A Dog Called Diversity
A Dog Called Diversity
Turning your purpose into your career.. with Shoon Yin Lim
Shoon Lim is one of the best known and well-respected Diversity and Inclusion leaders in Asia, and for good reason. She has built a career with global roles based in Singapore at blue chip companies such as Shell, Microsoft and Givaudan.
She now leads the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Practice (DEI) at Russell Reynolds Associates in Asia Pacific, supporting DEI search and consulting including recruiting diverse board directors and advising on DEI governance.
In this episode she talks about how her career moved into Diversity & Inclusion work, how she loves to solve problems, the roadblocks she has experienced in her career, and how as a geek she loved her time at Microsoft. If you love a good career story and like to be challenged about diversity and inclusion topics you will love hearing from Shoon.
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Welcome to A Dog Called Diversity, a podcast where we explore the themes of diversity, equity and inclusion through sharing stories of personal and powerful lived experiences, including how people have found their feet and developed their career in diversity and inclusion. Shun Lim is one of the best known and well-respected diversity and inclusion leaders in Asia, and for good reason. She has built a career with global roles based in Singapore at blue chip companies such as Shell, Microsoft and Giverdon. She now leads the diversity, equity and inclusion practice at Russell Reynolds Associates in Asia Pacific, Supporting DEI search and consulting, including recruiting diverse board directors and advising on DEI governance. In this episode, she talks about how her career moved into diversity and inclusion work, how she loves to solve problems, the roadblocks she has experienced in her career and how, as a geek, she loved her time at Microsoft. If you love a good career story and like to be challenged about diversity and inclusion topics, you will love hearing from Shun. Here's your podcast. Host, Lisa Mulligan.
Speaker 2:Hi Shun, welcome to A Dog Called Diversity. It's great to have you here, thanks.
Speaker 3:Lisa, it's a privilege. I'm really happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Oh great, because you're one of the people working in diversity and inclusion that I have admired in the Singapore market and I would say that you're probably well known across the APAC region for the work you do. It's a real honour to have you on the podcast. I wondered if you might just give us a bit of an introduction. You know of who you are and where you're at.
Speaker 3:Sure, lisa. So my name is Shun Lim, shun Yin, If you take the Chinese or Asian approach, which is usually where the family name comes first. So Lim is my family name and I shortened Shun Yin just to Shun From long time ago, as a childhood friend used to call me. I loved how that sounded and so I shortened it. I am a single mom of four kids and right now doing diversity, equity and inclusion advisory for Russell Reynolds Associates. And I'm actually quite new to Russell Reynolds Associates, just about a month old, and before that I had spent many more years in three other companies doing in-house DEI work as an in-house consultant for Shell, for Microsoft as well as for Givaudan, before I decided to jump over into the world of advisory consultancies and search, and we can talk a bit about that later, lisa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to.
Speaker 3:What's also probably interesting is that I wasn't actually a HR person by birth, into a professional career. Where did you start. Yeah, I started in the business. So straight out of graduation I joined Shell in their retail business and I did a number of business roles in retail, ranging from operations to marketing and branding and communications to business change management and transformation. And then finally, business planning before I moved over into diversity transformation. And then, finally, business planning before I moved over into diversity equity and inclusion.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, how did that happen? It's interesting. It was a little bit of if I may call it an initial misunderstanding and potentially avoidance of it. I was probably a little bit reluctant and then eventually I became converted.
Speaker 3:In my Shell career I was up and coming and doing all the stuff that a young Asian woman would want to do climbing the career ladder, doing business roles and having many opportunities to develop myself. And along comes a today what we will call a veteran in DE&I, leslie Mays. She was driving Shell's DEI work and wanting to push this much more globally out of not just being a US thing. And so here I was, one of these young, up-and-coming women in Shell and we were invited to this event where they were going to launch conversations with women and I was curious, but I was also reluctant. I remember having that, joining that meeting and then leaving feeling like, oh you know what, if you raised your hands right to start working in this, to start talking about this, would it be career limiting? Is it going to be seen as feminist bra burning stuff, right? And so I wouldn't want to touch that with a 10-foot pole and I was going to focus on my career a little bit selfishly, I think at that point I was probably about four or five years into my professional journey in Shell and then I hit a couple of interesting, I would say, roadblocks right, and sometimes it's probably these roadblocks that get you to pause and think about okay, maybe there is something more here and something needs to change.
Speaker 3:I basically applied for a couple of jobs, had a couple of stereotypes hit me in ways that were well awakening for me, and then I said do I want to? And I gave feedback during the interview process to the person about the bias, because I went there seeking feedback to say, okay, why didn't I do, why didn't I get a job? What could I have done differently? And then I found out it was stereotypes and assumptions and they hadn't asked the question.
Speaker 2:They had just assumed what were some of those things.
Speaker 3:What happened? So I was in operations and essentially I was applying Sorry, I was in operations, I was in brand and marketing actually and then I was going to apply for the operations manager role and that was something that I really, really thought I would enjoy doing. And I was competing in the final round with somebody else who is a guy and I didn't get the role, obviously. And what happened was I went back to the person who was the hiring manager and asked the question why didn't I get the role? What was missing in my career experience so that I could be successful the next time in a similar capacity in terms of application?
Speaker 3:And she mentioned to me that I did not speak the popular dialects that she felt was necessary for me to be able to do this role because you had to interact with station managers. And so I asked her the question. I said but that wasn't part of the interview, you didn't ask me if I spoke those dialects. And then we realized that there was an assumption, because in Singapore, men do national service, and so, again, an assumption that because we do national, service, you would be exposed to the dialects, even if you didn't speak them in the first place, and if you were a woman and you didn't go for national service, you wouldn't.
Speaker 3:So that was an interesting aha moment, not just for me. To the credit of the hiring manager, they realized that too. So I think it was a good learning experience for both. And I realized then that this isn't going to be just isolated to me as an experience. And what could I do to address this?
Speaker 3:Because personally, I've always been very much a person who says if you find a problem, don't gripe about it, go solve it. And so I took that on and started to get more involved. I started the Women's Network along with another colleague in Shell and then eventually did some facilitation of gender discussion workshops for leaders in Shell as well, as these were being rolled out, partnering with HR to do a lot of these conversations whilst still in a business role, running women's development programs for younger women who were newer in their careers, for younger women who were newer in their careers. And then, over a couple of years, as I was doing more and more of this, I really learned a lot more as a woman leader and eventually I decided, when the opportunity came, to apply for the DEI role in Shell in the region, that I would stick my hand up and that's how I moved.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, Wow. That's really cool. You've worked in D&I now most of your career. Would that be fair to say?
Speaker 3:I've lost count, lisa, but I would say it's probably something along the lines of three-fifths of my career is probably now in DEI. Wow, so you got there and you loved it. It's too long. I shall not review my age.
Speaker 2:What were some of the things, I guess, in that very first role that maybe surprised you and the reason I'm asking. I think sometimes you go into these roles and you have this idea of how you're going to change the company and do amazing things, but sometimes the reality is a little bit different. So how did that work out for you?
Speaker 3:I think what surprised me in the role when I moved from business into DEI was how much I had to learn and how big that space was even those many, many years ago. Maybe it was credit to Shell. Shell didn't take it as a gender focused agenda. They really look at it very, very broadly, even in APEX. So I had the benefit of really going deep and wide at the same time across many dimensions of diversity. But I was just shocked because, if you recall, I said when I was in the business working on the DEI agenda it was really gender focused. I started a network of women, I facilitated conversations with leaders about gender differences and challenges and I was helping younger women leaders to achieve their development goals, leaders to achieve their development goals.
Speaker 3:So suddenly it just went from women to everything else right, Disability age cultures you know, lgbt, et cetera, et cetera, and it was, like you know, I just opened Pandora's box, basically, and I was so surprised and there was so much to learn. And yet, at the same time, you know, the learning wasn't just external, because I had to grapple with a lot of internal learning as well, because, with all of these concepts, you have to think about where you are vis-a-vis the topic right, and what sits with you and why does it sit with you in this way? Where does a personal versus the public space or the professional space lie? Do you draw a strict line between the two and separate them? Do you blend them?
Speaker 3:So there was all this stuff that I basically, I would say, encountered and found surprising.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing. So how long did you do the role at Shell?
Speaker 3:I did it for about five years and then Microsoft came calling and I'm a geek, long did you do the role at shell? Um, I did it for about five years, and then microsoft king came calling, uh, and I'm a geek, so I I learned, uh, you know, that was my dream job. Uh, after shell. Shell was yeah, and and then it was like okay, yes, now I'm going to try and get myself into xbox at some point. Uh, so I jumped into microsoft, uh, to do dei, yeah that's really cool.
Speaker 2:Tell, tell us about what you did at Microsoft, because I think you've got a real pedigree of companies who do great work in this space across the board. So Shell has always been a leader and probably one of the companies many of us look to for the work that they do Microsoft as well. So tell us about what you did there.
Speaker 3:So at Microsoft I continued with DEI in the entire experience, both in a regional role a couple of regional roles actually as well as in a global series of global roles. And it was interesting because I did the global roles out of Singapore. I inverted my hours and did Redmond time out of Singapore, driving global DEI agendas. So this was really pushing the envelope, both for Microsoft as well as, I would say, for thinking about do we really need to relocate, as Asians, into, say, a US or European headquarter in order to continue to advance our DEI careers, or could we actually make this work regardless of location? And all of this happened before the pandemic, by the way, it was also interesting in that way.
Speaker 3:In Microsoft I didn't just do DEI in the region as an advisory concept, but I also did a fair bit of COE work. So this is like the COE within the COE. So did learning and development design globally, as well as looking at employee resource groups and how we can really make them truly global in their approach, and even exploring that as a concept. Right, is there even such a thing as a global employee resource group? How would you make that work? So we've got that set up as well. So those are just some of the highlights. Working in Microsoft, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Look, I think setting up global employee groups at the time would have been quite a new concept, but now they're quite, I think, are established in many companies. So that's really amazing work. I want to understand. You inverted your hours to work, I guess, the US hours. How did that work with four kids and being a single mom?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So some people actually found that a shock when I said that I was on vampire hours for two to three years of my life. But when I laid out my schedule they actually stopped and think about it. I said at that point in time it probably made a lot of sense. I was having school going kids at that time, uh. So they would be going to school with a range of ages that they had between, say, seven in the morning, uh, 6, 30. They would have left the house because in singapore that's how early they yeah before the sun comes out yeah
Speaker 3:it's terrible, but um 6 30 they would leave the house and then they'll be back um, the youngest ones maybe back at 1, 32 o'clock and the older ones a little bit later in the day. Um, so, effectively, if you think about um the approach, what I would have done is when the kids wake up for school is roughly about the time when I will be finishing up my day in Redmond, at about at six, seven, eight o'clock time, so I will be able to poke my head out, give them a kiss, make sure that they've got their breakfast and then get out of the house and then I might finish off my work day for that time, go out and take a run and actually at that time in the morning, at seven, eight in the morning, in Singapore it's not yet so humid, so it's actually a pleasant time to run.
Speaker 3:No, it's quite pleasant then, yes, might take a light breakfast, catch up on the news of the day, etc.
Speaker 3:And then it's blackout curtains and sleep for a few hours, right, and when the kids come back, at about 2 o'clock for lunch, that's when I wake up and of course, by then redmond has firmly shut down and I would have the afternoon to with the kids.
Speaker 3:Uh, it was hugely, I would say, impactful for me with with being a single mom and with young kids, because it meant that I could do homework with them, um, without having to feel guilty, right about, okay, their work versus my work. They were in softball. I could actually go for their games without feeling like I had to skip meetings just to be at the ball games, and if anybody needed to get a pair of shoes or something else, I could just hop into the mall with them. So it was amazing that way. And if it was a light day, no softball matches, no homework, then they are off on their own stuff and I would just be doing a bit of kind of catch up on emails et cetera. Then it's dinner and then they go to bed and then I start my day. So it actually worked out quite well in that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds great. I've worked in a number of companies where to get that next step in your career you do have to move to the head office, to the US or to the UK or wherever, and a lot of people not just in Singapore but, I think, across Asia don't necessarily want to do that. They want to be with their families and they want to be within their culture, and it's not practical. So often you miss out on those opportunities. So that's such a clever thing that you managed to negotiate.
Speaker 3:That's a great example, I was really fortunate I had really really understanding managers at that point when I really needed it, because it wasn't by choice that I wasn't able to relocate, it was by circumstances, of course, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I was in a horrible divorce and the last thing I wanted to add to the horrible divorce was a conversation about whether to relocate with kids, right. So my manager was really supportive in saying, okay, we know you can't move, but there's an opportunity here. We really value your expertise and what you can bring to this work, so let's make this happen. So that was amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think a great example of you. Make it work for the best talent, right yeah, wherever they are in the world. So what tempted you away from Microsoft? Being a geek, oh, I have to know. Did you get to work with Xbox? Did you get? You didn't tell me that bit.
Speaker 3:Oh, so the nice thing is in Microsoft they have an insiders program, so I was in that insiders program.
Speaker 3:Any employee of Microsoft would sign up to be a Microsoft insider and test all sorts of stuff, not just the Xbox stuff, so you could be in development stages. As in, you could basically help with giving feedback at the development stages of games, of apps, some of the accessibility features that they would want to test products as well. It's amazing. So I didn't just have a chance to get involved with Xbox, I got involved with Teams when Teams was pushing things like live captioning et cetera as a new feature, even before it hits the masses, we were testing it out and getting a sneak preview and giving feedback early.
Speaker 2:So those are just some examples of how it was amazing in Microsoft so cool, okay, so how did you get tempted away? Where did you go next?
Speaker 3:So the next company I went to is Jivodan and it was so different right from Shell and from Microsoft.
Speaker 2:Is it a pharmaceutical company?
Speaker 3:No, they are a flavors and fragrance company, oh yes, and based out of Switzerland, and what was fascinating about them is they are B2B, but it's almost a little bit of a secret society, if I can call it that, because when they reached out to me I was like okay, what is this company I'm searching? The best way to help people understand it is if you walked into a supermarket today, about 25% of what you find in the supermarket would have either a flavor or a fragrance that would have been made by Giraudin. So they work with FMCGs. They work with many other companies cosmetic brands, beauty brands, et cetera, as well Food, household cleaning products to put in flavors and fragrances that make an impact on your day. That's just the secret magic that is actually showing there.
Speaker 3:So I was fascinated to say, okay, what would DEI look like? Right for a B2B? I mean, microsoft had B2B and B2C, but this was a pure B2B. How would DEI translate? What would it look like? What would the strategy be? And just also having the opportunity to go into an entirely different industry and learn about it and to help them set up their global DEI strategy was an amazing opportunity.
Speaker 2:Wow, pretty cool. So what were some of the things you did there that you're really proud of?
Speaker 3:There was a few things. One was just imagine that you had a blank piece of paper and you could actually set the strategy and say so what is the strategy? How do we define diversity? How do we define inclusion right from scratch? You know you have a people survey, but how do you then use that to measure inclusion? How do we drive a roadmap towards achieving our aspirations around diversity, representation and creating a place that everyone feels that they can belong? So that was amazing. For me, it was a huge development and growth opportunity because with shell, with microsoft, strategies were somewhat formed. You had history, you had, um, also baggage in some cases, and you're coming in and reshaping. Uh, you're either coming in and running with it or, in some cases, refining it, maybe shaping it or updating it. But here, like okay, I was looking up and I realized, okay, sorry, the bug stops with me.
Speaker 3:I have to be the expert now and bring my experience from Shell and from Microsoft and from working and talking to so many other practitioners to inform this work, and so that was a great personal learning experience as well.
Speaker 2:A very cool global role that you also did from Singapore, which is amazing. Yeah, yes, very cool. You've now moved into, I guess, a different type of role, still within something that you're really passionate about. But how has the role changed, I guess, from being an internal DEI practitioner into, I guess, consulting, and tell us about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's about impact, I would say so. On the one hand, I was making impact with Shell, with Microsoft and with Gibraltar, and even in those companies, right, the play wasn't just about the company, it was often wider, in the ecosystem. Play wasn't just about the company, it was often wider in the ecosystem. We were encouraged not just to look at it from a perspective of within Shell, within Microsoft or within Shibolden. There were so many more other elements like community and partnerships, etc. That you're looking to influence, and all these three companies were great in that way.
Speaker 3:But I would say, with Russell Reynolds, this becomes can you amplify that impact? Because of the fact that you're going into an advisory role where you could impact so many, many more companies on diversity and equity and inclusion? And even in the one month odd that I've been here, what I've realized is, whilst we have many leading companies who do a lot of work and have been doing a lot of work on DEI, there are still many more companies that are just starting to figure out what is diversity, inclusion, what's their strategy, how are they going to set this up and how are they going to create inclusive workplaces for their employees. So there are so many more companies that could benefit from insights and from experiences.
Speaker 3:And that was really what got me excited about doing this and I'm going into Russell Reynolds not just to do this as a consultant, but also then to help other consultants in the company think about how this, then, is brought into play in the work that they are doing with their clients, so that there's the amplification not just from me but from others in the firm as well, and that's amazing to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a really smart move on Russell Reynolds' part to have a role like yours and to have someone in that role. Because when I think of companies who are going out searching for talent, usually for pretty key leadership roles in their business, they go to companies like Russell Reynolds and they are often putting a lot of pressure on finding candidates that might be diverse in whatever market that they're looking in. And I think it's a new skill set for some search and recruitment companies to know how to do that. They've been in markets where they just go, they put an ad out and they go find someone, or they might do some searching through LinkedIn and find a pool of candidates, but now it's much harder. We want women, we want different ethnicities, we want a whole range of diversity often to bring in so that companies can innovate. And I think very clever on Russell Reynolds' part and, yeah, a really cool way to amplify the work that you're so good at.
Speaker 3:I think it's really important the point that you've brought up, lisa, because search processes haven't always been equitable or inclusive, and when I was speaking with Russell Reynolds, I was actually very inspired by the fact that they were actually looking at this very intentionally for quite a while now and done a proven track record in this space about how many women CEOs they are able to place and beating the, I would say, market average, if I can call it that.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's cool relationships, right. When, when you are the trailblazer, when you are the only voice on the board and you are diverse or the underrepresented, uh, voice, um, it's so risky so you need to think really hard about the processes, right, um, from discovery and exploration right through to placement and onboarding and integration, uh, in order make this really really work and to make also these talented people feel supported and safe, because they are taking a risk. The company feels like they are taking a risk. The individuals, I would say, are taking a risk because if things do not work out, it's their reputation, but, honestly, they are amazing talent and they shouldn't be feeling like they are taking a risk, and it's how we have the right processes in place so that we stop having people say let's take a risk on this person.
Speaker 3:It's all this unconscious bias, it's all this that is baked into the processes right that we need to just become much more intentional about, and that's something that I would say we are committed to try and do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love that, because I've often heard leaders say, oh, we can't afford to take that risk at this time, you know, because that role is too important. And yeah, that's so true. I can hear people saying that in my head. One of the things I know you're really interested in is the notion of privilege, and I wondered if you could talk about it a little bit, because often in organizations, when we talk about privilege, there are groups of people who often are offended and who don't understand what it means to have privilege, and so I wondered if you'd talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I will talk about it from two frames. One is first a more global general concept of privilege and how I felt from experience how it needs to land, and then secondly, how this translates to APAC, because I've also seen an interesting trend of the rejection of the concept of privilege in AP pack as well so let's talk about these two things in different buckets.
Speaker 3:So the first bucket is privilege as a concept and how emotive it can feel. Right, we need to acknowledge a few things in that conversation that sometimes we don't. The first notion is when we talk about privilege, we need to recognize that the group with the privilege has emotions that are also strong when the word privilege is evoked, rightly so. They would feel that they've put in the hard work to make it to the top. I don't think in their minds they've hitched a free ride and gone up to the top just on the basis of a skin color or an education, background or socioeconomic class. Yes, there is that the starting line was different for them, but nonetheless, in their reality they would feel that they put in the hours, they put in the sacrifice in order to get to where they got to today.
Speaker 3:So when you talk about privilege and if you talk about it in a very black and white way, literally, you're telling all of these leaders at the top you made it there not on your own merit, and that can be very disenfranchising for them. So I think we need to recognize this first and foremost, but it's also then saying we don't let them off the hook right in, in a sense of but how do you help them to recognize that, yes, you've worked hard to get to where you've got to, but your starting line was different? And I think if we can acknowledge that they've worked hard and this achievement can't be taken away from them because they have privilege, it gives them that assurance. And then let's talk about the fact that, well, you are in a place where you are today because you had 10 steps less to take, or you had more easy access to sponsors and success. So, now that you are here and giving them then that space to process this.
Speaker 3:So sometimes it's also about the fact that the conversation about privilege is compressed and you don't give them space to process some pretty complicated emotions. If you can give them that as well, then they will be ready to come back to a conversation to say, okay, now I understand it and I can come to an acceptance of this, how can I use my privilege and my power to help those who have to take 10 more steps than I would have to take, to help those who have to take 10 more steps than I would have to take? And I think that becomes a us conversation rather than them versus me type of a conversation for the leaders. So I think that's the piece that I would say we need to balance very carefully with privilege in trying to get to the impact that we want to get to, so it's not divisive. It's right, we all have privilege. We got there somehow with privilege in trying to get to the impact that we want to get to.
Speaker 3:So it's not divisive, it's right, we all have privilege, we got there somehow. And then how do we use that privilege now that we realize that to help others? Come along with us, with, you know, social inclusion, if you think about it. For APEC, this was interesting because, you know, in Singapore last two years we've had so many people who are trying to bring this notion of privilege into Asia, into Singapore. I've heard that it's like okay, chinese privilege.
Speaker 2:Chinese. I was going to say your Prime Minister. I can see him in a press conference saying I don't have Chinese privilege and Chinese privilege doesn't exist, which was a really interesting statement. I thought yes.
Speaker 3:I think the problem is sometimes how, if people don't understand what privilege is, and then they take the words because that's what was used in a country like the United States and just scratch the word white out and put Chinese there- that's a whole different context there, though.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, it's a whole different context, and then that gets everybody focused on the wrong issues. And then the question is also what are the examples of privilege? Because whatever you talk about in terms of white privilege and in the US, and the examples that are given may not necessarily and often do not translate to Asia. So we've got to find our own local examples. And what I found is in many of these conversations the word Chinese privilege is given, but the examples have not been thought through, the storytelling hasn't formed well enough for the concept to carry into the region and be accepted, and I took quite a while to figure this out as well in terms of so what is Chinese privilege or is there other kinds of privileges that we have? And a great example that I would share, which I recently realized and came across, was just as simple as this I am Chinese.
Speaker 3:So, as somebody who is Chinese and with four kids who are Chinese, I've never thought about this when they were in kindergarten or in primary school growing up, that their mother tongue classes just happened naturally in kindergarten, because they're the majority. With so many kids in kindergarten who are like them, there was never a question about do you have enough teachers who don't just teach English but do they teach Mandarin? Right? That was never a question. No, it just is. Yeah, it just is this way, right?
Speaker 3:So when you look at the whole list of kindergartens and schools and where to send them, this was never a consideration. It's just the best school, the closest location, the curriculum, the extra activities that they do, etc. That's all you thought about. You didn't have to think about the fact that will they offer Chinese Mandarin as a mother tongue language in the curriculum or not, mother tongue language in the curriculum or not?
Speaker 3:But that's not necessarily the case for non-chinese, that they will have a much shorter list of schools to consider, and sometimes in that case it's like, oh, what if I want montessori versus non-montessori, but then I have to trade off the language? Or what if it means that it's another half an hour more to travel so that my child, uh, will have a teacher who is able to teach that language to my child, right? So that's an example of privilege, whether we realize it or not. That would also factor into underrepresented groups, calculations of travel time, cost etc. That somebody like myself would not have ever to think about. So it's bringing these kinds of stories to life that then helps people to understand what privilege really is, and now we can start to talk about what inclusion needs to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they're such good examples. I've lived in Singapore for seven and a half years and clearly I'm a minority in Singapore. I'm white Caucasian, but I'm a different minority to someone who might have an Indonesian heritage or an Indian heritage. I feel like I'm incredibly privileged, possibly more than many Singaporeans. You know I can access any international school and choose any language. I think that's a good example of you know. I can choose to live in a private condominium or a private house because I have the means. I've come in at a high level, I guess, in my roles so incredibly privileged, and so there's all these different layers. I think the Singapore society is so interesting when you start talking about privilege. There's so much to unpack and learn. I thought your examples were really great, actually, and you know, when I think of the Prime Minister saying there, you know, there's no Chinese privilege and he grew up in a family who gave him every advantage, I think, probably one of the most privileged families in Singapore, which is really interesting. He needs some conversations about this, I think.
Speaker 3:And I can understand where it's coming from from him as. I said it's never intentional.
Speaker 3:And not just for him for anybody who comes up and say there's no such thing. Right, there is often a lot of, I would say. Topics about DEI are messy and in unskilled hands they can be very dangerous and they can be very explosive. And I think this is where we have also a challenge, because how do you help all sides right, see the issues and have a conversation without it becoming something divisive and explosive? Yeah, because definitely, I would say for Singapore, integration, racial harmony and all of that are hugely important concepts.
Speaker 3:Racial harmony and all of that is a hugely important concepts and they are important for the progress that we make as a society. And it's not just for us. I mean, it's all of the different countries in Southeast Asia, in Asia, which have so much diversity, right. So I can, I can understand why people approach a lot of these topics with a lot of trepidation and it's like, rather than talk about it, it's like, okay, no, let's just put a blanket over it. And so it's not just Singapore.
Speaker 3:I mean, if you say race, it's surprising, right, with the amount of racial diversity we have in Asia. People struggle to talk about it and people have a lot of fear in talking about it. But then there's a lot of fear in talking about it, but then there's a lot of um, I would say, tension, fault lines, etc. That are underneath the surface, that we do need to find a safe way, uh, to talk about it. And, and sometimes the challenge is dei and its concepts. You know, we can't just take what happened in the us and say so, let's just take that and apply that here and use the same approach to talk about race in Asia. It's totally different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a really interesting example in the company I work in. We have a black employees network in the US and they're very active, an amazing group of people doing incredible work. You know they do a lot of work in attracting black engineers to the business, which is a really important thing for us. But one of our I think one of the executive sponsors of that employee group thought perhaps we should have a chapter in APAC and so we started with some meetings and I was invited and some people from our Australian business, because we were thinking about where would the bigger perhaps population of Black people be in the APAC region? And so we thought we would start in Australia, because we have Aboriginal, torres Strait Islander people in Australia and we thought, maybe well, not me, but a Black employees group thought that might be a good way to start and you know we've had a couple of really nice meetings. But even understanding the concept of black and how in the US it's okay to call people black or African American, that's okay. It's not okay in Australia and it's actually a derogatory term. And so even within our company, just trying to get through those issues and help people understand the different contexts has been really a challenge and you know, I think with a lot of D&I topics, there's simmering issues under the surface that, as you pointed out, skilled people need to be able to deal with.
Speaker 2:I wanted to talk to you about you said earlier you know the work you're doing at Russell Reynolds. You know, you said earlier you know the work you're doing at Russell Reynolds. You know you realize there's lots of companies who are now realizing they need to start doing some of this work in their businesses. So where do we find these people? Like there's for some parts of APAC, it's an emerging profession and emerging concept. We do have people who've worked in D&I for many, many years and are professionals and have really great credentials, like you have. But we have a lot of companies who are kind of appointing people and scrambling to do some things. So I'd love to hear your views on where should this next generation of people who work in D&I come from.
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't even know where to start. Lisa, that was big, wasn't it? Yeah, it's a big topic. There is a lot of structural challenges and mismatches at this point in time. So, first of all, worldwide, we just have a shortage of DEI people in the US, in Europe, in Asia. So it's a global problem, you know, because of what has been happening in the past few years, and suddenly everybody wants a DEI person.
Speaker 1:I mean, when I first started, nobody understood this job and I had to explain it.
Speaker 3:Some people thought it was a finance job because they thought diversity was diversification, so they thought I might have been in something to do with mergers and acquisitions or, you know, breaking up companies, which is so different, right. Not quite we want to bring people together.
Speaker 3:Yes, not break companies up. So that was, you know, that was the space I spent so much time when I was introducing myself, just explaining what DEI was. Years, years ago, some people actually thought you're not going to make a career out of this, you're going to do this for a few years and then go back into the business and shell. That was literally what a lot of people were thinking about DEI, and you know, I've not looked back and it's just grown and grown and grown in terms of demand. If you recall, I said I had the benefit of a very thoughtful, deep and wide development within Shell and that was unique, I would say truly in Shell. And I don't see companies investing in their DEI people.
Speaker 3:A lot of companies today are looking for the skill sets, they're looking for ready-made DEI people, yes, yes. And then the question is well, but where are they coming from if nobody's going to invest in their growth, in their development, and if there are no career development ladders within companies to help them mature right into the people that they need to be, with the skilled facilitation skills and the wide knowledge and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many competencies. Russell Reynolds, we talked about things like being a strategist, being a very, very data savvy, being a very competent storyteller, amongst many other competencies. Nobody's looking at the development of all of this skill set for a DEI practitioner.
Speaker 3:So that's a challenge I find right when you have people who in the last few years, might have moved from a business role like me into this, and it's great they bring a business perspective into the work but then they're not being given the technical exposure and development that they need to really do this job and perform this job well. And then you have a lot of much younger people today who say I would like a career in DEI. How do I? What do I study in university? And the answer is there isn't a course called diversity to help people learn this still. So, you know, I think we have a need and we need to have the conversations with the schools, with academia, with companies, to say this is going to be a huge need and everyone needs to think about the development of these people and this capability for the good of many of these companies and for the community going forward. And so, women, russell Reynolds, we might have an interesting space to play in this place, right, bringing all of these different stakeholders together for that conversation as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think that would be a cool thing to really be part of. Yeah, what are you looking forward to in this space, like, what are you optimistic about?
Speaker 3:I'm actually excited about what Asia is going to do about diversity and inclusion. I don't think Asia has totally woken up yet. So I'm not talking about MNCs with regional DEI folks. I'm talking about when our Asian companies, the unicorns, the startups, big Asian conglomerates, start to say we want to do diversity, inclusion and we want to do it the Asia way. And I wonder what that is going to look like and whether it will be an Asian way or just be a global way with an Asian perspective. So that's something that fascinates me and I wonder what we will bring to that mix and to that conversation when companies start to take this practice on originating from the region out into the rest of the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's such an exciting thing to think about because Asia, just from a business perspective, is so interesting and exciting. I think we've got so many amazing start-up companies coming out of Asia, we've got big multinationals doing incredible business in the region, and so, yeah, where does diversity and inclusion go? And it's potentially one of the most diverse regions in the world on a whole range of parameters, I think, and often the most conservative when those two things come together. Yeah, it'll be fascinating to see what happens.
Speaker 3:And I thinkia will also bring a lens towards this work of dei with a lot more, I would say, integration with development, as in things like national development, social inclusion and social impact, then what I would say have has been a trajectory, uh, that we have seen with DEI so far right. So it's like, as you think about how DEI has evolved in the past to now, I wonder if, as you continue with that timeline into, say, the 2030s and the 2040s, if what Asia will do to that timeline is bring in the whole notion of sustainability, inclusive growth, social impact, into that world, just because of the region and the way that this region is the stage at which we are in terms of market development.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, can't wait to see.
Speaker 3:Well, we'll both have the final seats to this Lisa, and I think it's not just going to be final seats. I think we'll be mixing it up in the middle of the storm. Seats to this Lisa, and I think it's not just going to be front row seats.
Speaker 2:I think we'll be mixing it up in the middle of the storm.
Speaker 3:We'll be creating it right. Yes, that's right. We'll be creating it together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'll be amazing. It's been so fantastic talking to you, shune. I've been looking forward to this conversation for so long, so thank you so much for coming on the podcast and thanks so thank you so much for coming on the podcast and thanks for inviting me, lisa.
Speaker 3:It's been fun. I've really enjoyed our chat. It's always, you know, meeting of minds and you know let's continue the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yes, please did you know that Microsoft has the quietest place on earth? Check out the link in the show notes. The main takeaways from Shun Did you know that Microsoft has the quietest place on earth? Check out the link in the show notes. The main takeaways from Shun was the amount of learning that's required to work in diversity and inclusion, and how wide and deep the knowledge base needs to be. I think the way she pushed the envelope in terms of where global roles can be based was a great learning. The envelope in terms of where global roles can be based was a great learning. How Shun managed working from Singapore in global roles and how she balanced looking after her children is a great example Maybe not one that is sustainable long term. However, if you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something, please share with your friends on social media, give a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.