What Is The Bamboo Ceiling For Asian Americans in Corporate America? (How the 'Model Minority' hurts Asian Americans in corporate America, the East vs West clash) Ft. Dennis Yu [Co-Chair of the AAPI Resource Group at Shopify] | SPOTLIGHT/BARBERSHOP TALK

The AM Podcast - A Podcast for Asian American Men

For today's Spotlight/Barbershop episode, I'm happy to welcome Dennis Yu to the show.

Dennis Yu, is a Merchant Success Team Lead and the Co-Chair of the AAPI Employee Resource Group at Shopify. In addition to his long career in sales and business development in corporate America, Dennis is an angel investor focused on e-commerce, and Asian found/led startups and is also the host of the Great Minds Think Differently Podcast where he interviews business leaders from underrepresented groups to share their stories

Today we're going to discuss the Asian American experience in corporate America, the bamboo ceiling, and how our eastern influences can affect how we are perceived at work.
"What the heck is Bamboo Ceiling?

Harvard Business Review article describes it as the phenomenon that Asian American white-collar professionals are the least likely racial group to be promoted into senior leadership, even though they are the most likely to be hired into technical roles.
AAPI made up roughly 6% of the country’s population but represented only 3% of the CEOs of S&P 500 firms.

In this episode, we discuss:

1:15 - Intro to episode

2:29 - Dennis Yu introduction

3:00 - Moved to Orange County where it was predominately white. Didn’t speak a lick of enlightenment

5:00 - his interest in retail came from his family business. His father had a manufacturing sportswear company

7:00 - getting hired on the spot after hustling to get a job at a trade show

12:00 - did you ever notice any bamboo ceiling/model minority while working?

12:48 - When you get to leadership executive levels, you start to see Asian representation dwindle down

15:00 - How did you manage the eastern stereotype in the corporate setting?

15:40 - Took on Confucius's idea and studied Phil Jackson, and Steve Kerr and how they were able to mix the two West and East to succeed in a hyper-competitive world

16:25 - closed mouths don’t get fed

18:23 - Leadership program at Shopify to help train Black, Latins, and Asian Americans

18:38 - Being minorities in a room, sometimes you have a lot of cultural conditioning or a lot of things you try to be overanalytical

21:00 - Mike talks about himself struggling with overthinking and struggling to reframe

21:56 - how often do you find yourself in a meeting and you want to comment but you start to overanalyze and miss your opportunity to speak

22:45 - describing model minority and bamboo ceiling

25:55 - In New York, the Asian community comprises the highest poverty rate in the state.

27:58 - when did you decide you wanted to help underrepresented communities?

29:38 - had a coffee chat with the chief diversity officer and expressed his biggest problem was a lack of role models that looked like him

33:51 - mental health in the Asian community is taboo / what are things we can do to help ourselves

37:25 - Dennis recalls one of the most stressful and overwhelming times of his life juggling multiple priorities

43:00 - practical meditation practices to help alleviate stress

45:15 - “Be Like Water”

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