Corporate America supports diversity for a variety of reasons, commercial as well as ethical. Skilled Asian American engineers, IT pros and other techies are in demand, and not just because they are very good at what they do. Another factor is recruiters' perception that the Asian culture stresses a deep dedication to a hard, meticulous work ethic.
Asians were among the wave of immigrants that helped build America in the mid-1800s. New waves continued to arrive throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the point where the population of the United States is now about 4.5 percent Asian.
And the influx continues today. In recent years, systems analysts, programmers, electrical and electronics engineers and folks with other computer-related occupations have topped the list of work-visa applicants. The largest numbers come from India, China, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Pakistan, in that order.
Affinity groups pitch in
Whether seeking a job or progressing in one, both "new" Asian Americans and those with a long history in the U.S. may find themselves up against stereotypes. Perhaps it's not so bad to be considered the "model minority," but it's not so good to be seen as part of a group that's deficient in English language and interpersonal skills. And even the "model minority" stereotype, like any characterization based only on outward attributes, rubs many the wrong way.
At many major corporations, Asian and Asian American affinity groups combat the stereotyping. They provide networking and career-development services, help new arrivals become more comfortable in the workplace, and expose management and other employees to the wide range of Asian cultures.
"For a newcomer, it can be challenging just to attend a meeting," says Kodak's Dr Tom Pian, a Michigan-born Chinese American who helped to establish Kodak's first factory in China. "No matter how industriously you've studied the English language, you find that Americans, at least at Kodak, tend to talk very fast and use acronyms not known in other places."
APEX at Kodak
Besides his day job as a project manager at Kodak (Rochester, NY), Pian is president of the company's Asian Pacific Exchange (APEX) group. The aim of APEX is to enhance cross-cultural communication and support employees from the Asian and Pacific regions. This can make a real contribution to the bottom line in a company where headquarters-based employees interface on a regular basis with colleagues all over Asia.
As a result, people who profit from APEX are divided almost equally among foreign-born Asians, long-term Asian Americans and non-Asian employees who have business dealings with people in Asia.
"Some of our advice is very simple," Pian notes. "We instruct people to send very clear faxes with agendas in advance of teleconferences, and to speak slowly during such calls. We also offer seminars geared to Asian employees, helping them develop traits like risk-taking and assertive communication, that are valuable in corporate America but run counter to Asian culture."
An organization like APEX improves the means by which companies conduct their business, and brings Asian viewpoints into strategic discussions. "It helps Kodak make decisions that involve understanding of how others think and feel," says Pian.
Given the potential for business development in Asia, that can be very important.
Asians at IBM
At IBM (Armonk, NY), Asian employees constitute more than 10 percent of the workforce and account for one-third of the company's PhDs, and the Asian group is one of eight task forces that shape IBM culture. Jackie O'Sullivan, a Japanese American and a program manager for IBM's Asian constituency, explains that the group has three primary objectives.
The first is tending the pipeline, which focuses on retention efforts like mentoring. A cultural objective addresses IBM's image in promotion and advertising.
The group's leadership objective is typified by career development programs offered in concert with Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics (LEAP, www.leap.org). Taught primarily by Asians, the programs "address what you need to be successful from the perspective of being Asian," says O'Sullivan.
"As a group, Asians are making a large contribution here," O'Sullivan declares. "It's important for management to realize that some of our Asian employees are ready to go far beyond the stereotypical technical professions."
In fact, many already have. From 1995 to 2003, the number of Asians in IBM's top executive ranks increased by better than 500 percent.
Dr Tom Pian: managing projects at Kodak
Dr Tom Pian, president of Kodak's APEX group, is a first-generation Chinese American. The son of a university professor, he grew up in Michigan. As early as sixth grade, Pian was telling his friends he would be a doctor one day. Presumably he meant a PhD, although "That was before I even really knew what a PhD was," he says.
True to his prediction, Pian completed a PhD in material science at the University of Wisconsin in 1982, following an MS from U Wis and a BS in physics from Stanford University (Stanford, CA). Today he's a Kodak program manager for solid-state image sensor solutions.
He joined Kodak with two years of experience at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, NJ), where he worked as a researcher while completing his thesis. His first job at Kodak involved research in the company's apparatus division.
In 1984 Pian moved to the materials analysis lab, supporting research and manufacturing development. From 1988 to 1991 he worked in electronic production development, overseeing Kodak's relationship with Microelectronic Computer Corp, an Austin, TX-based advanced computer technology consortium. His job was to ensure good technical transfer of projects and people.
In 1991 he began working in manufacturing engineering for thermal color printers, a project related to early digital cameras developed for the medical industry.
In 1995 he was sent to Shanghai, China on a long-term assignment: helping to establish an electronic products manufacturing plant. It was a big change for an American-born Chinese, "kind of a reverse culture shock," he says. His wife was born in Beijing, but it was a shock for her, too.
Pian arrived in China fairly fluent in Mandarin Chinese, thanks to childhood exposure and college courses. But he soon realized it would be more useful to get the engineering staff communicating in English than for him to improve his Chinese. "I was going to leave China eventually, but they were going to have to work and communicate with the worldwide Kodak community," he explains.
He worked with a general manager, also from the U.S., to build and outfit the facility. Besides getting elevators to work and arranging employee transportation, "We had to recruit, train and advise the employees, and bring Kodak values and practices to our first factory in China," he says.
He returned to Rochester in 1997 and began work as project manager for professional digital cameras. He managed several cameras and a 35mm film scanner, and helped coordinate relationships between Kodak and Asian companies like Nikon and Canon.
In 2003 Pian moved into his current program manager post, where he's been involved in the development and delivery of high-performance image sensors. The work is a big challenge, he says. "We have to keep projects moving forward on schedule across various departments."
Linda Marshall: at Kodak, the "technical challenge of learning"
Linda Marshall is the daughter and sister of engineers. Her parents are first-generation Japanese Americans who moved from Hawaii to Harrisburg, PA. Marshall received her BSChE from Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA) in 1976.
After five years with DuPont's photo products and petrochemicals divisions in Wilmington, NC and Rochester, NY, she left to start a family. In 1985 she got a job with Kodak's coating technology group in Rochester, and was soon invited to join the company's special opportunity graduate program. She began work on an MS in applied mathematical statistics at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Shortly before completing her degree in 1987, Marshall became a QA engineer. She was sent on special assignment as a quality consultant at a Kodak finishing plant in France.
The stint there "really cemented my learning," she says. "Before that I was an engineer making a conscious effort to switch to a QA orientation. There I was focused on QA all the time."
Marshall returned to Rochester as a supervisor responsible for quality strategy with shared machines. After a year and a half she returned to work as a coating engineer, then supervisor.
That has become the pattern of her career. She has continued to change jobs, generally every year or two. She's worked in manufacturing commercialization, R&D, manufacturing and maintenance supervision. Just this January she became a ninety-two machine functional manager.
"Movement within the company seems to be getting easier," she says. "I think that technical professionals can probably do just about anything they want to here. It's great to be in a large company!"
Marshall enjoys "the technical challenge of learning." She likes to meet and work with a variety of people, including the new friends she made when she recently became involved with APEX.
Ray Ng: infrastructure architect at Aon
When Ray Ng was seventeen, he and his mother moved from Hong Kong to Chicago to join relatives. He planned to study chemical engineering in the new country, but instead he went into communications. He's now an IT infrastructure architect at financial services company Aon (Chicago, IL).
Ng started at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). During his first summer vacation he took a job in computer engineering at Sprint (Chicago, IL), the telecom giant. The company liked his work so well, it offered to pay for his education if he would switch to a telecom major. He didn't need much persuading.
In the fall of 1992 Ng transferred to Northwestern University (Evanston, IL). He took night classes while working at Sprint full time, moving up to senior network engineer.
In 1997 he was asked to relocate to Kansas City. He didn't want to leave before completing his degree, so he found a new job with Anixter (Glenview, IL), an equipment distributor for the communications industry, which continued to cover his tuition.
As a data network engineer for Anixter, Ng enjoyed broadening his perspective. "At Sprint it was technical only. I could be a total geek and get away with it. But Anixter was a company focused on sales and I had to speak the language of my internal customer," he says.
Two years later, Ng made a strategic decision to tackle the challenges of a different industry. He joined Moore Wallace (Chicago, IL), a bulk printing company, as a network architect.
"It was a very different mentality," he says. "I learned how businesses react to various economies and how to speak the languages of technical people and plant managers." In 2000 he completed his BS in communication systems.
Ng moved to Aon in 2001. He began as a manager of network engineering, and moved into his infrastructure architect job in a departmental reorganization. He likes it very well, because he really prefers hands-on to managerial responsibilities. His primary focus is on his intra-company customers, the insurance brokers, underwriters and HR folks.
Ng was recognized in 1998 as one of 300 bright techies in the International Engineering Professionals Who's Who, published by the International Engineering Consortium (www.iec.org). Formerly an evening instructor at Northwestern, he now teaches at a local community college where he feels he can have more influence.
Having grown up bilingual in Hong Kong, Ng never faced serious language barriers. But he understands the career implications of good speech. "At the technical level you're primarily dealing with equipment," he says. "But when you get higher in the company and have to interact with people like brokers whose lingo you don't know, language can become very important."
Ng enjoys bringing his Chinese background into his dealings with people. "I like to take new acquaintances to a restaurant in Chinatown and order up dishes not on the menu," he says. "And I often use stories from old Chinese philosophers like LaoTzu to explain my theories. I find it easier to grab attention from my audience that way because it's so different from what everybody expects."
Yen-Ping Shan leads product development at ADP
Yen-Ping Shan is VP of product development in the employer services division of ADP (Roseland, NJ), the payroll, human resources and benefits administration services company.
He earned his 1984 BSEE at National Taiwan University, and after two years of compulsory military service headed to the U.S. for his PhD. "I come from a constant-learning mentality," he says, and it's a good thing, because although he could read his textbooks just fine he couldn't speak English very well.
When he got to the University of North Carolina, Shan spent a great part of his first six months learning the language. He learned it well, but with a Southern inflection that often got surprised reactions, he says. In his free hours, he supplemented his lessons by watching closed-captioned TV.
In 1990 he completed a PhD focused on object-oriented programming and its application to user interfaces. Then he joined IBM in Research Triangle Park, NC as part of a team collaborating with a Microsoft Windows 95 interface group. He led IBM to embrace Apache, which helped take the Web server software to better than 50 percent market share, and IBM helped him become a U.S. citizen.
At the end of 1998 Shan moved north to his current job at ADP. "The challenges are those of any technical job," he says. "I have to balance various priorities and requirements."
Heading up a staff of 200 who matrix-manage another 200 individual contributors, Shan divides his time between technical and managerial functions. "I enjoy the management but I'm not letting the technical connections go.
"Part of my job is to make sure that everyone is productive," he says. "I enjoy sharing knowledge and my experience."
A few years ago ADP sent Shan to the general management program at Harvard Business School (Cambridge, MA). There, he finally learned to adapt certain aspects of his Chinese heritage.
"When I was first in the U.S. I was very humble, as I had been taught to be in the Chinese culture. Here it is advantageous to be more direct and aggressive. It took me some time to get used to the new style."
Qin Zhang manages programming at Primavera
Qin Zhang loved computers even before high school. He learned Basic and the Apple system, and went on to study EE at Shanghai JiaoTong University. Then he transferred to Florida Atlantic University to be near his brother. He began to think of Florida as a second home, became a fan of the Miami Dolphins football team, and completed a BS in CS and engineering in 1992.
He went to Dartmouth College (Han-over, NH) to earn his MS and PhD in CS, focusing on multimedia studies and computer image compression. Now he's a programming manager in San Francisco, CA for project-management software maker Primavera Systems (Bala Cynwyd, PA).
Although he had studied English in China, "When I arrived in Florida I was afraid to open my mouth," he says. He taped class lectures and played them over and over at home until he could understand them.
At Dartmouth, Zhang had good luck. His helpful adviser made all the difference, he says. "He worked with me through five, six, even seven drafts of papers, and then my thesis," says Zhang. "He took the time to help me."
Once he had his PhD Zhang was recruited by Microsoft (Redmond, WA) as a developer on its desktop project-management software. Then he became a programming manager for software development for Evolve Software (San Francisco, CA), which was purchased by Primavera in 2003.
Zhang's job is always challenging, and he likes to encourage and support the development of his team members. "I like to see people grow. I enjoy creating values for customers and seeing products be successful.
"Every move I've made has been better than the one before," Zhang reflects with pleasure.
Sharon Chen works on the Microsoft Money website
Sharon Chen's family is from China, but she was born in New Jersey. She acknowledges that she's always been drawn to puzzles and brain teasers. Building on that interest, she earned a BS in engineering and CS from Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) in 1994.
She went to work right after graduation as a program manager at Microsoft (Redmond, WA). She was on the Access team, working on "wizards," the interfaces that can guide a user step by step through the Access program.
In 1995, Microsoft began to focus more on Internet technologies, and Chen's team shifted its work to Visual Interdev, a new Web development tool. She started with an end-user focus and over a few years migrated to developer tools and Microsoft's Visual Studio product team. "I was an evangelist for Visual Studio at the Microsoft Tech-Ed developer conferences," she says.
In 1998 Chen decided to apply what her evangelist role had taught her about building enterprise level Web applications. She joined the team working on Transpoint, a joint venture between Microsoft and First Data Corp for electronic billing and payment. Next, she spent some time as group program manager of the Microsoft Passport product team.
In 2000, Chen got management agreement to work on a concept tied to the MSN Wallet. "As with most start-ups, it didn't come out quite as expected," says Chen. "But it certainly showed me how business decisions are made.
"I gained experience in killing my own project," she reveals, a little ruefully. "But it was fascinating to see how far I could pursue a proposal."
In 2002 Chen took a six-month leave to spend time in New Jersey with her father. When she returned she joined the Microsoft Money team and focused on the reliability, maintainability and availability of the MSN Money website. The job drew on her experience designing and running back-end services and also gave her a chance to exercise her skills in a new context. "I have a talent for identifying resources," she says.
What will her next step be? "I've always been fascinated by the international side," she confides. "Although my work so far has been primarily in the U.S., Microsoft does a lot of business overseas."
Chen says that in her youth, her personal horizons expanded as she spent time with Asians of many different personality types. "I came to realize that being Asian didn't define what my interests were, what I would be good at, and in general what kind of person I would be." She believes that it is important for young people to meet many role models they can identify with, "in order to see what is possible."
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