Survey: Asian American women least likely to hold leadership roles in tech

By Louis Chan
REPRINTED FROM ASAM NEWS

DIANE KENG'S youthful appearance belies her stature.

At 18, she founded her first start up, My Weboo, during her senior year of high school.

Five years later in 2015, she launched Breinify, an artificial intelligence startup where she currently serves as CEO.

Keng is an outlier.

A new survey of 582 women in technology by Girls in Tech has found that Asian American women are least likely to hold leadership roles.

More than 19 percent who answered the poll questions were Asian Americans.

Almost 36 percent of the Hispanics polled identified themselves as a Director, VP, C-Level, or CEO compared to hite/Caucasian 34 percent, Black/African American 21 percent, and Asian/Pacific Islander 20 percent.

“I do think that Asian women holding the smallest percentage in leadership roles has some cultural swaying to it,” said Keng to AsAmNews. “One, I think upbringing is a big part of shaping who we are. I am lucky to have parents who are both logical, creative, and big believers of fighting for what you believe in. They did not push me to be in one profession or another.”

Second she sees a lack of Asian women role models.

“What I’m about to say is probably true for many cultures and not meant to sound restrictive. But growing up, I always saw Asian women sacrifice their jobs for their children. These are women who had great education and high level jobs who decided to take a break so that they can raise their kids. I think this is an amazingly valiant sacrifice. But with this, it also means less women have the opportunity to be in the leadership positions because of the huge gap of time between work.”

Girls in Tech is a non-profit dedicated to the education and empowerment of girls and women worldwide who are passionate about technology. It was founded in 2007 by Adriana Gascoigne who echoed some of Keng’s thoughts.

“While it’s hard for me to speak for an entire ethnic group, I believe this has a lot to do with cultural upbringing,” said Gascoigne to AsAmNews. “Asian American women growing up are often tasked with taking a backseat to male siblings, even when they are older. Furthermore, many Asian cultures teach their children to respect their elders — almost to a point of fault — that may negatively impact their chances for promotion. Is this all Asian women? Absolutely not, but it’s important to take into account the ways parents may be rearing their children from their own upbringing.”

Gascoigne also points out that the numbers for women overall in leadership positions are extremely low across the board, something she see as unacceptable.

“At Girls in Tech we are dedicated to increasing the number of women across the board and that starts with creating a network that fosters growth and support, but also access to other female leaders. The tech sector has been dominated by men in the venture capital ranks, which leads to mostly male-founded companies getting funded. It has to start from the top down.”

Keng says when people look at her, they don’t see an engineer, much less someone who works in artificial intelligence.

“Often times I get invited for meetings which I think will be business related but rather it is for me to find out that the guy is single and ready to mingle,” she said.

Sexual harassment is a real problem in the work world, technology is no exception. Keng sees accusations often turning into a he said, she said scenario.

“I’ve had female friends that missed out on great opportunities because they would rather be safe than to be put in a scenario where something bad but not provable actions can happen.”

The Girls in Tech poll also asked questions about sexual harassment, gender discrimination and the presidential election.

You can read the full results here.

Asian teens under pressure in Silicon Valley? CDC studies high suicide rate

OVER THE course of nine months in 2009 and 2010, six Palo Alto teenagers committed suicide. Between 2010 and 2014, an average of 20 children and young adults killed themselves annually in Santa Clara County, where Palo Alto is located.

The deaths in the city constitute two recent “suicide clusters” (multiple suicides within a short time frame); there are an average of five in the entire country each year. Having two in the same city in less than a decade is extremely rare.

Five times the national average!

The suicide clusters raises concerns in the Asian/American community and attracted the attention of mental health professionals here because 40 percent of the victims have been Asian/American. In Palo Alto Unified School District, over 40 percent of students identify as Asian.

RELATED: How a bout of depression helped Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson

The students died on the tracks, but also by hanging and jumping off a roof or overpass. Each time it happened, their classmates mourned them, and their distraught parents sought answers.

In response to what Santa Clara County officials have called an urgent public health problem, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is launching an epidemiological study on teen suicide in the area. A team of suicide prevention specialists arrived in Santa Clara a week ago for a two-week site visit.

In November 2014, the CDC conducted similar research in Fairfax, Va., and found “multiple risk factors,” including high expectations for students, parental pressure on students for success and parental denial of mental health issues among their children. It found that 72 percent of youth suicides exhibited mental health problems.

Community members hope that the study will yield responses to the question that has plagued them for the past seven years, when the first suicides began: If these kids had everything they needed to succeed, why were so many choosing to or contemplating giving up on life altogether?

In a wealthy community like Silicon Valley, one might assume that the kids have all that they need to succeed. What would they have to worry about?

RELATED: The Silicon Valley suicides

Some believe that the emphasis Asian parents place on their kids to be academically successful has added to the pressure that the high schoolers face on top of the social and racial hurdles teens normally face.

In “The Problem With Rich Kids,” published by Psychology Today in November 2013, former Yale psychologist Suniya Luthar noted that social, emotional and behavioral issues are as prevalent in the wealthy end of the socioeconomic spectrum as they are on the poor end.

She said that, on average, rich offspring experience serious levels of depression and anxiety at twice the national rates.

“The evidence all points to one cause underlying the different disturbances documented: pressure for high-octane achievement,” Luthar wrote. “The children of affluent parents expect to excel at school and in multiple extracurriculars and also in their social lives. … It plays out in crippling anxiety and depression, about anticipated or perceived achievement ‘failures.'”

Jeremy Lin: On "The Silicon Valley Suicides"

Atlantic graphic

RECENTLY, Jeremy Lin got a lot of attention because of his changing hairstyles even getting mentioned in a nationally published magazine.

When the NBA player posted on his Facebook page his thoughts on suicide, not so much. 

Reading "The Silicon Valley Suicides," in this month's Atlantic magazine caused Lin to reflect on his own high school years, darkened by the suicide of two his classmates, the pressures he placed on himself and the pressures he felt coming from others' expectations of him.

"The pressure to succeed in high school is all too familiar to me. I distinctly remember being a freshman in high school, overwhelmed by the belief that my GPA (grade point average) over the next four years would make or break my life. My daily thought process was that every homework assignment, every project, every test could be the difference," he writes on his Facebook page.

The Atlantic article written by Hanna Rosin focused on a couple of suicide clusters that occurred in Palo Alto, smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley, the cradle of 21st century innovation.

"Since I went to Stanford, in the early ’90s, the surrounding public schools have been utterly transformed by the tech explosion," wrote Rosin. "Gunn, and to a lesser extent Palo Alto High School, is legendary all over the world. Steve Jobs’s old house is in the neighborhood. Chinese patriarchs buy homes in the community and send their families, so their kids can go to school there. Parents sacrifice vacations and plan their budgets carefully so they can afford a house in the district."

Not all the kids who committed suicide in Palo Alto, where Jeremy Lin went to school, were Asian/American, but there was no denying that some Asian/American students were under some - sometimes unsaid - pressure to succeed academically. Rosin wrote:

Tragedies do not always bring people together; sometimes they just deepen the rifts between them. The day after Byron Zhu died, a Paly senior named Andrew Lu posted on his blog a diagram of three circles, labeled “Palo Alto,” “Male,” and “Asian.” “It seems that the demographic most at risk are Asian (Chinese) males in high school (hey, that’s what I am!),” he wrote. Three of the boys who had died in the past academic year had at least some Asian heritage. 

Andrew was broaching a very touchy subject, one that had come up more rudely in comments on Palo Alto Online. Heavy stress among “good kids” was the product of “a nasty competitive atmosphere contrived by unethical Tiger Mothers,” one commenter wrote. At the end of some of my conversations, a student, teacher, or counselor would look around to make sure no one was listening and then whisper a story about an Asian kid being punished or even kicked out of the house for a night after getting a B or failing to get into Stanford. I’d heard how new East Asian immigrant parents mistakenly transposed the reality of education in, say, China or Korea, which is that how you do on a single test can determine your entire future. Gunn is more than 40 percent Asian, and some non-Asian parents, particularly ones who’d grown up in town when the Asian population was smaller, felt the shift was poisoning the culture of the entire school.

The Atlantic article raises questions about a value that is part of the Model Minority trope and should make us stop and ponder the possible unintentional ramifications of those values. It should be noted that the vast majority of Asian/Americans grow up to be well-adjusted, healthy and successful individuals. 

Contrary to popular myth fed by the Tiger Mom archetype, Asian Americans do not have a higher suicide rate than other racial and ethnic groups. However, data in the National College Health Assessment Survey seem to indicate that Asian/American college students have suicidal thoughts and attempt suicide more frequently than their peers.

But what both the Rosin and Lin emphasize, we shouldn't  expect our young people to react in the same way, even though the environment they are in may be similar.

As we know, Lin survived high school. He found his close relationship with his Christian faith  and his parents to be his saving grace, but that might not be the solution for everyone. Lin went on to Harvard and onto a life in the NBA. In each stage of his life he had to meet everyone's expectations and defy the Asian stereotypes, which puts an awful lot on his shoulders.

Lin's Facebook entry drew lots of reaction.

"As an Asian American bicultural and bilingual psychologist I’ve had the privilege to work with so many over-pressured youth and loving but misguided parents who believe that their child’s exhaustion, anxiety, depression can be overcome by just not talking about it,” wrote Neleh Chimera. “Thank you for writing this — it will touch many young lives.”

Generally, Asian/Americans don't like to talk about mental health issues but not talking about it will make this issue go away. There is a dire need to gather more data on this subject considering the wide breadth of the 50 ethnic groups that fall under this broad Asian American category and their mental health needs vary as widely as their economic, educational and social status.

"We may not have the answers to how to completely solve these issues, but we can take more time to really listen to each other, to reach out and have compassion on one another," Lin concludes. "I don’t have any great insight and I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be a high school student today. I do know that I’m proud to be from Palo Alto, a resilient community that I see striving to learn how to better support and care for each other. I hope that my personal experience can remind someone else that they are worth so much more than their accomplishments."

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FOR ASSISTANCE

Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United Sates and 8th among Asian Americans. 

If you are concerned that you or someone you know may be at risk for suicide, we strongly encourage you to do one or more of the following: 

• Contact a mental health provider within your community. 
• Call 1-800-273-8255 (TALK), the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, for a referral. (More than 150 languages are offered)
• Call 1-877-990-8585, Asian LifeNet Hotline (24 hours). (Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Fujianese are offered)
• In the United States, call 911.
• In addition, each state and county have their own hotlines. 

Do not leave the person alone even after phone contact with an appropriate professional has been made.

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#ILookLikeAnEngineer sparks new look at Silicon Valley workforce and board room diversity

SOMETIMES, the stars align and a couple of unrelated events occur that by themselves would create a spark, but put them together and you get a supernova.

• When OneLogin launched an advertising campaign for engineers, they didn't expect to create an Internet star. When she agreed to let her company use her picture to recruit engineers, platform engineer Isis Anchalee, didn't expect the reaction her post would cause.

• At about the same time, Black Congressional Caucus visited several firms in Silicon Valley to encourage them to do more to hire more African Americans and other minorities, including women so that the tech industry would better reflect the population.

• In the nation's capitol, President Barack Obama launched Startup America, a campaign to increase opportunity for a wider demographic and to increase diversity in Silicon Valley's workforce and board rooms.

"Just three percent of America’s venture capital-backed startups are led by women, and only around one percent are led by African-Americans," the White House announcement read. "At present, only about four percent of U.S.-based venture capital investors are women."

President Obama meets with some of the innovators who took part in the Demo Day.

The announcement was made at the first annual White House Demo Day as part of the President’s new initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate technological entrepreneurship. 

Some 40 venture capital firms have joined the president's initiative, promising to boost opportunities for underserved minorities. Institutional investors like CalPERS, the state pension fund, committed up to $11 billion in investments for emerging and transitioning managers. High-tech companies said they would adopt a variation on the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule” for coaches, a requirement that they consult a diverse applicant pool for senior executive posts.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article29994513.html#storylink=cpy

Meanwhile, a survey of the top 20 U.S. technology firms found that of the 189 members of corporate boards, only three directors are African/American. “African/Americans have been, quite frankly, locked out of the tech workforce,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oaklalnd, part of the congressional delegation that met last week with tech giants in a 3-day tour of Silicon Valley. 

Indeed, the numbers released from the tech companies seem to support her statement. 

Africa/Americans, Latinos and women are severely underrepresented in every aspect of the industry.

Asians, although 17 percent of the tech workforce, have found it extremely difficult to break through the bamboo ceiling. Despite  their numbers in the workforce, few have been able to climb into the ranks of management and board rooms. 

"The 'bamboo ceiling,' as author Jane Hyun terms it, is hardly limited to technology, but its existence in a sector where Asians are thriving illustrates the intractability of the problem. Hyun blames the workers for the promotion gap, arguing that they need to take a page from Sheryl Sandberg and 'lean in,'" wrote Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.  "But other observers, such as Lisa Lee, a senior diversity manager for Pandora, point to the need for companies to curb their preconceptions about who will make a good leader."

RELATED: Study: Asians hit the bamboo ceiling in high-tech workforce

White males make up the majority of the workforce and almost all of the board members. The few minorities and women who have managed to make it to the highly visible or influential  positions have been the exception, rather than the rule.

Part of problem has been the dominant image of the typical high-tech employee as a white, hoodie-wearing, social awkward white male.

OneLogin's campaign asked Anchalee, one of their employees, to pose for a poster intended to recruit more engineers. The reaction was not what the San Francisco-company expected.

The ad — one of several her company posted in BART stations — received an unexpected backlash of frankly, sexist, critiques, where some people questioned the authenticity of the advertising based because they thought the company used a model instead of a real engineer. (Editor's note: She prefers to use her middle name over the name used in the poster.)

Some of the more printable reactions that was written online include: "This is some weird haphazard branding. I think they want to appeal to women, but are probably just appealing to dudes," reads one typical example Anchalee pulled off Facebook. "But I'm curious people with brains find this quote remotely plausible and if women in particular buy this image of what a female software engineer looks like." 

“The negative opinions about this ad that strangers feel so compelled to share illustrate solid examples of the sexism that plagues tech,” Anchalee wrote in her short blog that she felt compelled to create to answer the doubters and critics.

Isis Anchalee responds to her critics.

In response, 22-year old Anchalee took a photo of herself (above) with the Twitter hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer. The reaction to her response has been amazing. Engineers - women and minorities - began taking pictures of themselves with the Twitter hashtag. 

"News flash: this isn't by any means an attempt to label 'what female engineers look like,' " she wrote. "This is literally just ME, an example of ONE engineer at OneLogin."

"I doubt that most of you know me. I am a passionate self-taught engineer, extreme introvert, science-nerd, anime-lover, college dropout, hip hop dancer, yoga teacher/hoop-dance teacher, really authentic friend and HUMAN(omg?!). In fact, if you knew me you would probably know that being famous is one of my biggest nightmares; seriously right up there with falling into a porta potty. I keep to myself most of the time and generally prefer when others mind their own business too," wrote Anchalee.

Her hashtag has absolutely skyrocketed beyond her expectations. A fundraising campaign has been started (with Anchalee's approval) on Indiegogo to raise enough money to put up a billboard in San Francisco celebrating and encouraging diversity in the high-tech industry. 

“People have taken the message I started and are continuing the conversation themselves,” Anchalee says. “I am absolutely taken with gratitude.”

#ILookLikeAnEngineer is going beyond the Internet. There are now poster, t-shirts and socks with the hashtag.

There's definitely a movement to increase the diversity of the high-tech industry's workforce. Industry giants like Apple, Google, Pinterest, Yahoo and others are - frankly embarrassed by their statistics in hiring - have pledged millions of dollar in initiatives to improve their workforce diversity. Besides an implementation of the Rooney Rule, the companies will expand their recruitment efforts at colleges and universities outside of the Bay Area, employees will be sent to job fairs that attract minority applicants, and internship programs will be widened to include more African Americans, Latinos and women.

In a few years, if these efforts work, the companies' business will improve and competitive in the world stage, we will be able to draw our best and brightest from a wider pool of applicants, colleges and universities and America will be better off for it. 

If you, your daughter, niece, sister or any of the women in your life want to be inspired, or just want to bust open those old stereotypes, check out #ILookLikeAnEngineer, or Anchalee's Twitter account.

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Study: Asians hit a bamboo ceiling in the high tech industry

 Diversification efforts at Google are underway.

BAMBOO is pliant, but strong. According to a new report, Asian men in Silicon Valley find it difficult to break through the Bamboo Ceiling if they try advancing to the leadership ranks.

Lest we forget, besides the gender gap exposed in the Ellen Pao lawsuit, the high tech industry is still grappling with its well documented diversity divide.

It is most evident in the well-stocked cafeterias and coffee cafes of the high tech headquarters in San Francisco and down the peninsula in Silicon Valley. While you see a plethora of beige-skinned Asian faces downing the gourmet fare offered by the companies, in the board rooms, the shade is a good deal paler.

Google, Yahoo and other major technology companies are far more inclined to hire Asians as computer programmers than to promote them to become managers or executives, according to a study released May 6.

The analysis brought to light what is obvious to the Asian American community, the high tech giants have no problem in hiring Asian as workers in non-management positions, but when picking managers and executives, human resources prefer to hire European American men.

RELATED: Three Asian women challenge Silicon Valley culture

To be clear, there are more minorities in executive positions than there were three years ago, but progress is moving at a snail's pace. Fixing Silicon Valley's apparent preference for white males won't happen quickly.

"We have a lot more work to do," said Laszlo Bock, Google's head of human resources or as Google would say, 'people operations.'For a long time we'll have a lot more work to do."

Ascend, a group focused on Asian business issues, based its conclusions on 2013 data filed with U.S. employment regulators by five Silicon Valley companies — Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and LinkedIn Corp.

Minorities seek a place at the table in Silicon Valley.

"If you step in the cafeteria of any of these five companies, you will see plenty of Asian talent around," said Denise Peck, a co-author of the Ascend study and former vice president at computer networking equipment maker Cisco Systems. "It's only when you walk into the executive suites at these companies that you might see a problem."

Google knows it's got problems with diversity among its ranks, and it was one of the first in Silicon Valley to say so.

The search giant first released statistics last May about women and minorities in its workforce, and by its own admission they were bad. So, it's tried to find fixes, and it's talked about some of those programs publicly. One of them focuses on what it calls "unconscious bias," or cases of discrimination that aren't overt or even intentional, and it now has a program devoted to the problem.

But fixing Silicon Valley's preference for white males won't happen immediately.

"When we released the composition of our workforce almost a year ago, it confirmed what many people suspected: the tech industry needs to do a lot more when it comes to diversity," says vice president of people operations Nancy Lee in her official Google blog.

After their workforce report was released, Google launched several long-term initiatives and spent $115 million to diversify their workers. Other tech firms such as Intel and Apple followed Google's lead and began their own programs. 

The Ascend report found that Asians held 27 percent of the professional jobs yet only 14 percent were executives. For whites, the percentages are reverse: whites held 62 percent of the professional jobs at the studied companies, but filled 80 percent of the executive jobs. Hmmm.

Ascend, a group focusing on Asian business issues, concludes that the lack of Asian executives may be partly blamed on cultural differences. It's curious that a group focusing on Asian issues should bring up that old stereotype of the nonassertive Asian male. I could never understand how the self-promotion and braggadocio is admired in white males, but the nose-to-the-grindstone, lead-by-example and working as a team are seen as weaknesses in Asian males.

What should have been concluded is that the top leaders tend to prefer seeing themselves in their underling managers. The current leadership want to surround themselves with people with whom they feel comfortable, with whom they can indulge in common pursuits, have drinks, play video games, share joke, play golf. You know, sort of like a buddy.

In many ways, Asian males face the same double standard often placed on women in the workplace: assertive males good, assertive women bitches.

"With an organization of our size, meaningful change will take time," wrote Lee in her blog.  "From one year to the next, bit by bit, our progress will inch forward."

The nerd culture that spawned many of the innovators who in turn gave birth to Silicon Valley, also gave rise to the 21st century version of the old boys club. In extreme cases, that environment allowed, some say even encouraged, distorted values of privilege, exclusiveness and misogamy.

Once the high-tech industry can find ways to develop leaders from its Asian workers, then they can begin to grapple with the even worse plight of African Americans and Latinos, who constitute barely a blip in the industry's workforce.  

Though there are signs of change - such as Satya Nadella as Microsoft's CEO - that shift is coming slow. The industry is trying to compensate by investing in education, expanded recruitment efforts and bringing in foreign workers but it will never truly have permanent, institutional change until it can look at itself in the mirror and see an image, not only of its  workforce, but also the world market where lies its future. That, is the bottomline.

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TIME: The Real Problem When It Comes to Diversity and Asian Americans

The lack of Asian leadership in tech sheds light on a larger issue: Asians are excluded from the idea of diversity

Magazine cover, August 31, 1987

THIS WEEK'S Time Magazine (Oct. 14) has an article by Jack Linshi about the lack of Asians in the leadership ranks of Silicon Valley tech firms. Let me pique your interest with the opening paragraphs:

"Years ago ... they used to think you were Fu Manchu or Charlie Chan. Then they thought you must own a laundry or restaurant. Now they think all we know how to do is sit in front of a computer."

It was 1987 when Virginia Kee, then a 55-year-old high school teacher in New York's Chinatown, said the above words. She was one of several Asian-Americans who discussed the perception of their race for TIME's cover story, "Those Asian-American Whiz Kids." The cover story would elicit small-scale Asian boycotts of the magazine from those who found offensive the portrait of textbook-clutching, big-glasses braniacs. To them, the images codified  hurtful beliefs that Asians and Asian-Americans were one-dimensional: that they were robots of success, worshippers of the alphabet's first letter, study mules branded with their signature eyes. 

Today, Kee is 82 ... And yet Kee, who still recalls the words she told TIME nearly 30 years ago, maintains that not much has changed.  ... Read more, my friends.

And check out TIME's fun graphic that clearly shows the disparity between workforce and leadership: (If you cannot see it, click here.)

This topic generated a lot of conversation in the San Francisco Bay Area, the home of Silicon Valley and is the center of the world for techies and the venture capitalists who turn dreams into multi-billion dollar companies. Unfortunately, whenever you talk about inequalities or anything resembling affirmative action, it brings out the racists hiding underneath their hoodies.

Several news outlets have written about this topic, also known in the Asian community as the Bamboo Ceiling. For more articles, read Read Bloomberg's "The color of money in Silicon Valley" and a great piece by Mother Jones: Silicon Valley firms are even whiter and more male than you think. 

Whenever Americans talk about race, the vast majority often think only in terms of black and white. This myopic view is evidently not limited to the less educated. Through sheer numbers and the media focus on the border issue, Latinos have nudged their way into the conversation. The TIME article asserts that Asians are overlooked.

Why? I think Asians are saddled with the "model minority" stereotype. Asians are already successful. 

Asian men, who make up a larger portion of the workforce, also must also overcome the non-leadership qualities often associated with Asian males: being unassertive, too meek  and not being self-promoting. 

Asian women have one other hurdle to overcome  -- no matter how talented and intelligent they are -- their gender. Despite the rise of Carly Fiorina, Marissa Meyer and Sheryl Sandberg, technology is still a male-dominated field.

One other gargantuan barrier stands in the way for both Asian men and women: not being "one of the guys." You know, the back-slapping, drink-after-work, golf-buddy, trash-talking, take-home-for-dinner, be-my-wingman, share-an-off-color-joke, type of guys.  

The over-riding lesson here: When you are always looking for the next Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, you keep coming up with people who look like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs.

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