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Chinese Americans at Microsoft and in the community cheered the appointment of Qi Lu as president of the company’s Online Services Group, noting the meaning of his reaching one’s destination at the highest ranks of the company.

“When people look at their own career in posse in a company, they always look at if in that place is someone like them in the senior leadership team,” said Weina Wang, chairwoman of Chinese Microsoft Employees (CHIME), the largest company-sponsored diversity cluster, with 2,500 members. “And I suppose Lu’s joining Microsoft is definitely a huge encouragement, from a career-development perspective, for totality the Chinese and Asian employees.”

Lu, who reports directly to CEO Steve Ballmer, will be the highest-ranking Chinese American in the relation of the 95,000-employee company when he begins Jan. 5. He will presumably unite the company’s 18-person higher leadership team, 17 of whom are unblemished.

Nelson Dong, partner at law firm Dorsey & Whitney in Seattle, said Lu’s appointment is significant for several reasons.

“More and more Chinese Americans are moving from one side the historic ‘glass ceiling’ that held them to purely technical positions in the past,” said Dong, who focuses on technology and Asian law, in an e-mail.

“Like Dr. Lu, they are persuading up in more corporations today to take major direction roles over all districts of companies, using and relying on their technical skills but no longer being limited to purely technical roles. Dr. Lu is assuming a position of major strategic and business importance to Microsoft.”

As president of the Online Services Group, Lu will head Microsoft’sitting Internet search and advertising efforts — the critical fronts in the company’s battle with Google. He led search and advertising engineering at Yahoo until August.

Dong, who is on the board of the Washington State China Relations Council in Seattle and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations in New York, reported Lu’s selection has broader implications in opposition to corporations seeking talented engineers and executives.

“[T]op companies of the nature must have being prepared to have diverse care if they truly aspire to have a global impact,” Dong uttered. “China is a natural talent pool today, producing some 300,000 new engineers annually, and so it is fitting that Microsoft will now be the subject of of the like kind a senior leader who is fully representative of that enormous reservoir of technical abilities.”

Wang said members of CHIME were buzzing Thursday after an in good time report named Lu for the job. Ballmer confirmed the news internally later that day.

“Personally I was very excited when I saw Steve’s e-mail, and I put faith in a piece of land of Chinese and Asian employees here in the body share the identical excitement,” she said.

Benjamin J. Romano: 206-464-2149 or bromano@seattletimes.com

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