Betty Liu, the first female and Asian student to be inducted into Central High School's Alumni Hall of Fame, is seen here with her twin sons, Dylan and Zachary, 14. Betty is also the first female Executive Vice-Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

by Len Lear

Since the inception of The Associated Alumni of Central High School (AACHS) Hall of Fame 46 years ago, only two women have been inducted. One was Quiara Alegría Hudes (254th graduating class), 41, who won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, “Water by the Spoonful,” and wrote the book for the musical, “In the Heights.” Hudes was profiled in the Local on July 30, 2015.

The other Hall of Famer is Betty Liu (250th graduating class), 45, who was both the first female and the first Asian student to be inducted into Central's Alumni Hall of Fame. Betty's meteoric rise in the business world has been staggering. A former Bloomberg TV anchorperson and author of the book “Work Smarts,” Betty is now Executive Vice-Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

Liu was born in Hong Kong, moved to the U.S. when she was three years old, and from age 12 was raised in Northeast Philadelphia. Her physician father, who still lives in Philly, is a retired internal medicine specialist, and she has one sister, who lives in Edison, NJ, and is a dental hygienist. “My parents, being Chinese, told me I had to have a 30-year plan,” Betty told us last week in a phone interview, “but I could not have anticipated where I am today, although I do think everything I have done has prepared me for where I am now.”

Betty is indeed on the business mountain top. After graduating magna cum laude in 1995 from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English, she started her career in financial journalism as a Hong Kong-based regional correspondent and the youngest-ever Taiwan Bureau Chief for Dow Jones Newswires.

After leaving Dow Jones, she worked for several years as the Atlanta Bureau Chief for the Financial Times, where she broke stories on top corporate and political leaders such as Coca-Cola ex-chief executive Douglas Daft and former Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli, among many others. Returning to Asia as an anchor and correspondent for CNBC Asia, Liu covered the daily market action in the Greater China region for all of CNBC's morning shows, including for CNBC's Squawk Box. Over the course of her career, she has also written for The Wall Street Journal and Far Eastern Economic Review.

Liu’s consummate professionalism at every step on the ladder elevated her to Bloomberg Television, where she was the anchorperson for "In the Loop with Betty Liu" from its inception in 2007 until the show's cancellation in June, 2015. Betty interviewed countless boldface movers and shakers in the corporate world. Who was her favorite? “Warren Buffet,” she said. “He really is down-to-earth, just like he seems off-camera, although he is one of the five richest people in the world. I also grew close to his son, Howard, also very down-to-earth.”

In 2016 Liu founded RadiateInc. com, a subscription website offering business micro-lessons from top CEOs and other heavy hitters. When Betty was interviewing corporate CEOs for her Bloomberg TV show, she would often keep asking questions after the cameras were turned off, like “How did you get to where you are in the company?”

“Their comments were so interesting that I thought it would be a good idea to put them on video, so I wound up with a library of lessons from CEOs. They are two-and-a-half minute bite-sized, entertaining doses of wisdom. We now have over 2,000 of these videos in our library. We began making them available to businesspeople on a subscription basis. (Betty would not say how many subscribers they have.) We are not taking any new subscribers, but eventually I would like to make the videos available to everybody. The sky is the limit with it.”

A sampling of the CEO videos includes those of John Foley of Peloton, Mindy Grossman of Weight Watchers, Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani, as well as Jack Welch, Ariana Huffington, Gary Vaynerchuk and many others.

Some of the issues they deal with are: “How Do You Find Great Talent? “What Do You Do When You Go From Friend to Boss?” “What’s an Effective Perk to Attract Top Talent?” “What Is Your Must-Ask Job Interview Question?” “How Do You Help Employees Adapt To Fast Changes?” and “How Do You Fire Someone?”

In June of this year, Radiate became a part of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and Betty was named Executive Vice- Chairman of NYSE, its first female chief, as of July 9. Liu has been charged with building the NYSE leadership network, cultivating connections through live events and creating opportunities for organizations to connect across the NYSE’s listed community of 2,400 companies.

But Betty has not forgotten her Philly roots. “I was at the Super Bowl (in February) rooting for the Eagles,” she said, “but they did not need me. About 80 percent of the people in the stands were Philly fans!”

For more information, visit bettyliu.com or radiateinc.com. You can reach Len Lear at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com