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An Unplanned Leadership Journey 


By Ed Mauss

Editor-in-Chief: Rick Gibson

Publisher & CEO: Christopher Luna


How a South Korean immigrant with no five-year plan built one of America’s top-rated workplaces—and why she says the key to great leadership is forgetting yourself.


On her first day as the lowest-ranking member of a water agency’s public affairs department, Joone Kim-Lopez was handed a job description that left nothing to the imagination. “You are everyone’s peon,” her new colleagues told her. Her response? “I will be the best peon.” Seven years later, she was the CEO.


That moment captures something essential about Joone Kim-Lopez — her unshakeable pragmatism, her refusal to be diminished, and her conviction that showing up fully in whatever role you hold is the only real career strategy worth following. As the General Manager and CEO of Moulton Niguel Water District, a public utility serving 172,000 residents across six cities in South Orange County, California, she leads an organization that has been named a top workplace in Orange County eight years running and a USA Today Top Workplace USA five consecutive years—the first utility in the country to earn that distinction.



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