Leadership in Colour from Shez Iqbal, Powered by Media For All [MEFA]
Leadership in Colour showcases outstanding leaders of colour sharing their personal journeys, offering valuable insights and advice, and highlights their current projects. Join us to hear from these inspiring leaders and expand your perspective on leadership.
Leadership in Colour from Shez Iqbal, Powered by Media For All [MEFA]
Episode 18 - Humanity Our Greatest Gift with Suresh Raj
What if humanity — our shared capacity for empathy, connection, and courage — was the most powerful tool we have as leaders and changemakers?
In this moving episode, we explore the remarkable life of a man who defied cultural expectations, turned down fame, and rose to corporate leadership — all while never losing sight of his human story.
From growing up in a multicultural, interfaith family in Malaysia to nearly starring in Miss Saigon and becoming part of an MTV boy band, to leading growth for one of the world’s top creative agencies, this is a journey of breaking boundaries and choosing authenticity over convention.
What you’ll hear:
- A powerful story of identity, race, religion, and reinvention
- The emotional toll of cultural stereotyping and “the box”
- The truth behind fame — and the choice to walk away from it
- The importance of leading with humanity in modern workplaces
- Why storytelling, vulnerability, and connection matter now more than ever
This isn’t just a career journey — it’s a human one. One that reminds us that regardless of where we come from or what roles we play, our shared humanity is the bridge that can lead to real, lasting change.
🔔 Follow the show, leave a review, and share this conversation if it moved you — because humanity grows when stories are heard.
#Humanity #Leadership #Identity #Diversity #Storytelling #DEI #Authenticity #Buzzsprout #ImmigrantStories #CorporateCulture
Your feedback is always welcome, as we strive to enhance the content's value for you. Enjoy Leadership in Colour - Voices you may not have heard from before.
I started these conversations to discuss leadership, mentorship, growth, and so much more from voices you may not have heard from before. I hope the conversations inspire you, motivate you, and give you something to think about. It's Leadership in Colour with myself, Shehzad Khan, supported and powered by me. Welcome to Leadership in Colour. So, so pleased to have today, Suresh Raj, Chief Growth Officer at McCann New York. There are a few people that you kind of stumble upon their LinkedIn posts and you think, hey, you know, that could be an interesting person to connect with. And Suresh was one of those. So I saw some of your LinkedIn posts, especially about cans this year and reached out. And so pleased that you responded to that. And now you're here. And this conversation is going to be fantastic. In fact, Suresh hasn't told me this, but I know from the little bit of time that we've had together, he's a little bit competitive. And I'm sure this is going to be His aim is going to be to make this the best conversation we've had yet. Is that fair? That's
SPEAKER_02:a slight understatement, very competitive, overachiever. But yes, I do like aiming for the stars. And Chez, thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you for reaching out. Thank you for the conversation. And thank you for the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:So tell me a bit about your upbringing, because you mentioned, of course, the South East Asian name and sort of heritage back then. And you've Your parents come from a very diverse background, but you spent a lot of time in Malaysia, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I was born and brought up in Malaysia. My parents are both first generation Malaysians. So just to give you some context on the history of Malaysia as a country, it is a peninsula at the end of Thailand, just above Singapore. Everybody knows Singapore. It's a tiny little dot. And Malaysia is the big peninsula above it. But Malaysia was actually the global trading route for the Arabs, the Indians and the Chinese. And if you know anything about Malaysian culture today, if you ever visit the country, it's Three major races in the country are the Chinese, the Malays, the Indians. That's what makes up Malaysia. And in fact, the name, the word Malaysia means Malay being the dominant race and Sia is a combination of both the Indians and Chinese. It's a cosmopolitan society. So I grew up in a culture where I had Chinese friends, I had Indian friends, I had Malay friends, and we all lived harmoniously together. Having said harmoniously, mostly people married within their own races. And to my parents, who decided they're going to break the rules from the word go. So they were first generation Malaysians, and in fact, their own families had had intermarriage themselves. So kind of rule breakers from the word go. But the difference was religion. So on my dad's side, they kept the Christian religion, and my mom's side, they kept the Muslim religion. And when my parents got married, the Muslim side of my mom and the Christian side of my dad decided to get married, and that was a cultural taboo. Beyond just the mix of the cultures, the mix of the ethnicities, it was the mix of the religion. So a lot of complication there in terms of my dad had to become Muslim to marry my mother, then they both converted out and became Christians, and in Malaysia, a Muslim country, that's considered apostasy. So my upbringing was literally in a country where we were already the anomaly, ethnically an anomaly within the local cultural set. And then religiously, an anomaly. And so that was the upbringing that I knew in a country down in Southeast Asia. At the age of 21, I had the opportunity to pursue my education. I was a fairly decent student to do my degree in the UK, where I landed in London and lived there for a further 21 years. So I got my degree. I did my MBA and started my career in the United Kingdom. so worked there for about 16 years and then with my role moved from London to New York and I've been here coming up to 10 years now so I've had and I'm very grateful for this to be honest because not a lot of people from particularly from my generation and my part of the world had the opportunity to really just go and explore the world and absorb culture and live in different sorts of communities and I genuinely genuinely treasure and value that because I think it's mainly who I am as an individual.
SPEAKER_00:That's great history, although I think there's a part of you that really makes you who you are that you've skipped over there, and that is the fact that you were in a boy band. Yes, I quickly bypassed that stage. Yeah, you sort of went towards it like, yeah, I was in Malaysia, I was in the UK. No, but you were in a boy band.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yes, for all my sins. So the overachiever part of me. So as I mentioned, I was a good student. So my parents had this, as you know, any Asian person listening to this would know that they were born and destined for at least four major careers, a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, or an engineer. Any one of this is possible. moment of pride for every Asian parent so I was particularly good at school and there was a real passion and hope that I would end up being either an accountant or a lawyer because I was good and I was a national debater I was a national elocutionist and I was very good in math so like Those are my strong subjects. So my parents went, this is it. He's a good student, straight A's, really good in these areas. So that's what he's going to end up with. And to be honest, I had no path. I loved what I did. I love studying as the form and craft of studying, and I could study anything and I enjoyed it. And in my sort of, when I was 18, 19, I had an opportunity to go up to the capital. I was in the very south of Malaysia, small little village was where I grew up, and I had a chance to go and do my sort of equivalent of like a pre-college education. And whilst there in the capital, I ended up joining, I was a staunch Christian, and I was a uh one of the members of a christian band and it was more around doing something i enjoyed i'm a musician by ear i'm not a trained musician but i love playing the piano playing the drums i write my own songs i sing and i had the option to be in this uh christian rock band uh and and i loved it like i hadn't realized what music was such a deep passion and it really it made me come alive to be honest um And so I just carry that passion. My parents go, oh, that's nice. He plays for a church band. That's nice. God bless him. But keep on your studies. Right. And so, like, I knew I always knew my path was not to end in Malaysia. I had an opportunity to go to the UK. So I knew my education would continue. So in that mindset, I knew that the band was great. a passion point, but I hadn't realized that I actually did have a talent for it. And so when I went to the UK, within the first three months of being in the UK, I would just sing everywhere, like in the hall to perform. I'd just be singing in the shower, singing in my room, etc. And a number of friends of mine said, like, you really have a talent. You should go and audition for, you know, just audition and go into these open mic nights, etc. And in the first three months, I'd never seen a musical in my life, so I didn't know what they were. And there was a girl, I remember her name was Susan Blackwell. I'll never forget her. And she was a massive musical fan, living in the halls of residence, same as me. And she slipped a paper cutting of a open call auditions for Miss Saigon back in London and slipped it underneath. And it's a funny story. And I kind of like, heck, I'll just go do it. And the power of naivety, by the way, the power of just being generally, authentically interested in doing something and passion with no training. So I'm not a trained singer. I have no background in it. I just happen to be in a band and I love to sing. So I turn up in Drury Lane in Covent Garden and one cold November, December morning in 1994, three months into arriving in the UK. I'm a student at Middlesex University. I had three friends join me, Susan, Corrine, and Maven. And as I arrived, I realized how serious this was because yet this professional singer's, actor's role dancers etc literally doing the splits and stretches etc and I turned up in like jeans and a t-shirt and and everybody's bringing their headshots like you know big old headshots etc and we're like what the heck have I done like this looks quite serious and I started to get real and I'd never been into theater and this is a massive theater Drury Lane so and I'd only just I should contextualize this I'd never heard any of the soundtrack of the musical Miss Saigon so overnight I had to learn this song because I was auditioning for a role called, I think it's Chris, it's a sporting lead role. And there's a song, there's a massive song that he sings. It's actually the biggest song in the musical called Bui Doi, which is about the lost children of Vietnam due to the war. And so I'm like, I had to memorize the song overnight until three in the morning. I was in the music room in the halls of residence and learning the song. So we turn up and After so many people are gathering, I was like the sixth person to register for the day. And as I turned up to register, they say, you know, your name, blah, blah, blah. And they go, oh, you know, can you share your headshot? And I don't have a headshot. I don't know what it is. So I pulled out my Malaysian passport photograph to them. And they literally looked at it and goes, Are you serious? And he goes, yep, that's all I have. So literally, that's my point of naivety. Literally, they clipped it to my application. And as I sat down, people were going in. As I said, I was the sixth one to register. This is so embedded in my memory. And I turned to my friends and said, I'm not doing this. This is ridiculous. I can't believe I mustered the courage to come here to do this. I'm so embarrassed. And literally goes, no, no, no. You're like the next person, and you should just do this. I went, no. So I got up and said, we're leaving. As I got up, the door opened and Gillian Schofield, who was the casting director, opens the door and goes, and literally goes, I'm like, oh, shit, shit, shit, shit. So like, so one of my friends says, just go and do it. So I walked in, and it's the first time I've walked in a massive, if you've ever been, massive Drury Lane Theatre. It's got the helicopter that they lower in the show. It's right up there on the stage, and there's a pianist, the engineering booth that had like three people in there, and everything else was dimly lit, or not lit. It's literally, there's a spotlight on stage, the light of the engineering booth, the sound booth, and then I'm literally walking down, and they say, you know, anytime you're ready, so I get onto stage, I give the pianist the score, and it's the song and then the spotlights come on and I can't see anything and I start singing and it's as I said it's a very big song I remember the first two lines shares literally just the first two lines and then I made the whole song up I just made up lyrics because I couldn't remember I blanked completely but what I did do is I finished the song So I did all, however, minutes, four minutes plus of it. I can't remember how long the song was. I remember thinking at the end of it, as I ended the last note, I closed my eyes and I thought, oh, dear God, I need a paperback. I'm just going to walk straight out and not make a big deal about the situation, which is so incredibly embarrassing. The pianist gave me back the score. And then running down the aisle was this guy. And I said, and I was like, I'm so sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I'm very embarrassed. And he goes, no, that was amazing. Can you start on Wednesday? And I went, my response is, were you not listening? And he goes, no. Yeah. He said, I don't care about the lyrics, but your voice, you have a talent. And I, it's so raw, so nurturing. And I want to just get you in. So we start on Wednesday. So I walked out and I like, like, completely gobsmacked. I just didn't know what just happened. Walked out, Gillian comes running after me and goes, oh, by the way, here's the paperwork you need, equity, et cetera. Can you just get it ready and bring it with you on Wednesday? The guy was Sir Cameron McIntosh. So he was the one who spotted the talent. So I immediately, because it was a six-month, the way West End works, you get contracts for six months. And I was on a student visa at that point. So I called my parents and said, I really want to do this. I really think I've got a talent here and I'd love to pursue it. And of course, naturally they say, well, no, but if you decide you want to do that, then we're no longer supporting your education. You're on your own. So for me, I literally, the most sort of common sense side of me got, well, I don't want to risk that because I do want to have something to fall back on if this doesn't take off. And the contract with the West End was only six months. At the end of that, you don't know what's going to happen next. And let's be honest, Jess, how many roles are there for people of color in the West End? And that role was a role of color, and particularly played by a black man in the show. But I, for some reason, passed for that role. So I turned it down. But that was the sort of the acorn that grew into the boy band. Sorry, it's a long-winded story that gets to the boy band. So what I told myself is, okay, fine, I'll focus. I'll do my degree. And the day when I graduate, I'll pursue my music. So to the day of graduation, literally the convocation happened that day in 1996 or so. The very next day, there was an open call audition for a boy band being put together by MTV. And so I went. I quietly didn't tell my parents. I graduated. I did my degree. I did really well. I ended with a very good degree and really excelled in school. But I trudged all the way up to Camden, did the live auditions. And it was the very first pan-European reality music TV show. So you think about the X-Factors, Popstars, etc., That was the very first one, Search for a Boy Band. And they auditioned guys all over Europe, primarily Sweden, Germany, and the UK. And it was a live phone-in. Once you audition, the people were phoning in and shortlisting, etc. And I didn't have a TV. I was living in a bedsit above a Greek restaurant. Interesting fact, my landlord was Stavros Flatley. So the guy from Brit's Got Talent, Dimitri Dimitris. And so for three months, I didn't know that the voting was happening because I didn't actually have a TV and I didn't have MTV. Three months in, I get a call from Boris, I can't remember his name, but he was a video jockey, and Davina McCormick. call. She was the host of the show. She was at MTV at that point. And I was one of the selected to be in the boy band. So that was my brush with fame. I did it for about two years and then realized there was no money in it. So after graduating, I was I was washing dishes in Dimitri Dimitri's restaurant in North London on Bramley Road. And after two years of just living in a bedsit and not having any money, but having fame, people saw me on TV. We were performing. We're opening clubs and like opening nights and clubs, etc. It was just a very, very soul destroying industry because maybe there was a tipping point. But being and this is fact that. I remember being in an interview with a newspaper. I don't even know if it's around anymore. I appeared on like Z TV and some of these Asian channels and Asian Voice was a newspaper. I don't know whether it's still around now. They were doing a double page spread on me because I was the only person of color and Asian in particular, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern mix. The rest were two English guys, a white Swedish guy and a black German guy. For me, I was the first time a main... an Asian artist broke mainstream. We were an MTV boy band performing, and literally I sat on the sofa with John Landis, who was the director of Michael Jackson's Thriller and Black and White Video. That was the level we were at. And we actually were the opening act for the Spice Girls in Popcom. They had already hit two or three number ones at that point. And they were doing an interview on me saying, like, it's an amazing story about an Asian artist breaking mainstream and we'd love to do this double spread on you. And then head The editor of the newspaper at that point said, so, you know, you must be minting now. Like, you know, we've heard about what you've been doing in terms of opening clubs. And they're like, absolutely not. It's all promotional work. Like, I had to invest the time. I was taking the tube. I was getting my own designers because of my connections on MTV. I got my own designers to actually help me with clothes, et cetera, for the show. And he goes, no, no, no. I heard that you were paid£15,000 to do that opening night at the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square. I went, what? And I literally went to my manager, and the manager I had at that point was the manager from the 80s who would manage Human League and Culture Club, etc. And I was like a young, naive artist, starving artist, just wanted to do it for the love of the art. And I'd spoken to him and I said, I heard I got paid. And he goes, yeah, yeah, but that, you know, based on your contract, the first so many years, hundreds of thousands or a million pounds or whatever is due to all the investment that they're putting in to promote me. So I see nothing. And I just realized two years in, I had no food. Literally, I was living on£500 a month, paying a£140 rent in a bedsit and no heating. It was an awful time. So I just jacked it all in, completed my MBA, and then got a job in the marketing communications industry. Long story.
SPEAKER_00:It's a really good story, though. So I do appreciate you sharing it in its entirety. There's a lot to unpack there. I mean, the reality is that if I'd gone through that audition and then my parents had said, no, you can't go for it, I think I would have done exactly what you did. But I don't know, but that's not advice for anybody. I'm not saying that's something, if anyone else finds themselves in that situation, I'm not saying that they should go either way, but I probably would have done the same thing. And that's a real cultural thing, right? Like we just want to please our parents, but we also want stability. I think coming from that generation where our parents had an element of struggle You know, you've seen it. You've seen them have conversations about money openly. So you just don't want any of that, right? You just want to... So you end up going for the thing that makes the most amount of sense or going for common sense. But I do commend you on then after graduation, just going for it, like following your dream, because that's not how the story usually pans out. And the fact that you're able to see it through and live it, and there must have been a lot of... lessons along the way that you've brought into your corporate career? Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:yeah, 100%. And I think, and actually, they're not actually good lessons, but they were lessons indeed. I realized very quickly, and maybe the artist that followed, and I don't know him at all, there was no connections whatsoever, but I remember years later, not too long, a few years later, Jay Sean, do you remember him? I think
SPEAKER_00:Jay Sean's first single, whatever it was, with Chuggy D, I think he's got some sort of anniversary this year. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. It's been a long time. I can't remember how many years, but it's been like a long, yeah, it's like an anniversary year.
SPEAKER_02:So when they did that article on me, they talked about me being the very first ever Asian artist to cross mainstream. And when I say mainstream, i.e. I'm going to be direct, it's like, you know, white music, right, or cultural music, pop culture music. But it was weird because I was singing in English. And it's so weird because, like, even when I worked with music directors and publishers and songwriters, they would always, in my music, in the tracks, they put the, oh, we'll put the sound of a tabla in. So I was like, what? Why? I don't know how to play it. It's not my instrument. I play the piano and the drums. That's what I grew up with. But it's so weird. And then I realized very quickly, and that's the translation to the corporate world, people immediately put you into a box because they see you and think, that's what you are. You do that. And I was trying to break out of that. And not that I was trying to break out of it. I didn't realize there was a box. That's the thing. In my mind, there was no box. I speak... four, five languages. And like, well, my first language is English because it's a common language between my parents. They have different cultures. So I've always spoken English. I know how to sing in English. And that's my background. But when they see the color of your skin and your ethnicity and your background, they go like, oh, okay, you should only sing to this audience. You should only talk to this audience. And that's the only thing you would know. And I think that was the frustration. And funny enough, that's often 26 years into my career. And that frustration that environment hasn't changed. People tend to see you in a box and they like to put you in a box. I think that's what you can do. It's very demoralizing. But then when you think about it, you add the combination of being an overachiever and somebody who just doesn't think they belong in a box because there is no box that should exist in the first place. That gives you the fuel and the passion to really push boundaries. So I've tried to use that, not that I've engineered myself to have that emotion, et cetera. I just, well, why not? Why is there a box? Why are we sort of conferring ourselves within a certain sort of framework um so i try to use that as as a reason to break boundaries
SPEAKER_00:i want to ask this question so and i'm projecting my own experience here have you ever on a team been approached as it support
SPEAKER_02:i'll do one better i was uh working um i was the business development director for a very well-known uh pr agency in the uk i won't name the agency because they're amazing people i loved my time it's one of the best periods of my career ever and we had a world multinational, global client in the confectionery industry. Really good. And we had just done some of the most amazing work. And this is going back to the early 2000s and doing some amazing work for them. And they were holding a benefit or a banquet of some sort celebrating their charitable work in Africa. And it was at the Landmark Hotel in London. And we'd all turned up and we had a table. And I wore a very distinguished, what I thought, a very distinguished looking white tuxedo. So black trousers, white jacket, very nice tie, etc. And there were multiple tables. And in the midst, it was heartbreaking, to be honest, to even think about it again now. During the performance, we had African tribes come in and perform in loincloth. I'm not diminishing that because it's tribal, it's heritage, it's rich history, etc. What I'm really affected by is how... the community around it, particularly the majority were, as you can expect, very, very Caucasian-led. And nothing is a merit to a Caucasian, so I'm not belittling that in any which way. But the number of sort of Caucasians who got up and just started clapping, I just felt like, oh, dear God, I feel like I'm in the middle of a colonized country. And then, unfortunately, one of the performers, the loincloth dropped and they were not naked but their lawn cloth dropped and the amount of laughter that went around the room and it really crushed me like why are we like people talk about Africa like it's people living in trees have you seen Nigeria have you seen Kenya like If you've seen some of these countries, they're so modern, and people have this image of that's what Africa is, or even that's what Asia is. When people talk about Malaysia, they go, do you guys still live on trees? Do you use slippers? Do you use shoes? Like, super ultra-modern countries, right? So I was very affected by what I just saw, and I had to remove myself, and I'd taken out my BlackBerry at that point, and I was going to go to the loo, and I just wanted to get away from that scene. And as I was walking, one of the tables turned to me and said, excuse me, waiter, could we have more wine? And I looked at him and I said, I'm a guest. And so I don't need to be called IT boy. I've been called and no disrespect to being a waiter. In France, it's a profession by anybody, anybody of any color. But it was the assumption that the person of color in the room was the waiter, not a guest. In fact, a guest of the client who we were supporting. And so it's happened many times. Not so sure I've had the IT thing because I'm useless at IT. But I've been mistaken for a very diminished role for what I currently do.
SPEAKER_00:So I think the thing about, I'm a big fan of Africa, right? I love the culture, the heritage. My wife is from the contingency of Asians that came through via East Africa. And I've got family that pass that contingency as well. But I have to admit that I also find it a little bit, I don't know if cringe is the right word, but uncomfortable when I watch performances of the African tribal dancers and what have you, only because, and I kind of get the feeling that you were there as well, there is this sort of like, yeah, I think Commonwealth type feeling where, oh, right, you know, these people have been brought out to entertain us. And it's usually in mostly, you know, whites or Caucasian rooms. And it's wrong that I, maybe it's wrong that I feel that way because there is an art in what they do and the dance. And, you know, they're far more athletic. They're a million times more athletic than I am. And I can never do any of that. And if my children are able to do some of that dancing or that, you know, if they're that athletic, that'd be phenomenal. I'd be so proud of them. But at the same time, I'd love to see representation of some of the other cultural and art components that come from Africa, which is a huge continent. There is some discomfort. There's something there. I can't quite put the words to it, but there is a feeling that is intangible that sticks with you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I say that as somebody who's come from a colony, and it's just... Watching the way the far-right movement in the UK today about, you know, get everybody who's not born and brought up, or English in that sense, get them out of the country, is the kind of theme that you get when you sit in a room filled with colonizers watching a tribal dance. It's not a celebration of the art and the craft, because there is. You see it in the arts and the craft and the context of what it is. I know there are very traditional Malaysian dancers that it colonizes where to look. And I use that word purposefully, colonizes. It always feels like there is a level of society that's up a crust and better than everybody else. And then, oh, there's all the local tribes. And they're performing for us. And it's a feeling you cannot get rid of. And actually, it's very hard to actually live through that every day. And that's the lens we live through every day.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But if I think about it as a contrast, right? If I was in Pakistan, which is where my family's from, and there was a conference, an event there, and then we got a bunch of guys coming through with the pomp and ceremony of a bit of Morris dancing, I didn't know how that would be received. I... I don't know. Firstly, if those people, assuming they were all white that were dancing, right? I don't know how they would feel about it. I don't know if they would feel comfortable. And there is a part of me that really feels like they would be given a lot more respect somehow in the room, but I could be wrong because I've never been to a conference voice. I could be completely wrong. Maybe they would be taking the mick out of dance a little bit or you know maybe there would be a slight you know maybe a similar feeling in the atmosphere i
SPEAKER_02:would say and you know just instinctively first of all i've never seen that happen
SPEAKER_01:because
SPEAKER_02:it's always the other way around that we've ever experienced but if if it were to happen i'll give you this from a cultural lens Growing up in Malaysia, if you were married to a Caucasian or you had a Caucasian at your event or in your circle, you were seen as a better person. You are immediately elevated in your level of thinking. And I just generally think that simply because of a personality. living in a colony. Like, you know, it was, we were a British colony and the British Empire and before that the Dutch or that the Portuguese. Locals always just felt that they were always second best to second class. And you leveled up by having sort of Caucasian community in your vicinity, or you married into one, and as such, you suddenly became better. And it is. It is a mindset. And honestly, you know, there are products in, like, I, last time I went back was late to, it's about 2018, back to Malaysia, and till today, they sell body lotions, reputable, big, global brands that we would get here on this shelf. The same products are there, but they're sold with skin-whitening lotions so they have formulas in it to whiten and make your skin lighter because you're more valuable as a lighter skinned individual and so that is ingrained in our society that you are valued more if you're fairer in every single way so the highest level you can be is white right and and so it is but it's perception and that's why for us like to what we just talked about you'd never see morris dancing or waltzes coming being performed in local malay uh sort of at a local malay wedding because it'll be like oh that's really high class right is it high class i don't know because i i know some of malay traditional dancings indian bharatanatyam for example is an art form
SPEAKER_01:but
SPEAKER_02:it will you you train for multiple years to become this superstar in it uh but it doesn't have the same gravitas not in in the at least my point of view it doesn't have the same gravitas and it should have the same gravitas as from a cultural lens point of view.
SPEAKER_00:I like to think things are changing. Switching gears slightly, how do you think that translates to the world of leadership and diversity and leadership? How have you experienced diversity and leadership in your career so far?
SPEAKER_02:I will say we've come leaps and bounds, right? Credit where credit is due. What we have had is an opportunity to really have transparent conversations. And, you know, kudos to the leaders that have come before us who've actually paved that way and has that journey ended. No, we're still dealing, we talk about the far-right movements in the UK right now, still taking place in the country right now, in the same way in the United States we've had that. But we've also had leaders have actually broken new ground for us and actually spoken up that's led to policy change, industry change, and as a result, visible change in organizations. What has come very clear, and God bless the younger generations because they're the driving force behind this, they've realized very quickly there is power in your pocket. If you don't feel an affinity with a brand or a product or a service, you don't spend the money. And when you don't spend the money, guess who hurts? The company. And the reason they're not spending is they don't see themselves in that product and that service or that experience. So to see themselves, organizations, and you've heard this hot word, need to be culturally relevant. They need to be culturally relevant and speak to the different trigger points and the cultural touch points for these consumers. And that's driving a lot of that change. As a result, and if you do it as reverse engineering it, right? If you think about the work that needs to live and breathe and connect with this multicultural, multifaceted, and multi-identifying audience, much younger audience sets, so Gen Zs, Millennials, and even some of the slightly more forward-thinking Gen Xs. You backtrack it, so if you think about, so we're a creative agency, within a creative agency, How can we put out work that really speaks to these people if you don't have the people who understand that audience, who live and breathe that experience, who come from that experience, that heritage? So it becomes a reengineering of organizations. So in order to get that, then you need to have your audience. your team and your makeup of individuals that actually understands this and therefore comes from all these different walks of life. And therefore you start to diversify your workforce. They're going to be different people of different experiences, different cultural touch points, brought up in different parts of the world, speak different languages, have experienced things differently, have multiple identities. Like it's not just male or female, but every sort of spectrum under the book. So if you think about age, gender, race, sexuality, ability, and other sort of spectrums, how do you bring all of that and You have to diversify your workforce. In order to do so, you need a leadership that knows how to lead a multicultural workforce, right, and speaks in this new language of the current world. And that has driven and forced that change. Are we there, fully there yet? Dear God, no. We're so far from it. But we have cracked that barrier. that block, right? We've made a few cracks in it. We're starting to actually start to make that change. And I think I particularly love sort of in the role that I'm at at the moment, it's probably the most multicultural executive team I've been on that actually has that conscious inclusion is one of our sort of leading sort of North stars. And we do that. And trust me, like even I have sort of upbringing and things that in my life that have sort of allowed me to force me to have blinkers on certain things. And I'm growing as a person because I kind of had a perception of life or culture in a certain way. And I'm like, oh, shit, I didn't know that. I didn't actually experience that. And now I'm learning in that process as well. So I think being from a leadership point of view, and it's so important, and hopefully maybe this becomes the title of our conversation, humanity. driven not by the color or creed or background of our skins and what we define ourselves as, At the heart of everybody is this inherent need to be human and treat everybody with humanity. That, for me, is where leadership should be. Because I do think if we use that and we really hone on that and focus on that as our North Star to lead with humanity, we start to see change in a very, very... positive, encouraging way that also leads to fire within each one of us to ensure that we bring humanity to the rooms that we're in, to the environments that we're in and to the people that we work with.
SPEAKER_00:During the pandemic, we were given the opportunity to work more flexibly and from home. And I feel like we were treated a lot more like adults. And then post-pandemic, I feel like we're still treated a lot more like adults. But how would you say... an organisation could treat you more like a human if you're like us, you know, from Southeast Asian heritage? What does that actually mean for us to be treated as humans? How would that differ to what our black and white colleagues would need?
SPEAKER_02:There is a and I, this is, pardon me if it's a generalization, but there is a, I think in the world, at least in my experience, my limited experience, there is a sort of perception of here, sort of here, all the Caucasians who, here's who's all non-person of color. They all go into this one bucket. Then everybody else who's every spectrum of every color and every creed goes into the other box. And I, personally think that's where the mistake is, in my experience, because everybody from every walk of life, and even within the Caucasian communities, they have different cultural experiences, different cultural touch points, different cultural expressions. In the same way, not every person of color, POC, has the same experience. So there are Black communities, there's Hispanic communities, there's Southeast Asian. Within that, there is also the Chinese. And I remember having this conversation once at a hotel here in Dallas. I'd gone for a pitch and I asked specifically, I had a craving for Chinese food. And I went up to the concierge and said, I really love some Chinese food. And he goes, do you mean Asian food? I went, no, I want Chinese food, i.e. from China, Chinese food. Because he goes, you need to be a little bit more woke. Like you need to stop referencing specifically like Chinese, et cetera, because that's kind of like, that's rude. You know, you should be embracing Asian culture. So you should refer to it as Asian. And it was actually said to me by a black man, right? So you kind of think people have just bucketed and not taken the time to actually understand what humanity meant and what culture meant to each individual culture. Will we know everything? No. But the whole point is be open to learning embracing those differences and ask and question and learn. That's the nature of being human. We're constantly learning. I'll be learning till the day I die because there's so many things I don't know. And I don't know what so many cultures and experiences, but I think what I have unearthed in me is this curiosity to learn where I don't know why I ask questions. I don't just assume your experience shares is the same as mine because we come from very different walks of life, but we're both Southeast Asians. but your experience as a Southeast Asian is very different to mine. So I wouldn't assume, it'll be completely ridiculous of me to assume that I can contextualize your experiences because I'm of the same, sort of, we look the same, right? And I think... For me, it is that from a leadership point of view, that's my guiding principle. I don't assume the same experience. And therefore, I ask, I inquire, I try to learn from that. And so the next time I actually engage with a person with that particular background, I have some inclination of understanding what those triggers are. How can I make sure that I make that individual feel welcome out of the community by embracing that? their rich heritage and making it adding it to the rich tapestry of who we are becoming as a society
SPEAKER_00:um i just want to round off the conversation a little bit more about what's going on at the moment so walk us through a little bit about your role your current work what what your vision is
SPEAKER_02:so i'm as you know i'm the chief growth officer mccann new york and we are the flagship operation within the mccann world group uh portfolio of companies which is a very big group and Really, I've always been passionate. I transferred that knowledge and the experience in the boy band to the media side because I remember thinking when I was in the boy band and we were being interviewed by the press, I thought one day if I'm not successful here, I'd like doing that job because it looks super interesting. And the craft of it was storytelling. right? Because journalists and media was all about telling the story of the person they were interviewing. And so for me, I've always been guided by the craft of storytelling. I love storytelling. And I hope this conversation feels quite natural because I'm not scripted. I'm telling you exactly based on your questions, my experience. And I think for me, in my role right now, and I've moved from doing public relations to then doing new business as a craft, because every relationship that I nurture and cultivate with prospects and clients leads to hopefully bringing opportunities into the business I work with for my team. So whether that's a strategist to a creative, to a production lead, to a business lead, et cetera, is helping tell that business's story. And whether that's a service or a product or an experience, whatever it is, it's about telling, it's storytelling. brand storytelling. And ultimately that as human beings, if you even go back to the days when we were created, like days of, you know, however many years ago, we started life by sitting around a campfire and telling stories. That's how community grew. So the craft and art of storytelling has never changed. It's evolved to become more sophisticated, but the story, the kernel of it all is storytelling. So for me, I try to bring that in the craft of new business, and I talked about bringing in the lived experience of each individual so that every conversation and every interaction with a prospect or a client is richer. It's more informed. And clients, and I always like the number one buying decision by any brand, and they will be spending hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, is not, yes. Strategy was great. Creative is super important. Fantastic. All these are, oh my God, fundamentals, right? These are all basic fundamentals. But the one, I remember this conversation with a client one year that we had won the business back in the early 2000s. She said, you were not the best agency. We saw four agencies and your ideas. I'd say you were not the best agency in terms of idea. Your idea was like third best. We liked two others a lot better. But when we thought about it and we thought about when shit hits the van and things go all wrong who'd be the person that we'd love to go down to a pub have a drink with and solve it and you guys were the only ones and I realized very quickly the number one decision every pitch I've been in ever since has been we loved the people. We sat in a room. We may not remember the ideas. There'll be so many agencies that pitch, and the ideas would all be similar, but they will remember the individuals. And that comes back to engaging in the room. And how do you engage? By engaging with real, heartfelt, authentic storytelling. If you come from a place of authenticity, you tell your story much more authentically. You connect with the human. that our element of humanity, it's the greatest gift we all have. Humanity generally is the greatest gift. And it comes out by us just being completely authentic and natural in the way we connect with another human being. And for me, that exchange is human storytelling. And so I try to bring all of that common sense, frankly, if you ask me, into my line of work. And if I'm able to do that successfully, I'll actually really enjoy my life, my career. And I So I'm hoping that's one of the reasons I am where I'm at. I've actually worked really hard in my life to get here, but hopefully fueled and powered by this natural need to connect with humans and tell authentic storytelling in that exchange and lead by humanity.
SPEAKER_00:I really like that. And I think it's good advice for anybody, either on a pitch or an interview or any sort of interaction, really, that that human connection is really important. You could have all of the right information scripted and deliver it in whichever way, you know, fantastically, flamboyantly, with the lights and all the rest. But if people don't like you on a human level, they can't connect to you. If they don't think that they can work with you, they can spend their time with you, then... that's always going to be the nagging feeling. Even if you've got that role, that project, I think your days could be numbered. I genuinely really appreciated your time and the conversation. I know we went over a little bit, so thank you so much for your patience on that as well. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you, Shez. With that title, what is it that you're going to name this conversation? I
SPEAKER_02:think, and again, first of all, Shez, thank you so much, and thank you for Running this, you run this podcast as a passion point initially, but that passion point drives change. So thank you for leading with your heart and helping everybody who listens to this in some small way. I think I would love to name this humanity. our greatest gift, because I like to think that's the message that I try to land. And there's the good, the bad of what we talked about. It is all guided by our humanity. And so if our humanity is good, it leads well. If our humanity isn't, it leads in a different direction. So I hope humanity being our greatest gift will be our greatest North Star collectively, whether person of color or not, to help all of us along the way and make this world a better place.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. Love it. That's what it's going to be called.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Take care.