Frances learned the importance of diverse, international experiences early, first as a child raised in Taiwan, then as a high school student in Hong Kong, and then as an immigrant to the United States, where she obtained a degree in marketing from The University of Kentucky before taking on a systems engineer job at IBM. To this day, Frances credits the IBM recruiting manager who looked beyond the language barrier and her lack of IT experience with planting the seeds of what would become a lifelong passion: helping leaders and organizations with authentic inclusion practices that can drive disruptive innovation.
Frances has over 30 years of global business management, technology sales, emerging market development, and organizational leadership experience. She has held numerous executive management positions, including IBM’s first Chief Accessibility Officer. In June 2016, after retiring from IBM, she founded a global advisory firm to focus on helping organizations to operationalize inclusion as a strategic business imperative.
Her focus on human-first technology innovation and authenticity in the workplace led her to write her first book, Authentic Inclusion™ Drives Disruptive Innovation, which was recognized in 2019 at both the CES and SXSW conferences.
The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 brought on a fundamental shift in the importance of technology to how we work, learn, and live and how globally connected we are. Frances decided to expand her organization’s services to meet the challenging demands of leaders and organizations by launching FrancesWest&Co in 2023. With a team of culturally diverse experts with deep subject matter expertise in design and management, and industry knowledge spanning business and academia, Frances and her collaborators can help her clients with hands-on strategy, execution, and co-creation of transformative initiatives globally.
As a person who believes in harmony in life, Frances is always mindful of work-life balance. She not only looks for but creates opportunities to spend time with her two adult sons and their families in Boston and New York. Her latest interest includes learning how to garden and hike.
