Gong is now in his second year as president of the Seattle Jaycees and chairman of the Uptown Stroll, the annual festival of arts and entertainment for the lower Queen Anne neighborhood. This December he was elected president of the Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce.
And he works for a living, as a personal banking officer for U.S. Bank, currently out of its Rainier Valley office.
Even his job has a community service aspect. Gong said he took the job, in part, because the company encourages employee volunteerism and community involvement. The company also endorses Gong's leadership roles in the Queen Anne community.
The energetic Gong admits this is the fullest plate he's ever had. But he believes in combining business and volunteerism. The belief must be strong because, within two months of moving to Seattle in January 2001, he was already involved with the Jaycees as its financial vice president.
Role models
"My father was an attorney by trade and was a role model for being community oriented and business-oriented at the same time. It was a natural progression for me, watching him mix his career with his civic responsibility," Gong said.
Gong's father was the first Asian American elected to the House of Representatives in Florida. After two terms in the House, he went on to serve in the Senate.
Another illustration of the merit of community involvement came from Gong's grandfather, who opened a grocery store and grew it into a chain that expanded throughout Florida.
"[My grandfather] worked with other Asian businesses, helping bring other stores together, which is what made him successful. I like to think I have a lot of that in me," he said.
While in high school, Gong had his own epiphany about the worth of volunteering beyond its contribution to the community. He donated his time to a number of charitable activities, but working with the Special Olympics cemented his appreciation of volunteering.
Gong initially felt sorry for the people participating in the Special Olympics, seeing them as disabled because they had trouble doing such basic tasks as walking.
"Then you see them line up and race or do the discus throw, and you learn how they're not disabled by any means - because they don't see themselves as disabled. I started feeling sorry for myself. I thought they were the ones who were helpless, but they're probably more in tune with themselves emotionally and mentally than I am," Gong recalled.
It was a lesson in not judging others by their exteriors that Gong took to heart, and he realized how much he could learn from volunteering.
His charitable efforts continued at Florida Southern College through his fraternity, including a children's day that was supposed to be a punishment meted out by the dean to Gong and his cohorts for putting on a kegger. The event ended up being so successful and attracting so much media coverage that the dean was infuriated.
Gong graduated from Florida Southern College with a major in business management and minors in communications and economics.
After college, when Gong's work as an asset manager for a large real estate trust moved him around the country, he joined the Jaycees in every state where he lived, serving at the local, state and national levels. In 1993, he was recognized as one of the 10 top speakers nationally in the Jaycees Speak Up program, a feat he reprised in 2002.
Family ties
Family is also the tie that brought Gong to Seattle. Gong, raised in a family of five siblings in Miami, had jobs that bounced him around the country for several years. Eventually, he began to miss being near family, and he wanted to be on the West Coast. Conveniently, he had a sister in Los Angeles, Calif., and a married brother with a son in Seattle.
"I was miserable at work because I was so far away from everyone. I wanted to be an active uncle. I don't want to be the guy that visits them three times a year," he said.
Gong got his wish.
"One cold winter day in November or December of 2000, when the snow started to pile up outside my apartment in Chicago, I picked up the phone and called my brother and said, 'I'm ready to come out there' - we'd been talking about it for some time. And he said, 'Come on out,'" Gong recalled.
Gong gave away much of what he owned and put the rest in storage.
"I lived with my brother and his wife for the first three months, and I saw my nephew every single day," he said.
And, no matter how busy his life gets, Gong makes time for his brother's family, which now includes a daughter.
Gong's schedule is demanding. The Jaycees is a leadership training and community service organization for young people, and it happens to have a multimillion-dollar budget. The Uptown Stroll is a growing event, still in its infancy. And Gong is working on a plan for getting the Queen Anne Chamber more actively involved and recognized in the community.
Always thinking about how he can improve the organizations he leads, the last book he read was "Gung Ho," which focuses on how to form a team based on trust and respect while recognizing goals and objectives. He said he'll be giving his Jaycee board members pop quizzes periodically on each chapter.
So it's no surprise he gets about five hours of sleep a night, which he said is plenty for him. If he ever gets any time off, he'd like to spend some of it playing sports or cooking.
"Like a lot of families, we grew up around the kitchen. We loved to eat to we loved to cook. By high school, I could make dinner like it was no big deal," he said.
When summing up the importance of volunteering, Gong harkens back to his experience at the Special Olympics. "People say nothing is free in the world anymore, but that's not true. Volunteering costs nothing. Sometimes those are the things that have the most value, the things that are free, so to speak."
Anyone interested in contacting Gong about getting involved in the organizations he heads can reach him at joegong@seattlejaycees.org.
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