‘Apprentice’ candidate fired by Trump seeks school board seat – Palo Alto Daily Post

BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily mail employee

A candidate for Palo Alto school board once appeared on “The Apprentice” — and she was fired by Donald Trump in the first episode.

Nicole Chiu-Wang, 34, joined the show in September 2010 for a season focused on how people recover from the recession.

Chiu-Wang said she was working as a lawyer at the time but wanted to change careers. She volunteered as a project manager for a team of women tasked with designing and building a “modern executive workspace.”

Chiu-Wang left decisions to her teammates, who ultimately created a project that Trump didn’t like.

In the boardroom, Chiu-Wang’s teammates criticized her for being “wishy.” Ivanka Trump asked Chiu-Wang why her teammates said she wasn’t a good leader.

“What I did wrong was that I wasn’t bossy,” Chiu-Wang said. “And the reason I wasn’t bossy is because, having worked with women, I feel like women rebel against bossy behavior.”

At the end of the episode, Donald Trump said he would arrange an interview between Chiu-Wang and the Miss Universe franchise he owns.

“You are the project manager. You lost. “I’m sorry,” Trump said after firing her.

When she was younger, Chiu-Wang competed in beauty pageants, 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 opened up so many opportunities for me and allowed me to take on a leadership role when people would dismiss it as just looks. But that wasn’t my experience,” said Chiu-Wang, one of five candidates vying for three open school board seats.

Chiu-Wang placed second in the Trump-led Miss California USA pageant in 2008. She said the experience informed her leadership and public speaking skills, which she still uses today.

“I’m a feminist who competed in beauty pageants on The Apprentice. I am a complex person with intersectional identities,” she said in her interview.

Chiu-Wang said the way Trump appears on TV is how she saw him in real life.

“Nothing is a front for the cameras,” she said.

Chiu-Wang joked that the experience was similar to her campaign for school board in 2022, when she was relatively new to Palo Alto and didn’t win.

“Raising my hand to be a leader and then losing is something I’ve done before,” she said.