#466: SPOTLIGHT: Mike Lee

#466: Mike Lee 

June 2, 2026

A Backbeat of Community

Question for Mike:  

Is there someone in your life that has UNEXPECTEDLY shaped your way of viewing the world, humanity, or the challenges you face?  What happened in the process to turn “unexpected” into extraordinary for you? How do you carry that influence today?

Mike's Response: 

My grandfather came to Detroit in the 1940s with his three older brothers. They left their wives and children (my grandmother and mom and aunts and uncles among them) back in Hong Kong for twelve years while they built one of the cornerstones of Detroit’s Chinatown. They sent cash home. The brothers saw their families in person maybe twice in all that time.

Growing up, I always wondered why Detroit. Why not New York or San Francisco, where Chinatowns already existed and they’d be surrounded by people like them.

He shrugged when I asked. They picked Detroit because nobody like them was there. They could stand out. They could be the ones who introduced Motown to Chinese American food.

He never framed it as a strategy. No journey narrative, no LinkedIn post about being a pioneer. It was just what they did because they thought it gave them the best shot.

I’ll admit this interpretation is mostly mine. He’d laugh at me turning it into an innovation lesson about white space, about skating to where the puck is going. But it’s the lesson that stuck. I look in the places other people aren’t looking, even when it means standing in rooms where I’m the oddball. That’s how I’m wired. And I guess it’s partly because he was wired that way too.

Photo of Mike cooking (sesame ramp noodles) for about 100 people over a giant wok on an open fire at a gathering of his chef friends in NJ weeks ago