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Asian Americans represent 4.4% of Fortune 1000 boards: RPT

Ascend's latest white paper addresses the popular American narrative of Asian Americans being perceived as the "model minority". Anna Mok, Ascend Co-Founder & President, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the importance of Asian American representation in workplaces.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. As we celebrate AAPI Heritage Month, we are taking a closer look at Asian-American representation in the workforce. Nonprofit group Ascend out with a new white paper that measures progress in Fortune 1,000 companies. And you see the number there. It certainly shows there's still more work to be done. Out of all Fortune 1,000 directors, just 4.4% are Asian. The number's even smaller for Asian women, at 1 and 1/2%.

Let's bring in Anna Mok, co-founder and president of Ascend. Anna, it's certainly good to talk to you. Let's talk about the perception versus the reality. Because we do talk a lot about sort of this model minority myth around Asian-Americans. And the thinking there is that there is certainly a lot of progress being made, especially on the corporate side of things. What did your study find?

ANNA MOK: Our study has found in not only this one, but other Ascend studies, it is definitely a perception and a misperception. Because of this model minority concept, people do believe we are equally and maybe even overrepresented across all levels of a company and in society. And that's just not true.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, the other thing, too, I mean, we talk about it as kind of a catch-all, Asian, but as the report kind of breaks down and people have pointed out before, you know, ad nauseum, it's not a monolith when you dig in to kind of the numbers there. People might mistake it as just one of the larger groups there. When you dig into those differences, though, across those cultural groups within the Asian umbrella, what do you think people miss about kind of the economic angle there or the education angle there and how these groups differ?

ANNA MOK: Asian-Americans have one of the broadest economic ranges in terms of disparity. So that is one of the things we really need to better understand. And frankly, just because there has been some Asians who have been able to get into, let's say, ranks of CEOs, there's still very few of them. That doesn't mean all Asian-Americans have equally thrived and have been equally successful and have equity in the workplace.

AKIKO FUJITA: And we're pointing to sort of a breakdown from your study on the screen there. When you look at the median annual household income, the highest being Indian-Americans, more than 100,000, and yet, the discrepancy between the high and the low certainly significant. What do you think has contributed to that, and how do we tackle it?

ANNA MOK: Well, we have to remember Asian-Americans are a community of immigrants. So immigrants come from many different countries and for many different reasons. So on the lower end of that range that you just put up, we have people from different parts of Asia-- Hmongs, others, Burma-- that really are struggling in society. And there's not a lot of news on that because we tend to focus on, oh, who's only been successful. And even when you look at what success Asian-Americans have achieved, we are not at workforce parity. And that's really important of a message for us to get out there.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and Akiko opened with highlighting that 4.4% representation among Fortune 1,000 directors, but the numbers, obviously, even smaller for female Asian representation there. And it's something we've been covering kind of in the pandemic, this recovery in the uneven kind of hit to female workers versus male workers. But what have you seen when you dig in to kind of the impact to female Asians there and what was already kind of small representation, but the way that they have been impacted in the pandemic, too?

ANNA MOK: Well, the pandemic and, frankly, the connection of all the hate, anti-Asian hate that's going on, we are seeing women in the workforce at large, right, really disproportionately impacted. And Asian women, we have to keep in mind, most of us come in multi-- are in multigenerational families and households. So we are now worried about our children. We're worried about our aging parents. At the same time, we're being asked to get back into the workforce and take public transit. And so that is creating significant stress on the workforce at large on women, but in particular, on Asian women and other women of color.

ZACK GUZMAN: That's a very good point as we think about the reopening and the transition there for a lot of employees around conversations that companies are having in regards to just that point. But Anna Mok, Ascend co-founder and president, appreciate you coming on here to chat some of those things with us today. Be well.