Wei Li checks many diversity “boxes,” including gender, nationality, race, culture, education, and work experience in various geographic locations. Her superpower is organizing systems, motivating people, pushing technology forward and daring to be different. As senior vice president of D&E software, Wei has established herself as a formidable leader in the Dutch working culture and within Development & Engineering. To give some perspective into the importance of her position, D&E is ASML’s largest sector, with more than 15,000 employees, including more than 2,000 working for software.
A highly technical person trained in electrical engineering, computer sciences and solid state physics, Wei also possesses impressive soft skills, rivaling those of any global leader. That left-brain, right-brain versatility makes her a role model for Fe+male Tech Heroes.
She chooses to advocate for women and help them advance not because they are women, but for their abilities. She embodies the quote from Verna Myers’ insight: "'Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.' You can hire all kinds of people, but they will be on the sidelines until you include them in the roles to which they contribute their best capabilities,” quotes Wei Li.
Her mantra is that the level of diversity within ASML is a parameter, but inclusion is the tool that allows change to mentalities and ingrains new behaviors in the working culture.
Wei rallies women to embrace the differences between females and males. She believes we need to utilize and highlight the advantages of being a woman, such as resilience, humility, empathy, willingness to cooperate and emotional intelligence. These traits contribute to better workplaces.
In that spirit, she has built a female leadership network to make D&E more attractive to women, and this group now functions within the broader Women at ASML group. The network serves as a platform to empower, mentor, inspire and connect. “I’m doing this for everyone who needs this network to support each other and find each other. I find myself constantly inspired by the diverse range of female leaders who dare to share their personal challenges,” Wei says.
The impact of this initiative is tangible. For example, the network helps women find internal job postings they otherwise may not have known. The percentage of women in senior management rose from 8% in 2021 to 11% in 2023, according to recent ASML statistics.
Change agent
Wei has a long and impressive history as a change agent starting from her youth … and an incredibly unconventional career path.
Growing up in China, Wei was driven by an internal force from an early age to be the best. Her parents worked in the biomedicine and economy fields, and she went to a science-oriented elementary school. “I was always trying to be the best student in class. I was very interested in physics and mathematics. Solving math problems from Russian math books used to be my escape from house chores,” Wei says.
She attended Beijing University – considered one of the most prestigious institutions in China – for a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.
Although she hadn’t set foot outside of China before and didn’t master well the language, Wei took a huge step forward and signed up to pursue a PhD in physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Along the way, she met professors from Argonne National Lab in Chicago who were in the process of building a High Performance Computing (HPC) lab in LSU. She joined their five-year, dual PhD program in physics and computer science as the first student. “There I found my passion in computational physics. And I was very interested in how to design a parallel algorithm and translate to computer language in order to run on distributed processors,” Wei said of her time as an LSU Tiger.
This period also presented personal challenges, as she had her first child while in the program. She struggled with how she would finish. “My advisors were very encouraging and pushed me to continue,” Wei says.
Moving from academia to the tech world
After her PhD, she was ready to move out of academia but wasn’t certain how attractive her advanced degree would be to the corporate world, going so far as to prepare a resume that didn’t include her PhD degree.
Wei found her next challenge at the startup Informatica. Although she was questioned whether she could work days, nights and weekends while raising a young child, she accepted the challenge and jumped headfirst into startup life.
“I started as a quality engineer and grew to a senior QA Manager of a highly diverse team of engineers from many cultures and various background. Being the best and winning customer trust have always been my personal and my team’s driving forces,” Wei says.
She had her second child during those years and worked through the startup boom and the wild ride of Informatica’s IPO and stock splits.
“After seven years, I started to think, ‘What’s next?’ I put my resume out and suddenly got a lot of calls. I wanted to repeat my success with startups, so I joined three more startup companies in two years. I just wanted to try different things.”
She learned a lot and traveled a lot, to India and China working on a variety of projects, evolving from a quality manager to an engineering manager “who can do everything,” she says.
At these four startups, she gained business insights, from IPO success to a bankruptcy.
Startup background meets corporate life at ASML
After honing her entrepreneurial and management skills in academia and startups, Wei moved to the corporate world in 2007 after an unexpected call from Jim Koonmen at ASML in Silicon Valley. Now a member of Board of Management, Koonmen was then a vice president of operations at Brion, a startup acquired by ASML. He was looking for someone with her exact profile, including a background in physics and software engineering and management experience.
Wei hesitated though, not knowing anything about photolithography or semiconductors. After an encouraging email from Koonmen, she joined the company.
Her first job at ASML drew on her startup acumen. ASML had just bought the computational lithography startup Brion and needed someone to integrate the silicon valley software startup into a highly functional and process-centered Dutch manufacturing company. Brion had a tribe of smart, yet proud, founders and Wei had to prove herself that she was up to the job, while managing a team of mixed background that wasn’t performing – but she couldn’t let anyone go.
Wei needed to transform Brion engineering environment into a completely new system and along the way, she had to convince people that she wasn’t moving too quickly. Wei was hands-on and would work through weekends alongside the founders and engineering teams to make progress and earn their trust.
After leaving her legacy on Brion, she accepted a new assignment from ASML management to work in the Netherlands in 2019. Working with a strong engineering team, she started her new challenge to transform and enhance scanner software development with modern technology. Her journey at ASML exemplifies her ability to adapt, innovate and lead in complex technological environments.
Wei doesn’t like to be labeled a tech hero. In fact, the label makes her a bit uncomfortable. Yet, she is someone who leads by example, who sees the value in connecting people to help others advance in their careers. “What is the purpose in life if you can’t bring positive impact to others?”