learn, then being a wife and parent has been the greatest challenge in my life. I have learned the most from my husband and children. Rob and I became friends since that first day in Calculus class and had been partners in crime in a variety of shenanigans for almost 10 years when we had approached our parents about getting married. I believe my mother summed us up as the blind leading the blind. “Who will be the grown up in your family?” She asked.
Adulting is overrated. My husband and I have managed the past 26 years without either one of us having to admit to being an adult. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve never shirked our responsibilities, but then we’ve always had responsibilities. That is a part of being a member of society. We have just never stopped seeking and being motivated by fun. Two beautiful beings came into our lives and we were blessed to be a part of their childhood, honored to witness the wonder of their development and proud to see the brilliant, smart, responsible non-adults that they’ve become.
I know I look back at my life with rose tinted glasses and the older I get, the rosier everything is. But I know that whatever hardships and challenges I had growing up, I know there are others who’ve had it harder and more challenging than I. And if we don’t let them go, then we can’t move on.
I’ve always told my kids, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. So we meet every obstacle and challenge as an opportunity to grow and learn. Our strength, success and intelligence are all a testimony to the obstacles and challenges that we have faced. May everyone have the challenges and obstacles that we’ve had.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association (GBCCA) was founded in the mid 1950’s. We are a predominantly volunteer run, family oriented, cultural non-profit organization focused on education and cultural enrichment. GBCCA is best described as the union of many many clubs. We were formed to be a sort of home away from home for those recently from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or really anyone missing the Chinese Culture and wanting to find a little piece of that here in the US.
We recently had a nice young man of Jewish decent walk through our doors looking for a piece of the Chinese culture that he felt was missing from his life. He was born and raised in Newton where he learned Chinese in high school and subsequently went to China and worked there for several years. He recently returned to his home town and as happy as he was to be home and near family, he felt he was missing something until he wandered into our community center. He spoke fluent Chinese. He was looking for a little piece of Chinese culture in America, just like the rest of us.
GBCCA was a hub for those of us who lived outside the 128 circle. There have been Chinese in Chinatown since the 1800s. But finding Chinese in the suburbs was not as common for most of the 1900’s. Goodness, the Chinese Exclusion Act wasn’t fully lifted until the 1950’s. So, for the immigrant generation living outside of Boston in those times, GBCCA was a haven. A place where one could speak English and Chinese and everyone still understood you. A place where the kids could commiserate about having to play both the piano and the violin (because EVERYONE played either the piano or the violin, if not both) and therefore being impressed with those who were gifted and dedicated. A place where one could teach one’s children what it was like growing up in China or Taiwan or where-ever one came from. The membership was an extended family and the cultural center was a home away from home.
Growing up, it seemed my family’s whole social life revolved around GBCCA. There was a weekly basketball game that my father would sometimes join. My grandmother played mahjong. My parents participated in the Choral Society and ballroom dance club. There were ping pong tournaments, movie nights, seminars, art classes, music classes, adult parties, youth parties and often simply family parties. My sisters and I attended the weekly Chinese School. The community even vacationed together! GBCCA would arrange the annual “Chinese Family Camp” where over 50 families would all take the same week off and parents and children would occupy one of the campgrounds in western Massachusetts. I believe we spent several years at Camp Greylock after their regular campers had gone home for the season.
I guess that I am the most proud of GBCCA being the bridge and guide between communities, between two cultures that are near and dear to my heart. Our cultural center helps new immigrants of Chinese heritage integrate with their new home country. Through our Cultural Workshops, Dragonboat Festival and First Night participation, we have outreach programs to help others in the US to better understand the nuances of the Chinese people. We bring people together and help them better understand each other.
What were you like growing up?
What? I’m still growing up! 😂 I’m technically a middle child, but really I got to be both the adored little sister and had the pleasure of having the most amazing little sister who will always be my first “Little Girl” even though she is now the mother of four boys of her own! Okay, I suppose I did have to grow up a little bit, at least enough to raise two awesome kids, though my Mom would say that they raised themselves. I was blessed.
If my mom were to sum me up, she’d probably call me social, which is probably just a polite way of saying I talk a lot. She has a bunch of stories of when I was little and she lost me at the store, or park or beach and I was usually found chatting up some stranger and telling them our life story or perhaps my aunt’s false teeth or something. I was a tryer and a joiner. There wasn’t an activity I didn’t try, a sport I didn’t play. I was even one of the first girls in our town to qualify to play little league baseball back in the early 70’s. In high school I played varsity tennis, gymnastics, track and swim. And, of course, I was on the math team. I danced jazz and studied with a professional artist. Yeah, I was social which often got me into trouble but actually got me out of trouble too.
Now, my Dad would call me his numbers girl. Though both my older sister and I attended MIT, even she is prone to calling me the geek. I really do love numbers. My husband and I met when we bonded over discovering a five digit prime number on a sign (doesn’t everyone try to find prime factors when looking at numbers?). My Dad loves to tell about the time he made a cashier re-scan our order because her cash register total didn’t match the total I had calculated in my head. And yeah, I was right 😊.
I’m old! Talking about me growing up takes a long time 😂. I had fun. Great family. We moved around a lot. We didn’t have much. We didn’t miss much. Family. Friends. Community. That about sums it up, I hope!
Contact Info:
- Address: 437 Cherry St
West Newton, MA 02465 - Website: Www.gbcca.org
- Phone: 617-332-0377
- Email: gbcca.boston@gmail.com
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