Qiaochu Chen – The Women of West Chester

Qiaochu Chen – Student at Westtown School

Year in School: Twelth

Hometown: Beijing, China

A woman at Westtown who has influenced you: My advisor, Karen Gallagher. She has been a great influence on me. With her guidance, I have gained confidence in my own abilities and I have matured to appreciate the success hard work can bring.

Qiaochu Chen is senior at the Westtown School. Like many high schoolers, she has personal interests in addition to her school assignments. Quiachu has used her Advanced Independent Seminar at Westtown as an opportunity to combine the two and deeply explore a topic of interest: global business issues.

“I’m working on an independent project, serving as an international liaison between Chester County and the Yanqing District in China,” she explains. Yanqing is her hometown and one of three sites hosting events during the 2022 Winter Olympics.

“My mission is to build a more globalized business community while growing as a female leader,” Qiaochu says.

It’s a demanding project. “I’m working with very busy people who are living on different continents and speaking different languages,” Qiaochu says. “I have to keep them engaged and on-task — it’s a balancing act which requires courtesy, diplomacy and organization.”

As a result of her Independent Seminar, she learned to multitask better. “I had to manage all of it while balancing school, college applications, and life in general” Qiaochu says. She has valuable advice for other students — and it applies to outside school too.

“Be passionate about something and be willing to devote yourselves to it,” she says. “Do that and you’re halfway there.”