“Look around you… Nearly half the people here are Asian.”

--Jino Ahn, President & CEO, Asian Diversity, Inc.
NSHMBA Conference

We are living through unprecedented times. With our gaze daily affixed to our screens and monitors, tracking the downward zigzag of the markets, we are inescapably reminded of this hulking and resplendent beast called globalization. And with its advent, our emotions have become unwitting victims to extremes and contradictions, where we are at once terrified and jubilant, dreadful and expectant, unimaginably wealthy and destitute. For however much we are aware of it, we must come to terms with the sinking and uplifting reality that we have ventured past a point of no return.

In the 21st century, we must reconcile ourselves to the understanding that what got us here will not necessarily get us there. New challenges and strategies for how we deal with our employers and employees are ever being realized. To be successful in this new era, we must learn and adopt newer and better methods for how management and labor interact and relate, and no other region of the globe currently presents greater challenges and possibilities to the old order of business than Asia. In the balance lies the need for companies and employees to better access, educate and leverage the available tools and resources over their competition, more intelligently and effectively, not just in America but in Asia, as well.

The Problem

The National Society of Hispanic MBAs (NSHMBA) and The National Black MBA Association (Black MBA) have faithfully served their constituencies for 20 and 30 years, respectively. Considering the simple truth that Asian Americans far outpace all other ethnic minorities in terms of MBA attainment vis-à-vis US population percentages, it is bewildering to say the least how a concerted effort to promote the professional development of Asian American MBA graduates’ interests have gone so completely ignored.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are nearly 15 million Asian Americans living in the U.S., which account for five percent of the nation’s population. The Asian American population has risen an astounding 63 percent since 1990, thus making Asian Americans the fastest growing of all major ethnic groups.

Twenty percent of Asian Americans, in comparison to 10 percent of the total U.S. population have earned an advance degree (MBA or other). About 45 percent of Asian Americans are employed in management, professional and related occupations, compared with 34 percent of the total population.

This number is likely to grow, as the rise and fall of business school applications appear to have an inverse relationship to business cycles. According to Businessweek.com, “In fact, the most recent numbers from GMAC suggest that prospective MBA students have been expecting the economy to tank for quite a while now. Since bottoming out two years ago, GMAT testing volume is up about 27%.”

Even despite the onset of the recent global economic downturn, no other region of the world has proven to be more economically dynamic than Asia. Preceding the subprime mortgage fiasco earlier this year, China continued to sustain economic growth rates of greater than 10 percent per year. Indian economic growth also accelerated at striking rates over the last decade, and now India and China are set to be among the world’s three largest economies.

Nevertheless, amid all the great strides, Asian Americans still continue to be under-served within the professional community as they struggle to make it beyond the low to middle tiers in management within US and European firms.

One man who has recognized the disparity and anemia of available resources for Asian Americans in the corporate sector is Jino Ahn, President and CEO of Asian Diversity, Inc. (ADI), who has made it his life’s work of over 30 years to try to correct and normalize. During the 1990s when words such as “political correctness,” “diversity” and “EEOC” became part of the lexicon among major U.S. firms, Mr. Ahn attended a Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) “diversity” conference.

There, he came face to face with the stark reality and the silent injustice Asian American professionals had been unknowingly suffering under, when he raised his hand and asked the presenters why they seemed to only address African American and Hispanic issues within the workplace while completely ignoring the needs of Asian Americans.

Needless to say, he was snubbed and met with jeers from the audience, who had based their rationale on the Model Minority myth—the inanity and fallacy of which we now know does Asian Americans far more harm than the benefit much of America and Asian America previously thought it did. For the latest and arguably most groundbreaking study conducted by New York University and The College Board, google: Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight

Since then, among other projects, ADI has been the proprietor of the largest job fair and career expo in America dedicated solely to Asians. Every spring, the Asian Diversity Career Expo (www.AsianLife.com), ADI’s flagship event, has been host to many of the top Fortune 500 and Asia-based companies at Madison Square Garden, New York, and has been attended by thousands of entry to mid-level Asian and Asian American job seekers.

With the continued success and the vital groundwork and partnerships that have been laid with the Asian Diversity Career Expo, Mr. Ahn feels that this is the right time to embark on what he believes is a natural progression by targeting the mid-to-executive level Asian American talent pool.

Following the tradition began by NSHMBA and Black MBA, Mr. Ahn is proud to announce the inception of Asian MBA or AMBA and its inaugural event: The Asian MBA Leadership Conference & Career Expo (www.AsianMBa.org), which will be held in New York City at the world famous Jacob Javits Center in September 2009.

But Hiring During a Recession?

Before jumping to conclusions as to the logic of hiring new employees in the face of seemingly endless waves of layoffs here in the West, consider this from a November 17, BBC article titled, China and India and World Recession, by Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics at Cornell University:

“China is sufficiently integrated with the industrialized West to be able to provide support, and yet not so integrated to go down with it . . . Although China is expected to slow down this year, the most pessimistic growth projection is 8% . . . Even for India, the Chinese economy is a bulwark and partly explains why India is expected to grow by around 7% this year, despite the global crisis . . . China-India trade has grown by nearly 50% per annum in recent years.”

Due to the confluence of government-owned land, much higher quality mortgages, a closed financial system and huge foreign exchange reserves, the economy of China is regarded to be in a prime position to dodge much of the financial woes epidemic to the rest of the world.

The hope of Asia is certainly not limited to the Far East, as demonstrated in an Asian Journal news report titled, Deutsche Bank Says: No Recession in Philippines:

“European banking giant Deutsche Bank says the Philippines, among other Southeast Asian countries, is not in danger of facing a recession. ‘While the collapse in commodity prices and the anticipation of weaker exports should hurt economic growth, DB is not expecting a recession in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand or the Philippines,’ the German bank’s equity research confirmed… The bank noted that member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) show greater resilience today than during the infamous Asian crisis of the late 1990s…”

But rather than simply giving multinational companies a head start in their hiring season to attract the best and brightest Asian American leaders and potential leaders, AMBA’s Asian MBA Leadership Conference & Career Expo aims to be so much more.

Leadership workshops will offer companies the opportunity to send their employees and Asian affinity groups to attend progressive and dynamic professional leadership and development seminars and panel discussions.

Mr. Ahn notes, “Though conditions appear to be slowly improving, a common refrain still heard among the Asian American community is the substantial absence of Asian leaders and role models within the corporate context and without. While creating opportunities for job seekers to meet face to face with representatives of U.S. companies is good, it is simply not enough to address the seeming lack of focus and disjointedness of our community. With AMBA’s leadership workshops, I would like to provide the professional Asian community and diversity professionals alike the chance to come together to enhance their core body of knowledge, leadership and management competencies.”

Other features of the AMBA event—and perhaps a major drawing point for present executives—will be the networking sessions & receptions and the gala awards presentation (sample categories include: AMBA Award for the Top 30 Companies for Asians and AMBA Executive Excellence Award). The networking sessions will provide professionals and executives from both East and West the rewarding opportunity to advance one’s business cross-culturally and foster and strengthen new and existing ties within the professional Asian American community.

A Wealth of Opportunities

Despite the sagging global economy, hiring in Asia is expected to be much more prolific than the turmoil now roiling much of the western hemisphere. According to a FinanceAsia article (Asia’s Recruiters Weather the Storm):

“Asian employers continue to search for talent, while it is Groundhog Day for financial service professionals in the US and Europe where bad news plagues the job market . . . The winter of discontent across Asia could be shorter than expected deeming from the ongoing recruitment within the region, say headhunters. The likes of Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan are said to be actively recruiting, while RBS is on a significant hiring spree following its acquisition of ABN AMRO.”

Further revving the engine of China’s job market and, by extension, the whole of Asia is the recent release of a staggering statistic by the Education Department of China showing that over 50,000 Chinese students studying abroad will return home to China to work this year. The China Youth Daily reports:

“…the returning Chinese international students have been constantly growing over the last five years. There were 20,100 returning Chinese students in 2003. More than 40,000 students returned to China in 2006. More Chinese students have come back to China in the last five years than in the 25 years from 1978 to 2002.”

If this development could be interpreted as a bright spot along the horizon for the Asian economy, then certainly, China is its saving grace. And through the mire and upheaval now gripping the western financial sector, Asia has all the hallmarks of becoming that shimmering beacon of hope for a downtrodden globalized economy.

The Solution

All this encouraging economic news, along with the mass ingress of such internationally trained workers, then begs the question: Who will reach out to this robust group of highly educated, multilingual and multicultural base of human capital?

Corroborating this interest—and perhaps one of the more salient marks of the promise and future American companies have vested in Asia and its talent pool—was the 2008 Asian Leadership Summit (www.als2008.org), sponsored by IBM, GE and HSBC, held in New York City in November of this year. Attendance was comprised of more than 400 representatives from US companies. Covering this event, the World Journal states in an article titled, More Asian Leaders Wanted by International Companies:

“The American companies said they would like to put more Asians in leadership positions in both the United States and Asia. The summit focused on understanding markets in Asia and Asian markets in the United States, fostering Asian leaders, and ways for international companies to give back to Asia.”

As corporations continue to proliferate across Asia, and as Asian economies continue to advance, the need for Asian American talent is increasing at an astonishing rate. Hiring, promoting and retaining top Asian American talent will prove to be not just beneficial, but crucial for global business, as they can overcome the language barrier inherent to a globalized economy, and also serve as a cultural and economic bridge between Asia and the US.

“A common concern among many American multinational firms when it comes to locally hiring Asian managers for posts in Asia is the inability for these local hires to understand and function within western business culture and philosophy. In other words, they lack the ability to ‘fit into’ the western corporate mindset,” said Mr. Ahn. “The objective of the career expo portion of AMBA is two-fold: in addition to meeting a company’s diversity and executive hiring needs on the domestic front, it will serve that company’s most pressing executive hiring and diversity needs abroad on a scale never seen before.”

Judging from the sheer number of Asians regularly attending NSHMBA conferences, it is projected that AMBA will be attended by over 8,000 professionals, industry experts, recruiters, MBA students and alumni from leading companies, not-for-profit organizations, government bodies, and institutions from all sectors. In addition to the regular fare offered at most job fairs such as career clinics and professional coaching, AMBA will hold a unique “Jobs in Asia” pavilion, whereby companies will have the excellent opportunity to recruit bilingual professionals interested in working in Asia.

It is certainly long overdue for Asian Americans to have an MBA event to call their own.  Eventually, Mr. Ahn’s vision is to have AMBA become the national forum by which Asian American community organizations, Asian American professional organizations and human resource and diversity heads of major corporations will congregate and organize to empower and promote the interests of Asian American business leaders and MBA graduates in the hope of one day shattering the so-called Asian glass ceiling once and for all.

For more information, please visit the AMBA website at (www.AsianMBA.org).