Coming from a high-profile family traditionally serving Chinese governments and society, she left the East while continuing to be a bridge of cultures.

Initially proving herself in university, she worked in diplomatic circles leading to the League of Nations for some years and then, inspired by aviator Li Xiaqing, she embarked on extended flights across the United States, speaking on international peace, pointing to the needs of China against the looming aggressions of the era, and then working with the United Nations.

A major transition was her conversion to the Baháʼí Faith in 1944 and she was centrally involved in the religion achieving its registration as a non-governmental organization with the United Nations, where she then continued her work for several years.

[2] Her parents were Fu Ching Yen and Siu Ying Chow, the extended family being prominent under Sun Yat-sen.[3] Her baptismal name was Hilda.

[5] Her family returned to China and then back in the States again for more work in public health, when at the age of about 16 she took the university entrance exam as a cultural exchange student without permission of her parents and won entry into Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

The year before her family returned to China, in 1923, an uncle, Dr. Y. S. Tsao, then president of Tsinghua University of Beijing, had heard of the Baháʼí Faith through Martha Root and then joined the religion.

[1] At the end of their service, there was a party which included meeting Li Xiaqing and together they worked to make a presentation promoting Chinese women in flight.

She then served formally at the League of Nations for three years including working with committees addressing issues of trafficking in women and children in 1937.

[3] In December 1941, she witnessed the marshaling of Americans after the attack at Pearl Harbor and as the Japanese arrived at Hong Kong while performing at a party for diplomats and Chinese leaders.

[3] She was moved by the spontaneous gestures of welcome and care shown between individuals society normally kept apart as the material demonstration of the ideals of a worldwide unity across all humanity.

[14] And she dwelt on the turning point of her plane crash more during a radio interview later published in World Order (see Baháʼí literature#Periodicals).

"[1] She joined the UN Department of Public Information[3] and traveled increasingly for the Baháʼí Faith and comparing the peace plans then proposed.

[18] She soon met and married John Gifford Male on May 15, 1948; in 1946, he had secured a job in the United Nations Secretariat in the Human Rights division following being Eleanor Roosevelt's private secretary.

She went to school at Columbia University, getting a degree and experience as a science librarian and gained employment in the field in the Brooklyn Library.

Her longtime colleague at the Baháʼí International Community, the name of the religion's NGO, Mildred Mottahedeh, underscored her service: "This noble lady played an important role in the development of the Baha'i Faith in the international field, and it was through her efforts that the Baha'is began their work with the United Nations",[25] and wrote a memorial.