Transcript:

Intro: Hi, I'm John Iino and welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions, and challenges, past and present, all with a goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included.

John: Well, welcome everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. We are really pleased today to welcome a good friend, Jean Lee. Jean is the president of the MCCA, the Minority Corporate Council Association. For those of you who don't know the MCCA, it's a national organization that's focused on hiring, promoting and retaining women diverse attorneys, and they provide cutting edge research and best practices, trainings amazing events. We are really proud at Reed Smith to be a member of the MCCA and the programming that they do as just world-class second to none in terms of diversity inclusion activities. So welcome Jean.

Jean: Thank you, John. Thanks to you and Reed Smith for having me. I am delighted to be here.

John: So we do a lot with this podcast. We really focus on telling some personal stories. So I've heard you speak and tell your story a number of times, whether in front of 800 people or in a more intimate gathering. So if you could just share with our audience a little bit about your background and your passion for diversity inclusion.

Jean: Sure. And sorry that you have to hear it again. One of the reasons why I'm incredibly passionate and it drives me every day to get up and continue the work that we are doing at the MCCA is my own personal story. I immigrated to the United States when I was eight years old and I started school in the city of Philadelphia two days later. And that was quite a bit of a challenge. In 1980, which was 40 years ago, there weren't that many Asian Americans in Philadelphia, and certainly not as many in the public schools where my brother and I attended elementary school. I think there were maybe two, three other Asian American kids, and it was a school that, it was actually called a grammar school because it went from kindergarten to eighth grade and it was pretty daunting to begin with to immigrate to a new country where you didn't speak English, where you didn't the ABCs and you were really starting from scratch in terms of not having any friends or people that looked familiar. I was the only Asian American child in my classroom at the time, and I mean, there were ranges of funny stories, but there were equally as many, I think, heartbreaking stories. If I think about what my brother and I endured, some of the more funny stories are that the classroom settings, I just remember thinking how everyone looks so different. I remember seeing people on television in South Korea, and at the time we did not, and this is the late eighties. I came literally January 5th, 1980. And in South Korea in the seventies, most people had only black and white televisions if they were lucky. And to see black and brown people and Caucasian people live in front of you, it was a shock to an 8-year-old child. I remember that very vividly. And then at the same time, it was quite a shock to be able to adjust to a culture where there were very clear rules in Korea between boys and girls in the United States. Even in 1980, there wasn't, we all sat together, boys and girls mixed more so it was a very interesting time and an experience. And of course, having a language barrier for the first really, I would say first year, I mean we spoke very basic English after about six months, but the first few months of that school year, I mean, I didn't speak anything. I didn't know how to speak anything except for the few words my then 17-year-old grandmother had taught us, which were random things like eyes, nose, ears, and pp because she was very concerned that I wouldn't know how to get to the bathroom. So she taught me that you need to say pee-pee if you have to go to the bathroom. She didn't know the word for bathroom. So those were some of the more memorable experiences. And of course the challenges were that my brother and I were always taunted. We were picked on, we were beaten. I can't tell you the number of times that they stole our lunch, they stole our money. They knew we couldn't speak English, so what were we going to say? And then on one occasion, about a month later, there was a large snowstorm, and you probably heard me talk about this a little bit, John, where we were dismissed early and my brother and I walking home, and I would say probably about 15 if not more older children, decided to basically chase us for fun and throw snowballs at us, shove snow down our coats. And it was a pretty bad beating for a six and 8-year-old because most of the kids were much older. They were the fourth graders, the sixth graders, the eighth graders. And that was a turning point because that was a time when my father and mother were, I mean, they were devastated. They saw their six and 8-year-old beaten to a pulp and came home pretty bloody. I mean, we were crying of course, hysterically as children. My brother and I just did not like the United States, and it had only been 30 days, and those 30 days were not easy. And that kind of started my journey about exploring justice and fighting for people and standing up, the vice principal had gotten the call from my father and decided to take me around the entire school to basically have me point fingers to my perpetrators and to bring justice to me. Of course, I talked about this too, but when you're eight and you've been in the country for only 30 days, I mean, one of the funny things I didn't talk about in my speech at Gala, and I'm talking about it here now, is that every kid looked the same. I mean, I couldn't identify, okay, this kid with the blonde hair, with that kid with the brown hair, they were wearing coats, they were following us. How in the world was I going to point that out? I don't know. But I was able to kind of point fingers to some of the kids that I thought heard us, and that kind of put some fire under me even as an 8-year-old that I wanted to do something that the idea of not having a voice and not having, I think the vice principal of course tried. He was not Korean American. He did not speak another language, but I think he understood even at that time, the importance of protecting children. And I think in his own way was trying to say that we are going to have a fair system in our school. And this was a time where kids were still being bused to desegregate schools in some parts of the country. And I really appreciated that, and I wanted to be more like that vice principal. I wanted to be able to give back to our community and those kids who may come after me, that opportunity to really fight for themselves and that then fast forward, I ended up, instead of going to law school right away, I ended up doing my master's in social work for a few years and really got to see what it was like to be part of a community that constantly is disenfranchised and worked for Legal Aid Society, juvenile rights division for about, I want to say three plus years before I decided to go to law school in New York City. And at that time, one of the things that really opened my eyes working for the juvenile rights division of the Legal Aid Society was that in the nineties, this was in Kings County in Brooklyn, New York where I think crime was up with children. I think it was the first time the AWA, the Violence Against Women Act was passed and then maybe repealed, but there were a lot of sex offenders. And I worked with juvenile first, I worked with children who were abused and neglected in the system, in the foster care system in New York City. Then moved to helping children who had been sexually abused, raped in some cases. And then at some point I really wanted to understand the mind of the individual who perpetrated those crimes to better serve and help perhaps those kids who had been victimized and started to work with juvenile delinquent who had been sex offenders. And it opened yet again, my eyes to what the justice system was like for those who do not have as much access to justice. And that's what really encouraged me once again, to pursue a career in law. I mean, there were many things that really led up to that, but that was yet another turning point that being a social worker is incredibly educational. And a lot of people say, oh, it's so rewarding. I couldn't do that job if I were you. But it was really for my own kind of understanding of human behavior. How do people really think? How do people really behave in tough situations? What motivates people? What are the challenges that makes one perpetrate another crime on another individual? And for me, it was incredibly rewarding because it was educational, not because I was doing some work that was very noble, as some said, I actually didn't think that it was noble. It was more of a self-interest and desire to understand society and how the society at large treat individuals who have and who do not have as much. And that really propelled me to go to law school. And I was a little ashamed that I could not find a job in the public sector and then finally had to really what at the time, what I thought was settling and selling out to the private sector. But that also was an incredible experience. And I would say one of the big benefits of my life and career has been that as long as I'm learning and I'm growing professionally and personally, I've gained so much from every experience. Never would I have imagined that I would work for an organization as big as JP Morgan Chase in their legal department. And I think if you asked me that 20, 25 years ago, I would say, you can't pay me to do that. But I did, and I love every minute of it. I know that's hard to believe. Going from a legal aid social worker to being a lawyer at JP Morgan, a lot of people look at my resume and say, wow, we can't really box you in to sort of a label, right? And taboo. I did not go to Harvard or an Ivy League college or law school like many of my Asian American friends, which throws people off a little bit too. But yeah, I mean, that's my journey. And now here I am leading a national organization that's really focused on giving voice to those who have not had a voice in this country, and raising the profile of those who may not have had the opportunity, and to create that opportunity and to figure out a way with folks like you, John and many of our committed members, to really disrupt the status quo and the system. And how do we do that in a way that's not just talk, but real action?

John: Wow, Jean, what an amazing, amazing story from the time you were eight years old and just what a horrific, horrific event. But I always believe there's a silver lining in everything and that it motivated you to become a social worker, to be fighting for a fair system and ultimately becoming where you are as a CEO of the MCCA, serving the entire nation. The, there's a lot. I sometimes think in terms of me becoming in the role of Chief Diversity Officer for Reed Smith, that was a culmination of all my life experiences and especially in the work experiences having served in management and our executive committee and the like, just having an understanding of the ins and outs of a law firm. And through that, being able to be more effective in the role. It sounds like your experience at JP Morgan Chase has really given you another insight, not only into from your social work time, but for understanding corporations, understanding how corporate legal departments work and how to be effective. I always say it's important not to just be that person that's standing on a soapbox screaming, you have to have a message that's going to resonate with so many people. So if you could tell us a little bit about your time at JP Morgan and what did you learn there in terms of diversity inclusion programming that we need to do going forward to be really effective given that you had spent some time in-house in the legal department?

Jean: I mean, I think if you look at all of the financial services organizations in our country, I would say at that time, and I think still today, JP Morgan, despite all that was going on, has done a fantastic job in gender diversity. I remember talking to another colleague, and I won't name the other institution where the number of women in senior ranks, not just in legal, but just in the company was appalling. And I remember talking to her about how Jamie Diamond had so many female direct reports, and then you go down to the legal department. At the time it was Steve Cutler and then Stacy Friedman became the general counsel right before I left. And if you look at the legal department leadership team, I think seven out of nine of direct reports to Steve Cutler were women. I mean, this is before, this is in 2000, maybe 12 or 13, before diversity became kind of the hot topic in the last three to five years. And I think when companies are intentional, I think you can achieve more. And even without being so intentional, or perhaps it was intentional at the time, when I think about the legal department, there was an enormous amount of gender diversity at leadership ranks. Now, if you go down into different departments, maybe not as much, but the one thing that JP Morgan did not have as much, which is why I had raised the issue about having a D&I committee and it had existed, but then it was kind of quiet. And then with the Dodd-Frank, section 3 42, they formalized another diversity committee sometime in 2013 under their leadership of, I think then general counsel of the Consumer and Community bank, which is one of the lines of businesses that reported up to the entire enterprise, CLO, Steve Cutler. And that's what really motivated me. I remember being at JP Morgan, and it's not just even JP Morgan, so I don't want to single out JP Morgan. All of the banks at the time did not have any Asians or Asian groups listed as one of the diversity affinity groups that they supported. And it really struck me because oftentimes when you think about diversity, inclusion, and equity, people say it's the black and brown people. And not to be pejorative, but using color as a scheme. I mean, some Asian Americans are more brown than others. I know yellow has been the color that it gets associated with Asian Americans a lot. But when you think about D&I, Asian Americans as people of color and a minority group in this country, a growing one in fact is never included. And even today's conversations as CEO of the Minority Corporate Council Association, when I go and meet with General Counsels, everyone pretty much says we're looking for more underrepresented minorities. And when you ask about what that means, they mean in many cases, African-American and Latinx or Hispanic lawyers and not Asian-Americans. And I find that to be kind of curious, if not, is it a lack of education or what's causing people not to think about Asian Americans as people of color or minorities who have been underrepresented in Asian American circles? And certainly those of us who do D&I work have talked about this quite a bit, which is probably why if you look at Asian American law firm numbers, that's the group that is declining and leaving law firms the fastest, I think, next to African American women. And so to go back about JP Morgan, that's what really encouraged me to think about diversity inclusion once again in corporate America. Why aren't Asians included? They're not purposely being excluded, but they weren't really being included. And we started thinking about ways as a group of lawyers who are Asian American at JP Morgan to think about how can we raise that challenge and help people understand we have challenges as well. They're different, but sometimes the impact and the outcome can be the same. So that's one of the things that really encouraged me to get more involved. At JP Morgan. I was certainly involved in the initial discussions about diversity and inclusion. At the time, it was the general counsel of corporate and investment bank. He was a great champion. Unfortunately, he had to leave, and I think he's now at one of the television stations, but before Dodd-Frank started to get a small group of us together and included me in that conversation. And I'm really grateful for that opportunity and for JP Morgan to being open-minded because we started hosting an event called, I think it was the Black Ivy, and it was African-American black lawyers who had gone to Ivy League schools and they hosted a reception. And I had raised that with some of our leaders, and there was never a pushback. And I said, well, what about LGBTQ? What about Americans? What about Hispanic lawyers? And of course, because I raised that, I had to organize a lot of those events. But it was a way to educate people about the challenges that many different groups face. And as you noted earlier in this podcast, they were certainly open to being more inclusive. And I think that's what it takes sometimes for organizations in order to be open-minded and embrace more diverse voices. Sometimes they just need to be told or to be asked. I think that's something that we all should be mindful of, because I think it would've been very easy for me to think that somehow Asian Americans were excluded, and that's the end of that. But that wasn't the case. And in fact, some of our Asian American lawyers got together to talk about how there wasn't any Asian American lawyers in leadership positions, and what are the things that we can do to create opportunities to share our story, to really think about positive ways to bring about change at an organization that's as large as JP Morgan. And we talked to our colleagues at different banks to get ideas those who have been a little bit more successful, and were further along in achieving some of those objectives. And I really applaud organizations as big as financial services because you have 200. And I think at the time when I left JP Morgan in 2016 had 265,000 employees. I mean, to be able to satisfy and include or make 265,000 people feel included, that is no small task. So I applaud them for being open-minded, and continuously striving to do better and to do more.

John: And you are such a champion for not only just all diversity, but including Asian Americans and having gone through your own personal experiences and being excluded, being bullied because of the way you look, you can certainly see the drive to push for more inclusivity. It's interesting because one of the big focuses that we're doing here at Reed Smith in terms of our D&I program is really focusing on allyship. And we had a recent discussion around what allyship means, and even within the D&I circles to make sure that, for example, our African-American black group or the Hispanic Latino group or our LGBT group is how can we make sure we're more supportive of each other as opposed to just within the group. And that's being a good ally for Asian Americans or for our veterans groups. And ultimately what I really hope we're driving towards as a culture is that everyone feels that they can be an ally, that it's not your typical cisgender white male that we're asking to be allies that everyone can serve that role. So yeah, to be able to, like you said at JP Morgan, to be able to really open up and think about who we're not including, and if it's Asian Americans, it's LGBT, what groups are underrepresented? There's so many areas I'd like to go just to explore with you, Jean. I know that the MCCA along the lines of allyship has put a lot of effort around and programming around inclusive leadership. And I love the concept. We're doing a lot more around that, tying our leadership principles and our leadership training to just being more inclusive. If you can tell us a little bit about what the MCCA is doing around developing more inclusive leadership with a goal from our perspective of just making sure that everyone, regardless of their color can be more inclusive.

Jean: I love this idea of, I just want to go back to your point, and I'll answer your question in a second because it ties into it, but the idea that anyone could be an ally is such a great concept and something that everyone should embrace. I want to go back to an example of that. At JP Morgan, we did not have a very senior Asian American leader. So when we had Asian American Heritage Month, we brought Asian American leaders from the outside. We didn't have any from inside. Everyone was a VP level, which at JP Morgan was basically a staff level lawyer. And the three of us were all VPs at the time. And in one year, Neil Wilcox, who's now on the MCCA board, was also a former JP Morgan colleague. He at the time was I think the chief administrative officer for JP Morgan's legal department. He was our ally. He's African American. For those of you who don't know Neil Wilcox and a great champion for all diverse groups. And I can't tell you how we are so grateful to Neil for being an ally, attending our event, supporting our event, and really speaking about some of the challenges of different groups. So I really love the idea that you can be an ally. You do not have to be a cisgender white male to be an ally to one of the diverse groups. And to your point, vice versa. If you're not part of the LGBTQ group, you still could be an ally to that group or to the veterans or lawyers with disabilities. So having said that, what is MCCA doing to create more inclusive leadership? One of the big things that we launched at the end of 2017, beginning of 20, is our partnership with Russell Reynolds and associates, Russell Reynolds Associates, sorry, not, and. And Microsoft. Microsoft and we had been talking about how do you create a culture of inclusion? What are the behaviors? Because when you talk about diversity and inclusion, diversity is very quantitative. You can say, in 2020, we're going to increase the number of women by 5%. Well, you can see whether you achieve that goal or not by the end of 2020, by simply counting the numbers of women in your law firm. Whereas inclusion is so subjective. How do you know that John feels included and that Jean feels included at Reed Smith? What are the ways in which we can figure that out? What behaviors make people generally feel included? And that conversation with Microsoft was really the turning point of us thinking about what are the things that you guys are doing Microsoft, because you're leading in this space. And at that time, their CEO, Satya Nadella had come up with 10 behaviors that create a culture of inclusion at Microsoft, which she had, I think all of his direct reports adopt one of those behaviors to see if there are changes. And I could be misstating what exactly happened. So don't quote me on it, but I know that there were 10 behaviors. We looked at those behaviors and we thought, what can we do to encourage our members who are leaders, who are aspiring leaders to adopt some of those behaviors? And that's where we started interviewing a lot of consultants and decided that Russell Reynolds, Tina Shaw at Russell Reynolds and Cynthia Dow were the right group to partner with on our research about what creates a culture of inclusion. And then we of course did a survey. We have our second survey out currently now, and then we started benchmarking behaviors in the legal profession. What did people think were behaviors that created a culture of inclusion and how can leaders mimic those behaviors? And if you haven't seen that, it's available on our website and you can get the executive summary if you're not a member. And we're continuing to do research in that space. In addition to that, we had the entire MCCA board last January, be part of the Inclusive Leader development program that Russell Reynolds Associates conducted for us because we thought that what is the best way to create a group of leaders who are really thinking about this? Why not start with the MCCA board? And we'll continue to do that and offer those inclusive leadership development courses to general counsels who want to better understand their own behaviors. Because as leaders, you have to be self-reflective because what you think is a behavior that's very inclusive may offend someone unbeknownst to you. And that's the challenge of inclusion, I think that you had alluded to earlier, John. And one of the ways in which you do that is to better understand people through stories to individual interactions outside of a larger group. And we do that through panels at our conferences, at our inclusion summits. We started hosting inclusion summits in 2018 around the country. We've done some already at every year. We do one in Seattle. We've done it in workshops in smaller formats as well as a large panel. We've done a very large half day session at Eaton Corporation in Ohio last year in Cleveland. We are looking at opportunities to host another in the south this year as well. But those are the three big, I guess, ticket items that we're really focused on in trying to create more inclusive leaders, the survey, the research, the development program for leaders, and then our summit and conferences that talk about a culture of inclusion. And we had two panels on that last year at Pathways, and we'll continue to do that.

John: Fantastic. Quick shout out to Tina and Russell Reynolds through Jean's introduction, Reed Smith. We actually also hired Russell Reynolds to do the inclusion index survey for all of our personnel and implementing their programs around inclusion. So really, really great programming that they've done. Jean, you're doing so much, you just love hearing from you in particular. Thank you for sharing your story as sharing that with our audience. What lessons do you hope that people will take away from your personal journey?

Jean: I would say the most important thing is don't give up. I think that it's important for people because diversity, inclusion, and equity, when you think about that as a challenge within our workplace, it doesn't even have to be corporate America, but in our day-to-day workplace can be sometimes demoralizing. It can be just difficult emotionally in many ways, but if we give up the fight, then it doesn't get it better. So I would encourage everyone to continue fighting, to continue giving the other person a chance to share their story because maybe there's something there that you've missed. And in a busy world like today, where so much is happening, everything is in many cases, often about the bottom line, and I completely get it now that I run a nonprofit business, I'm constantly thinking about the bottom line. But take that extra five minutes because it may help you better understand and better evaluate and better assess people that you may have discounted or that you may not even have thought about. And that would be my biggest advice. Don't give up, listen and share.

John: Awesome. Great, great, great advice. So Jean Lee, thank you for coming in. Thank you for sharing all your experiences. Thank you for sharing all the things that, the great work that the MCCA is doing. I just applaud so much your efforts, your leadership. You're really a thought leader around so many issues, and I'm just happy to be your friend. Thanks again.

Jean: Thank you, John. Thanks for having me and allowing me to share my story today with you and Reed Smith.

Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. Available on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, PodBean and reedsmith.com.

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

All rights reserved.

Transcript is auto-generated.