Shiao-Yen Wu

From file clerk to founder of WPI Real Estate

“I believe that the key to success in life is to get educated and work hard. I really see that as what the Seattle Colleges help people do.”

Shiao-Yen Wu, Founder, WPI Real Estate · Seattle Colleges Foundation legacy donor

Shiao-Yen Wu arrived in Seattle from Taiwan at 21, supporting her family on $375 a month as a file clerk while selling Avon and imported wigs on the side. The $3,000 she managed to save became two rental houses in the University District — and eventually WPI Real Estate, a company with holdings from Everett to Tacoma.

Through the Rotary Club of North Seattle she met North Seattle College’s president, who introduced her to the college’s programs and students. “I admire our Seattle Colleges students so much,” she says. “They work hard for everything they have in life, just like I’ve had to.”

Now she is leaving part of what she built to the Foundation — “not in order to give people a fish, but to provide that fishing pole — those skills — that can let people eat their whole life. For the most part, money doesn’t come easy for anybody. Mine didn’t come easy for me. I want to put it to the best use. I like the idea of what community college can do for the community. And that’s why I am making this gift.”

Read the full interview

Jon Fine & Paula Selis

A legacy gift for student completion

Jon Fine and Paula Selis have built their lives around public service, and now they’re turning that same commitment toward Seattle Colleges students with a powerful set of planned gifts. Their estate plans will fuel two funds: the Districtwide Completion Scholarship and the new Jon Fine and Paula Selis Endowment for Student Completion, both focused on students in their final one or two quarters who need a last financial push to finish strong and step confidently into the region’s economy.

Jon Fine, Immediate Past Chair of the Seattle Colleges Foundation, led United Way of King County as CEO for nearly 19 years and co-chaired the Foundation’s Equity Can’t Wait campaign. Paula Selis is a former senior attorney in the Washington State Attorney General’s Office and a trusted civic leader.

Read more in the 2025 Report to the Community (PDF)

Marilyn Smith Layton

Forty years at North

“Throughout my four decades of teaching, my students awed and inspired me.”

Marilyn Smith Layton, Faculty Emeritus, North Seattle College · Seattle Colleges Foundation legacy donor

Marilyn Smith Layton joined North Seattle Community College’s faculty in 1969, teaching her first classes at Nathan Hale High School while the campus was still being built. For forty years she taught writing and literature, creating courses still taught today — among them Reading and Writing Autobiography and Intercultural Communication.

Her devotion reached well beyond the classroom. She advised North’s Phi Theta Kappa honor society chapter and, in retirement, chaired the board of the Education Fund at North Seattle College. She also wrote three books, painted and took photographs — and never stopped championing what students could become.

In 2020, as North marked its 50th anniversary, Marilyn honored her late husband, Dr. Richard Layton, who also loved the college, by establishing the Marilyn Smith and Richard Layton Endowed Scholarship — a gift in both their names. She knew, she said, that “the journey can be arduous, especially for students of limited means who need to balance school and family with long hours at work. I want to live in a community made better by people who are realizing their potential through education.” Marilyn passed away in February 2026. Through the scholarship that carries her name and Richard’s, her teaching goes on.

Read her North Seattle College faculty emeritus profile