[Music]
have you heard of the term fasion it's
short for a fake Asian I'm not sure if
it's something that my friends and I
came up with but that's basically what I
am Ephesian my name is haley yates i was
born in south korea and adopted at five
months old I've grown up here and lived
in Sydney my whole life my parents and
my extended family are all white
Australians for me I've only ever
identified as a proud Australian I don't
feel like I'm different I don't wake up
in the morning and consider how I can
live my best minority life I've I've
gotten used to the double take when
someone makes me for the first time and
my face and my accent doesn't quite
match the picture in their head I laugh
about it when people say but where are
you really from like I might be a spy
with a secret identity most of the time
it's easy to forget that people can make
assumptions about me just based on how I
look not long ago when I was at
university group assignments made up a
large portion of your marks
groups were often formed in the first
few weeks usually based on who you sit
with so in that time I'd noticed people
scanning the room as they walked in
evaluating their options they look in my
direction think it over and then they
sit at another table for a while I just
assumed it's probably because I'm just
not that smiley but several subjects
passed it was still bothering me until
one of my friends said Hayley it's
probably because they think you're Asian
so I decided each time I started a new
subject I would be that person that had
done all of the readings I'd put up my
hand and I would answer all of the
questions I felt like if I put in the
extra effort and I spoke up my
classmates would think I was somebody
worth working with after going above and
beyond in
to many subjects I realized I was making
myself work harder than everybody else
just to be seen
I found myself consciously and
subconsciously modifying my behavior to
manage these assumptions I found myself
not wanting to buy certain items of
clothing or wear my glasses to work in
case they looked too Asian for years I
didn't have a picture on my LinkedIn
profile because I didn't want anyone to
think that I wouldn't make a good
communications manager because English
looked like it might be my second
language I was secretly grateful to have
a westernized name and one day I
realized if this is what it's like for
me a fake Asian what's it like for
someone who's genuinely from another
culture it stands to reason if you erase
in a culture different to the one that
you end up working in you're probably
going to feel some pressure to adapt an
Australian study of people with Asian
backgrounds including India Pakistan and
Sri Lanka found that two-thirds of
people surveyed felt that they needed to
conform to anglicized ideas of teamwork
and leadership to be successful the
irony of this is that cultural diversity
it's actually great for business a
McKinsey study of over 300 multinational
companies found that companies which
were in the top quartile for ethnic
diversity
they were 35% more likely to have
financial returns above their
competitors and when you start to look
at it there's extensive research that
suggests just why this might be the case
culturally diverse teams can produce
more accurate work by tapping into a
wider variety of skills and experience
they're able to focus more on facts and
remain objective they're also more
innovative studies of showing culturally
diverse teams are more likely to develop
new products and they're also better
able to solve problems and make
decisions I don't mean the kind of
decisions like what are we going to
order at Yamcha I still get asked this
quite a lot
but decisions which reflect the
diversity of an organization's staff and
their customers so if it's so beneficial
for businesses to help people feel that
they can bring their whole selves to
work are we making it easy for them when
the topic of diversity comes up it's
often in relation to gender diversity
we've looked deep into the barriers to
gender equality at work the gender pay
gap female representation in senior
management and on boards the glass
ceiling we've become more and more
educated on how to tackle the problem
support groups quotas versus targets as
women we've been told to get mentored
reach higher lean in and speak up but
what about cultural minorities what if
you're Asian and female do I need to
lean in twice as hard
Asian American leadership author Jane
Horne coined the term the bamboo ceiling
similar to what the glass ceiling is for
women the bamboo ceiling refers to
barriers to people with Asian
backgrounds faced in workplaces with
Western cultures and when I first read
about the bamboo ceiling I felt a bit
guilty guilty how I'd handed myself in
those university classes and taken it
upon myself to manage other people's
expectations like I was somehow
reinforcing these multiple ceilings
earlier this year the ascend foundation
together with data from the US Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission though
tech company numbers on hiring retention
promotion of tech comedies in Silicon
Valley over a period of nine years while
Asians were the largest minority in the
industry even outnumbering white people
at an entry level they were the least
likely to be promoted into management
black and Latino representation had
actually declined and while white women
seems to be climbing the corporate
ladder minority women were just not in
fact
race had over three and a half times the
negative impact on career progression
than gender did probably the most
upsetting conclusion in a sentence
report was that the millennial
generation my generation is unlikely to
crack the cultural ceiling are we
seriously looking at another decade of
people thinking twice about using a
profile picture or their given names on
a job application when I think about
legacy it's not just something to be
posthumously preserved it's something
that should drive us forward into the
future and make us want to work towards
something better than what we have now
diversity and inclusion there's so much
more than a couple of mentions in an
annual report or even workshops on
implicit bias it's about shifting to a
more globalized mindset and expanding
our definitions of what teamwork and
leadership can look like it's time to go
beyond the demographics of this issue
the WHO and the white we need to be
looking at the how and the why authentic
unrestrained conversations to look deep
into the barriers that cultural
minorities and their employers face
because as far as I know there isn't
going to be a data point that's going to
tell you how it feels to think your
peers might be avoiding working with you
just based on how you look or how good
it can feel to look at your organization
and see diversity truly represented at
every level to break the glass bamboo
and whatever other feelings there may be
let's create environments where we can
bring our whole selves to work because
the next generation deserves to feel
like they are enough and because there's
real strength in our differences thank
you
[Applause]