BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A candidate for Palo Alto school board once appeared on “The Apprentice” — and she was fired by Donald Trump in the very first episode.
Nicole Chiu-Wang, 34, was on the show in September 2010 for a season focused on how people were recovering from the recession.
Chiu-Wang said she was working as a lawyer at the time but wanted to make a career switch. She volunteered to be the project manager for a team of women tasked with designing and building a “modern executive workspace.”
Chiu-Wang left decisions up to her teammates, who ultimately put together a project that Trump didn’t like.
In the board room, Chiu-Wang’s teammates criticized her for being “wishy-washy.” Ivanka Trump asked Chiu-Wang why her teammates said she wasn’t a good leader.
“What I did wrong was I was not bossy,” Chiu-Wang said. “And the reason I wasn’t bossy is because, having worked with women, I feel like women rebel against bossy.”
At the end of the episode, Donald Trump said he would set up an interview between Chiu-Wang and the Miss Universe pageant franchise that he owns.
“You’re the project manager. You lost. Sorry,” Trump said after firing her.
Chiu-Wang participated in pageants when she was younger which helped her get scholarships and graduate from law school debt-free, she said in an interview last week.
“It was this incredible experience that got me so much opportunity and allowed me to be a leader, whereas people would write it off as just about looks. But that wasn’t my experience,” said Chiu-Wang, one of five candidates competing for three open seats on the school board.
Chiu-Wang was a runner-up in the Trump-owned 2008 Miss California USA pageant. She said the experience instilled in her leadership and public speaking skills that she still uses today.
“I’m a feminist who competed in pageants that went on ‘The Apprentice.’ I’m a complex person with intersectional identities,” she said in her interview.
Chiu-Wang said how Trump appears on TV is how she experienced him in real life.
“Nothing is a facade for the cameras,” she said.
Chiu-Wang joked that the experience was similar to her campaign for school board in 2022, when she was a relative newcomer to Palo Alto and didn’t win.
“Raising my hand to be a leader and losing is something I’ve done before,” she said.
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