6 minute read
A Great ‘Canasian’ Success Story
Pun-loving Jacqueline VONG’98 is a key player internationally in toy licensing and children’s content—and outspoken about her heritage
By Berton Woodward Photo by Denise Militzer
About a year aft er Jacqueline Vong entered Branksome Hall in Grade 6, her world turned upside down. She had been living with her parents in the Bridle Path, enjoying the fruits of her father’s successful property development business. “We had a beautiful house with a pool and tennis courts,” she recalls. “I was driven to school every day.” Th en came the real estate crash of the early 1990s, and Jacqueline suddenly found herself in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in northwest Toronto. “I had to take the TTC, and I couldn’t invite anyone over.”
But don’t think Jacqueline is looking for your sympathy—far from it. For one thing, her family kept her at Branksome and began to recover fi nancially, and by Grade 11 or so her now-spacious house in North York was the goto home for gatherings and parties with her Branksome friends. And for another, you can’t help but be charmed by the way Jacqueline tells such stories about herself—with humour and honesty, seemingly as intrigued by them as you are. “Now I just look at myself and I can’t believe I grew up that way,” she says. “I’m so humbled that I even had the opportunity to have that type of life.”
Th e other thing you soon conclude is that Jacqueline is much too smart and full of moxie to be down for long. It doesn’t surprise you to learn that her outgoing personality easily took her into PR and marketing aft er she graduated from McGill University, and that she now runs her own company, consulting in merchandise licensing for children’s brands and developing kids’ content. In 2018, she was named to industry bible License Global’s list of Th e Infl uentials: Top 40 under 40. Earlier, during a four-year stint in Hong Kong, she was at the forefront of bringing the Minions franchise, of Despicable Me fame, and Peppa Pig, an iconic pre-school brand, into mainland China. At Branksome, she was voted a Chieft ain of the Clan McGregor and excelled as a student, enjoying math and languages. She now speaks—fl uently—English, Cantonese, French and Spanish, and gets by in Mandarin, Polish, Korean, Japanese and some Chinese dialects.
You might still wonder how her degree in economics and East Asian studies led to a job in marketing at Toronto-based Spin Master, now a global force in toys and entertainment. For that, you can check out her resume item from Junior Achievement, which she joined while at Branksome. Her team won JA’s national company of the year award for their product, big hot-chocolate cups called MMMugs, which she named as the team’s vicepresident of marketing and sales. And at university, she successfully ran for student council on the slogan, “Who Wants to Be a McGillionaire”? “I like puns,” she admits.
In that spirit, perhaps, since her parents came from Hong Kong and Shanghai, she likes to call herself a fi rst-generation “Canasian”— which she describes as “a hybrid of Chinese culture and very Western views”. But that’s another twist to her story, which she considers
especially important to tell. At Branksome, she says, “I struggled with my cultural identity.” Th ough the school “did a good job of getting everybody to accept each other,” there were only two or three Asians in her grade among day students. “Th ere were no role models—everybody that I wanted to be was Caucasian, on sitcoms and everything else. I would dye my hair blonde. I was the last person you would expect to have a career moment in Asia.”
Her thinking began to turn around in university and afterward, as she moved through progressively more senior roles at Spin Master, Corus, Nelvana and Mattel, where she handled the top-drawer Barbie line. “I embraced my Cantonese and Shanghainese heritage,” she says. “It’s just something that was triggered in me. I really wanted to learn more about the language and the food. The food was really important to me—like making dumplings with my grandmother.” Today she also embraces “being an empowered woman and person of colour amid the dialogue regarding race and privilege—it’s a very interesting time.” It’s a period, she adds, when women like her should “use your voice and don’t be afraid.”
She points to a recent public debate she had in a trade publication that got a little personal. “All my career, I have been underestimated due to my youthful appearance, despite a wealth of skills and experience. I chose not to be silent about being put down, as anti-Asian sentiment is rising due to the pandemic, and other gender and racial issues are very topical,” she says. “We are living in a unique time where we are writing our own history. I hope to inspire and empower the future generation to challenge the status quo to make the changes needed, as our voices are louder than ever. Being flexible, adaptable and pivoting to the ever-changing world is one of the only survival tips I can off er anyone right now.”
That kind of outspokenness hasn’t always gone smoothly for Jacqueline. In 2012, at about the point she felt she couldn’t go much further in Canada, she was suddenly off ered a job in Hong Kong, where her task would be making toy licensing deals for the China market. But she didn’t quite reckon with the political realities of the mainland. As an idealistic Canasian, she jumped into the 2014 protest fray in Hong Kong, cheering the Umbrella Movement and posting on social media in support of democracy. Th at appears to have caused trouble for her crossing into mainland China—she was detained several times at the border, once for six hours. Her boss fi nally asked her to stop going public with her politics.
Needless to say, she was deeply dismayed last July to see the tough national security law imposed on Hong Kong by China. “Hong Kong will never be the same,” she says sadly. “I’m very concerned for the citizens.”
But Hong Kong was very good for Jacqueline in other ways. She met her Texan husband Michal Garcia, a musician of Mexican and Slovakian heritage, while sailing on a party junk. And in 2016 she discovered she was pregnant and decided to have the baby in Canada. So they came to Toronto, where she has partnered with another Hong Kong connection, Nicole Schneiderjohn, a former TV executive, and formed Playology International. Th eir licensing clients include Spin Master’s Paw Patrol, the Australian kids’ juggernaut Th e Wiggles and the popular holiday brand Elf on the Shelf. Jacqueline has also mentored students at Ryerson University and Seneca College.
She has two kids now, one-year-old son Camilo and four-year-old daughter Serena, “a future CEO”. Her husband, she says, keeps her grounded. As an avid outdoor person, “he got me to stop and enjoy nature.” Good work, Michal: for this hard-driving woman whose business is toys, it’s no small achievement to get her to simply play. R
