Asian Americans Climb the Corporate Ladder, But Only So High

(Bloomberg) -- In the U.S., people whose family origins trace to a vast swath of the globe are lumped under the demographic category of “Asian.” Members of the group don’t have much in common, with one exception: They tend to be notably absent at the highest levels of corporate America.

Across America’s big corporations, Asian Americans get hired at a much higher rate than their proportion of the general U.S. population, which is about 6 percent. The group makes up more than 20 percent of the student body at some of the elite colleges and universities that shoot graduates up the corporate ladder -- and a recent lawsuit suggests that percentage could be a lot higher.

And yet Asians are hardly promoted at the same speed as their white colleagues. “We are the most successful minority,” said Buck Gee, a retired Cisco Systems Inc. vice president and co-author of a new report about Asian leaders in the technology industry for the nonprofit Ascend Leadership. But when the lens turns to C-suites and upper management, “we’re the least successful minority.”

Asians held 47 percent of professional jobs in Silicon Valley tech companies in 2015, slightly more than white people, according to Equal Opportunity Commission data analyzed by Ascend. But at top levels, Asians were far outnumbered, holding 25 percent of executive positions, compared with nearly 70 percent held by white people.

In U.S. private companies, Asians make up 12 percent of professionals and 5 percent of executives, according to EEOC data.

In finance, the numbers tell a similar story. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is typical: a quarter of professional employees are Asian, but fewer than 11 percent of executives and less than 1 percent of the management committee are.

Leslie Shribman, a spokeswoman for Goldman, said the company’s success depends on attracting diverse employees and pointed to programs that support Asians, including one designed to “develop the next generation” of Asian leaders. Representatives of other financial institutions also said they were keen on increasing Asian numbers; Citigroup Inc. spokeswoman Elizabeth Kelly said the bank had recently revamped its diversity strategy to recruit and develop more Asians and members of other underrepresented groups.

The absence of Asians in senior leadership poses a challenge to advocates for racial and ethnic diversity within big corporations. The lack of black people and Latinos in upper-level jobs is often described as “a pipeline problem” -- a lack of diversity in the junior or mid-level positions -- and in response, some companies have increased their recruiting efforts with black and Latino college graduates.

There are lots of Asian people in professional and middle management roles, says Jane Hyun, a diversity consultant who coined the term bamboo ceiling. Because of their success in getting hired, she added, “Asians were missing from the whole diversity conversation.”

‘Very Skewed’

Ellen Pao, who is perhaps best known for her gender discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said racial bias was prevalent in Silicon Valley too. In her recent book, “Reset: My Fight For Inclusion and Lasting Change,” she writes that her boss in Silicon Valley often confused her with another Asian woman who had previously held her job. She also frequently heard jokes and ethnic stereotypes about Asians.

There are more than a few Asian Americans running big companies. They include Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella; Sundar Pichai at Google Inc.; Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Ajit Jain, the head of reinsurance; and Citigroup’s chief risk officer, Brad Hu.

Success stories can make the imbalance seem less severe than it is, said Laura Huang, an assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania. “If we look at ratios in the population versus top management, it’s very skewed -- it’s not proportionate.”

Stanford’s Answer

Ascend’s Gee and Wesley Hom, a retired IBM executive, worked with Stanford University develop a course to help Asian managers break through to the upper levels. Classes in the week-long, $12,600 program are drawn from the general executive curriculum at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

They also address behaviors that, Gee’s research shows, can slow a career and tend to be more common among people of Asian heritage, including deference to authority and an aversion to risk taking.

“My brothers and I were raised to not talk unless we were spoken to,” said Wes Chung, 40, who works as the chief of staff for IBM’s chief brand officer. “We were told to work hard and the results would come to you.” Chung took the Stanford class which, he said, helped him be more assertive about his ambition.

Encouraging people to assimilate can’t be the only solution, said Hyun, whose book “Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians” was published in 2005. “That’s putting the onus on one party. If nobody is meeting you part way, it becomes very stressful.”

Pao now runs an organization, Project Include, that advises companies on steps they can take to promote equitable treatment of all employees. “Putting it on the employee to change their behavior is not going to solve the problem,” she said. “This kind of solve-one-problem-at-a-time approach creates divisions among groups that should be working together.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Colby in New York at lcolby@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Janet Paskin at jpaskin@bloomberg.net, Anne Reifenberg, Bruce Rule

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