Update: We are deeply saddened to share that Dr. Michele I. Shoresman (right) passed away on January 18, 2025, at age 75, after this story was originally published.

Quick Take

• A $100,000 gift—intended as a surprise birthday present—turns into a scholarship to support study abroad students in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s College of Education.
• The gift comes from Qiumei Yang, who earned her Ph.D.in economics at Illinois, and who would not have made it to America were it not for the generosity of College of Education alumna Michele Shoresman.
• Yang credits her Illinois education as being critical in her career as a leading financial executive in Asia.

Imagine receiving a check for $100,000 as a birthday gift. And turning it down.

That’s what happened to Michele Shoresman.

“I was shocked!” says Shoresman, ’71, Ed.M. ’74, Ph.D. ’89 ED. “My first thought was this doesn’t belong to me. I didn’t feel it was mine.”

The gift came from Qiumei Yang, M.S. ’92, Ph.D. ’96 BUS, who in 1990 came to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with less than $100 to her name. Her travel expenses were paid as a gift from Shoresman.

The two had met in summer 1988, when Shoresman was in Beijing, China, doing research for her dissertation. Yang, a graduate student at Peking University at the time, was assigned to translate for Shoresman and assist her as needed.

“At the end of Michele’s visit, she said I was such a bright student, and I should come to study in the United States for a Ph.D.,” Yang recalls. “But I just smiled and said I didn’t have the money to come to the U.S.”

Yang was making the equivalent of $10 a month as a graduate assistant. While cost of living in 1988 in China was low (as were the salaries—her parents made the equivalent of $30 to $40 a month)—Yang was living meagerly, paycheck to paycheck.

“I had never even dreamed of going to the U.S.,” she says. “Even to take the GRE, it cost $40. I told Michele I couldn’t even afford to take the test to get into grad school.”

“Well, you can now,” Shoresman replied, digging into her purse and fishing $65 out. She plunked the money into Yang’s hand and said, “There you go. Now go take the test.”

Good News, Bad News

Which led to good news and bad news.

First, the good: Yang took the GRE and the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exams and applied for and received a scholarship to Illinois.

Now, the bad: The cost of the flight from Shanghai to San Francisco—about $500—might as well have been about $5,000. There was no way Yang could afford it.

Shoresman, back in the States, was not going to let that hurdle stop Yang from coming to America. She sent Yang $1,000, along with a letter, by express mail. (Yang had no bank account that the money could be transferred to.)

Yang received the letter—but not the money. The envelope had been opened and the money—worth about $2,535 in today’s dollars—was gone.

Yang, distraught, called Shoresman and told her what happened. Shoresman was equally distraught but undeterred. She took out a loan and sent another $1,000 to Yang, this time via the person of Peter Schran, a professor in the Economics Department at the U. of I.’s Gies College of Business, who later became Yang’s professor at Illinois. Schran happened to be visiting Beijing and hand delivered the letter—this time with the money enclosed—to Yang.

“I remember Peter asked me what Qiumei could do, because she had no transcript and no test scores,” Shoresman recalls. “I told him that Qiumei is the best student in the best university in China.”

“At this point,” Yang says, only half-jokingly, “I knew if I didn’t come to the U.S., I would never be able to pay her back. Michele was never thinking about me paying her back, though. She just wanted to help me come to the U.S.”

Coming to America

When Yang arrived at San Francisco International Airport, a man in customs greeted her and said, “What’s your name, ma’am?” Yang stared back at him, not understanding his accent or his terminology. “We learned British English in China,” she says. “I couldn’t understand him. I’d never heard the word ‘ma’am.’ A Chinese person translated for me. I remember crying after that. Here I was, coming to work on my Ph.D., and I can’t even answer someone when they ask me my name!”

When Yang’s flight from San Francisco landed in Chicago, she was in awe. “I felt like this is another planet!” she says. “The sky is clearer. God created this place?? There is hot water coming out of the faucet! We never had that in China. We had to boil water! Everything was amazing. It was too much for me.”

Growing up in China, Yang’s family didn’t have a television until she was 18.

“We had heard about Michael Jackson, we’d heard of Madonna, but we knew so little about the U.S.,” she remembers. “And a lot of the things that we heard was not positive. America was capitalist. It was exploiting its workers. But I thought if Americans are like Michele, they’re not that scary! They’re wonderful people!”

Once in Champaign, Yang took an ESL (English as a Second Language) class, connected with other international students, and started to acclimate to a very different culture—thanks again in part to Shoresman.

“I was so lucky to have Michele here to help me,” Yang says. “She taught me about life, about cultural things. She gave me clothes. I still have a necklace that she gave me 30 years ago. I still keep pajamas that her mother gave to me. As a friend, as a person, as a mentor, Michele was everything for me.”

A Brilliant Career

Yang earned both her master’s degree and her Ph.D. in economics from Illinois and has gone on to a highly successful career. She is a managing director and advisor to the CEO at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX), a stock exchange operator akin to the NYSE or NASDAQ in the U.S. She also served as the Asia Pacific CEO at ICI Global, a global association of regulated funds and managers, from 2013 to 2018.

Yang has held significant positions in Chinese securities market regulation. She was deputy director-general in the China Securities Regulatory Commission's Department of Investment Fund Supervision and worked on its planning commission and as deputy director-general in the Department of International Affairs. She was also a member of the Hang Seng Index advisory committee, contributing her expertise to one of Asia’s most influential stock market indices. And she worked at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris as a consultant and taught economics as an adjunct professor at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her career has spanned academia, regulatory bodies, and financial institutions.

“Right now, I’m working for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, building bridges between Hong Kong and China,” Yang says.

"She Was My Family, My Mom, My Hero"

That career, she notes, couldn’t have happened without her education at the U. of I.

“Without my understanding of English and of the American system and industry, without my education here in the States, I would not be where I am today,” she says. “It has benefited my career greatly.”

And that education, of course, would not have happened were it not for the generosity—and tenaciousness—of Michele Shoresman.

“All of my life, I’m grateful to Michele,” Yang says. “She opened the door for me. She was my family, my mom, my hero. She was everything to me—a strong woman with a warm heart who did everything she could to help me understand U.S. society and the university.”

Yang laughs as she recalls the deep friendship that blossomed between the two.

“Every time I’d get an A in class, she’d invite me for lunch or dinner,” Yang says. “I kept getting As. Finally, Michele said, ‘You have to stop getting so many As! I’m inviting you too much!’

“I remember after a year of being over here, she said, ‘Qiumei, you’re a woman. You have to start wearing lipstick!’ I had never used lipstick my whole life. She took me to a store, and we bought Mary Kay products, and she paid for it all, including having my nails done. I can’t find the words to describe what Michele means to me. She gave me hope and so much more.”

Yang was determined not to have the gift-giving all one-sided. After all, beyond the clothes and cosmetics and lunches and dinners, Shoresman had spent $2,000 to get Yang to Champaign.

She immediately started paying Shoresman back. When her payments reached $1,200 Shoresman told her she had to stop.

“You paying me means a lot to me,” Shoresman said. “But it doesn’t matter. I want to support you with that money.”

Establishing a Scholarship

So, Yang let it drop. But she didn’t forget Shoresman’s generosity—or lose her desire to repay her in some way. In fact, many times over the years, Yang tried to give money to Shoresman but was continually rebuffed.

Yang learned to stop asking and took matters into her own hands last spring.

That’s when she sent Shoresman a surprise birthday gift—the aforementioned $100,000.

But, just as Shoresman’s original gift of $1,000 hit a major snag, so did this return gift.

“It took three weeks for Michele to receive it,” Yang explains. “But after two weeks, my bank figured the check got lost. So, I was told to cancel the check, which I did. Then, Michele received it, and I had to tell her, don’t cash it!”

Shoresman was totally fine with not cashing it.

“I didn’t feel it belonged to me,” she explains. “I told Qiumei it should go to the university.”

So, what was intended as a personal gift became—through the generosity of Yang for offering it and of Shoresman for redirecting it—the Michele I. Shoresman Study Abroad Scholarship Fund. One hundred thousand is going into the fund; another $20,000 was directed, at Shoresman’s request, to the scholarship in her husband’s name at the Grainger College of Engineering.

The Shoresman scholarship will support undergraduate students in the College of Education who participate in a study abroad program and display financial need.

“I think every student should have the opportunity to study abroad, and funding that opportunity should not be a factor,” says Shoresman, who enjoyed a long and illustrious career in international education for both the University of Illinois and Washington University in St. Louis. “I feel strongly that we have a lot to learn from other countries and that we need to be open to learning from others.”

“Scholarship funds like this support our students, future teachers, to study abroad,” says Allison Witt, director of International Programs in the College of Education. “Having this transformative experience will enable them to bring new cultural knowledge into their own future classrooms, communities, and lives. Preservice teachers will use this experience for years to come as they develop their own lessons, bringing best practices from abroad to benefit students here. Moreover, this first-hand experience will help them develop empathy when teaching students who are new to our culture and classrooms. The experience will benefit not only our students now, but future students, for years to come.”

"This heartwarming story demonstrates the power of alumni connections to create extraordinary opportunities,” says Heather Zorn, chief advancement officer for the College of Education. “We're deeply grateful to Dr. Yang for honoring Dr. Shoresman and providing our students with valuable experiences that will foster future connections."

Inspired to Help Others

Yang couldn’t agree more.

“I am grateful to the University of Illinois and sincerely hope that there will always be student exchanges, even between enemy countries, because we have to see each other and understand each other and to make the world a better place, we need to know each other better,” she says. “We have to build the bridges and windows; we have to try to understand and educate students from each other’s market.”

Yang is doing her part to make that happen. “Michele inspired me to help other people,” she says. That inspiration is evident in how Yang lives her life.

Yang and her late husband, Tang Xiao'ou, who cofounded one of China’s largest artificial intelligence firms, have supported 40 students in China for many years. She is also supporting many family members in their pursuit of higher education.

“Because of Michele, I have the mission to help others whenever I can,” she says. “And I have not stopped. I will do more.”