The venue is about an hour outside of midtown New York. This gathering, which started nearly 30 years ago with nascent shipping software providers demonstrating their wares to the then-burgeoning Connecticut shipping cluster at a local restaurant, has grown into a world-class event drawing attendees from shipping centers throughout the world.
Likewise, the Commodores have been drawn from Europe and Asia, in addition to the all-important U.S. maritime markets. Ms. Chao joins a list of previous awardees including Worldwide’s Helmut Sohmen (1996), IMC’s Frank Tsao (2002) and Cosco’s Capt. Wei Jiafu (2009). In recent years, awardees have included Scorpio’s Robert Bugbee (2014), Capt. Panagiotis Tsakos (2015),Euronav’s Paddy Rodgers (2016) and in, 2017 Jack Noonan, from the chemical tanker side of the business.
Chao’s biography is extraordinarily impressive. She joined the “family business” - with the original Wah Kwong founded by her grandfather in the early 1950s - in 2002, after gaining grounding in the finance, insurance and Class sides of the business. She has recently served as chair of the Hong Kong Shipowners’ Association.
The importance of Asia was an important consideration as the CMA Board chose among a short list of impressive and highly qualified shipping industry leaders. In explaining the CMA’s choice of Chao as the 2018 Commodore, the CMA President, Joe Gross, who works for the d’Amico organization’s local office in Stamford, noted that: “For us here on the East Coast of the US the central role in and understanding of Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area and the remarkable One Belt One Road initiative is just icing on the cake for our community.”
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