Ms. Wanida, the Thai managing Private Investigator (PI)

Ms. Wanida was a journalist for several years, and was still working as a journalist when she met Mark. Wanida was working for a high society Thai magazine which literally translates to "Who's Who Today" (Pokkon Wannee). She interviewed and wrote articles on leaders in Thai society. For example, I remember when she interviewed a guy named Dr. Thaksin Shinawatra at his home, and she predicted that he would be Prime Minister in a few years... Wanida's knowledge in Thai society is quite vast. She knows who's who.

Wanida and Mark quickly became friends with mutual interests about the world before Mark knew any of this.

Also, Wanida could always arrange meetings for Mark with leaders in Thai society. She has poise and class.

In 1998, they first started to do private investigations together. Wanida has a lot of good contacts, to say the least. Wanida also has a lot of friends in journalism, including personal friends who have learned to do private investigations.

In the early years, Wanida performed many investigations in the field, but as time went on, Wanida moved into more of a managerial role, hiring some of her longtime close friends, and also advertising / interviewing / screening a few choice ladies with experience in expat & tourist venues and having key traits (as Wanida and none of her friends had any experience in the expat & tourist nightlife places).

There is a funny story I'd like to tell which fairly well sums up Wanida's role: One day, I was going thru Wanida's old hometown high school photos when I came across her high school ladies basketball team. Wanida is a fairly tall Thai lady so there was no surprise that she played basketball, but also in the team photo were some of her friends who also help us in investigations. Hmmm, their smooth team work in surveillance probably benefits from their teamwork in basketball, but I wondered who was the team captain. Answer: Wanida. I asked who they gave the ball to at the end of a close game to take the shots, and she said "me, and the other team expected it, 2 or 3 people cover me sometimes". It just all came together to me at that moment -- my successes with Wanida at the helm.

Wanida was born into a middle class family. Her father was a teacher and he raised her partly on English language newspapers. After graduating from the university (in 3 years, not the usual 4), she went immediately into journalism by just walking into the office of her favorite magazine and offering to work for free at first in order to prove herself. She was soon on salary.

Wanida is an avid reader of all sorts of stuff on the web and in paper print, ranging from what Mark calls trashy Thai gossip rags all the way up thru today's contemporary cutting edge leadership publications. She verbally translates a lot of this to Mark, being his filter, and Mark does likewise for Wanida for international news (without needing to translate -- Wanida's English vocabulary is quite good).

Wanida manages the private investigation business, and helped start our translation division several years ago though she handed over management of translation to a specialist after translation got too big (see also www.ThaiEnglish.com . Wanida now focuses on managing two sectors in our business -- private investigations and exports.