Watch or listen to this episode below.

Brief summary:

Our podcast guest for this episode is Amy Huang who serves as Director of Onsite Technical Support at Marsh McLennan. Listen in as Amy, who is a champion for diversity and inclusion, discussed on this episode how someone can be supportive and lean into creating an inclusive environment at work, specifically around the LGBTQ community.

Key insights from this episode:

• (at 3:28)  Amy shares her fuel

• (at 7:28) Amy talks about how intersectionality plays out in her life

• (at 14:07) Amy offers advice on how we can create a sense of belonging with someone who seems so different than us

• (at 20:16)  Leila and Amy discuss how someone can be supportive and lean into creating an inclusive environment at work, specifically around the LGBTQ community

• (at 23:26)  How a genuine apology can take you far when you put your foot in your mouth unknowingly

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TRANSCRIPT
FUEL Podcast hosted by Leila Ansart
EPISODE 7: Being a Champion for Diversity and Inclusion -- with Amy Huang, Director of Onsite Technical Support at Marsh McLennan

INTRO: Thanks for joining us today. Our podcast guest is Amy Huang who serves as Director of Onsite Technical Support at Marsh McLennan. Let me tell you, I so enjoyed speaking with Amy, who is a champion for diversity and inclusion. 

She held several roles that aligned with this mission, such as being the facilitator for the Technology Advisory Council on Race and Diversity at Marsh McLennan. She's been a representative on the MGTI Diversity Council, global lead of the buddy program, mental health champion and global ambassador for Lean In Circles. 

She's passionate about making a difference for others, serving as board member for the Wesley College alumni association, as well as serving as a mentor for the Wesleyan Washington program since 2009. Fun personal fact? Amy's proud of setting up two of her friends who've been together for over 15 years and recently got married. Pretty cool. Listen in as we hear more of Amy's story. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Welcome back to FUEL everyone. We're excited to have you listening in today and I'm thrilled to have Amy Huang in my studio today. I'm interviewing Amy who is the Director of Onsite technical support at Marsh McLennan. Amy leads 40 plus technology professionals, and together her team supports four countries over 90 locations and 5,800 plus colleagues. She has got quite the job that she manages.

Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Amy Huang, Guest
Thanks Leila. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Leila Ansart, Host
Absolutely. We're going to talk today, Amy, and thank you again for your time about your journey around your professional career, what you've experienced. And I'm just going to dive right into the meat of the matter, which as the listeners know, is all about identifying your particular fuel. That's a bit of a play on words that we like to have fun with here on the podcast, but shining the light on the human experience that you have had as a business leader. 

What has been that internal drive for you to continue moving through the adversity that you faced with grace, with resilience and with assertiveness, I would say, in this particular situation? 

Amy Huang, Guest
Thanks Leila for having me. I would describe my fuel as being a voice for people,  and as being an opportunity to create an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive. You'll hear a lot of press around empathetic leadership and how a lot of issues have really just come to light in the pandemic. With zoom you're in people's homes, you're seeing their families, you're seeing their pets and you're really getting a sense at a very personal level of what everyone goes through. That veil between the personal and the work has come down, and hopefully out of this, we get much more empathetic with our colleagues and each other and can share more and create those stronger bonds among us. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I one hundred percent agree. I think it's a timely move. It's a change, not just that's happening because of the pandemic, but I think it's certainly been pushed forward at a much quicker speed because of the pandemic. I think everyone has just moved past that old stand and control, command and control. That is just so outdated in this day and age, knowing that people are the ones doing the work. 

That's what I love to talk about is shining the light on the humanity that we have in the workplace. It's not about just the output. It's not about just the numbers, it's balancing all of those things with the people, your greatest asset. And how to do that I think it's so necessary. I find it refreshing to hear you say that that's your particular fuel out of all the things that could drive you in your experience and from some of what you've shared with me, there's some particular reasons for that. 

Share with me about what you've been through and how that fuel source has crystallized for you. 

Amy Huang, Guest
Sure. I've been thinking a lot about my parents lately, especially with the rise of anti-Asian violence and that within my father's lifetime, right? He had gone from a farmer in Taiwan to getting a PhD, to leading a technology team at a company and to have a daughter also following his footsteps, at first unwillingly, but to really join and take his very empathetic leadership forward and as well as lead a technology team. It just is amazing to me that because of the choices he made, I have better opportunities. I think about that for others in an organization, because as we're in a war for talent, as we're building a more inclusive and diverse and equitable workplace, we have a lot of different experiences and different people to bring together. So, I hear the term like this person wasn't a good fit, or t this person doesn't fit our culture. 

I challenged that because we are really kind of about expanding the pie, right? What are they adding to the culture? Do you necessarily want people to fit in when really they're additive? What are they bringing to the table? How can they make our culture better? 

And I love your point about people. Marsh McLennan is a professional services organization and we have our 150th birthday. Our CEO, Dan Glazer, says we are a people business. Our wealth is in our people. And I feel the same way. My team has been incredible throughout the pandemic and really at the front lines of making sure that our colleagues have the technology they need to work from anywhere.

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah, absolutely. And again, my eyes glaze over when I look at the number of people that you support. So I'm sure that's a huge job. Tell me about your experiences around the subject of DEI and how you personally experienced that end of things. 

Amy Huang, Guest
Absolutely. It's been interesting and I love the term intersectionality because it comes and describes so many things. Being the daughter of immigrants, being of Asian descent, being a woman in technology, being a non-traditional technologist in technology as well as part of the LGBTQ community. For me, there's a lot of different variables and situations that I navigate and I'm not exactly sure what they're based on or why they certainly happen. 

I'd like to firstly say that I've been very fortunate and stand on the shoulders of giants and other people who have worked so hard, I remember thinking that marriage would never happen. I was very surprised when the Supreme court said that you cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation within the past year. And that was really amazing to me. The things that occur, I really would not want to happen to anyone and it could be as minor. 

I had a boss who would make fun of my name and just say “hoo-wang” just for fun. I have team members who have been told, well if you wanted me to pronounce your name correctly, your mother should have named you something different. And literally said that to them. I've also had team members who were given nicknames because people did not want to learn how to speak their original name or their real name. 

I would spend a lot of time listening to their voicemail, just really learning, because I'm actually terrible with names and myself and so [I’m] learning their names. Then I have a situation, unfortunately, where my boss and other boss would text me and say I was beautiful and sexy and asked me out. That was very uncomfortable because they did not have HR support in this particular organization. So I had to navigate that very carefully. 

I had another situation where I was on LinkedIn and my profile on LinkedIn is very generic about the differences that I have. And I've internalized a lot of homophobia. You won't find clear communities that I am aligned with and I've received a message from a client that said sex and sexual orientation don't belong in the workplace, I'm disconnecting from you on LinkedIn. That really surprised me because there's really nothing in there that would state that. The other piece was, it was so direct. I remember it because it occurred during the North Carolina bathroom crisis where a lot of these feelings from people were very strong. I remember wow, that directly impacted me. It directly impacts a lot of people. That's why I have a lot of empathy for a lot of people who are trying to go through that. 

And the last situation that I want to mention is that as someone who's an other, how do you navigate the workplace where a lot of decisions and conversations happen unofficially through networks, through networking events that may not be open to you? So I had thought I was going on a very normal client event and that turned really negative, really personal, really intimate and very uncomfortable very quickly. That was another experience that I really want to share so that other people don't have to go through it. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I remember you shared this experience with me when we spoke last and if I may expand based on what you told me. So Amy had gone to a networking event thinking she was networking, building her business relationships, and instead you had a client or whoever it was, a colleague, asked you inappropriate questions based on you being in the LGBTQ community. Am I remembering correctly?. 

Amy Huang, Guest
Yes. Unfortunately women, Asian women, queer women are fetishized and objectified in society. There's just this kind of image around them. There are some times where it's very innocent, inquiries like, oh, you're the first LGBT person I've met, which is probably not the case. I have some questions, and they could be very innocent questions. Unfortunately, these questions became increasingly uncomfortable and intimate where the client shared their own personal details, which I did not ask for, of things that they and their partner do. I always tried to bring it back to, oh, your child is in ballet, Like, what is that about? Let's talk about other things. Which then led to questions about me and my partner, of things that I do not discuss with, well, with anyone really, 

Leila Ansart, Host
Right, right. That's your personal business. I think it's interesting as we talk as a society about being more inclusive, and I love that phrase, “culture of belonging” that it can sometimes feel a bit like navigating a minefield or trying not to step on a glass that's been shattered on the floor. In the sense that maybe the individual is curious, maybe they haven't been exposed to someone who's confidently who they are. 

The idea of taking the conversation into such a personal realm when you can -- there's a lot of ways to get information, people. Does not need to be with that colleague that you're sitting across the coffee shop from. But going back to my point around this culture of belonging, I think that those of us who are trying to practice being more inclusive and being more curious, that's kind of the word that comes to my mind. 

We can sometimes be nervous about asking the wrong thing, or how do I make someone feel welcome without making them feel uncomfortable? Because I'm asking about what appears to be a difference between us. Well, how would you speak to that, Amy? 

Amy Huang, Guest
Think about what you would normally ask. If I was speaking to a heterosexual male colleague and said, oh, how is your wife? How are you doing? How was your weekend? And you would say, oh, we took the kids to soccer. I mean, there are very basic conversations. So when you're engaging in those conversations like that, hear about the soccer or the dog training, and those are fine. You almost have to self-filter because maybe you do have a curiosity. Maybe you have been sucked into some biases and cultural discrimination that's part of the wiring. We all have biases that we're working on. And you know, would I ask this question to anyone else? And we talked about a disconnect, right, where I could be saying, Hey Bob, how is your wife, Janet? How's that sourdough pizza that you're making in the backyard that you mentioned? That seems very normal. 

There may be a bias that comes back. Well, if Amy has a female partner, this means I can ask about things that they do. I think it's me asking about your wife and your family and what you're going on. And then a disconnect around, well that's Amy and her female partner, well that become sex and sexual orientation in the workplace when it's really, we went rock climbing, that's what we did this weekend. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Exactly. It's really coming back to just people and your family unit and whatever you want to refer to. But like, what are you doing for fun? What are you learning? How's work going? I mean, it seems so incredibly basic when you break it down. At the same time, I think that sometimes, pulling the bad apples outside of this statement, because there's always just jerks out there. Let's be plain and simple. I think, sometimes people just end up coming across in a way that I don't know that they intended to, again, bad apples aside. I think one of the ways that we can show that sense of belonging is being, in my opinion, genuinely curious and then paying attention. Like if you are in the business role where you are doing sales, or you're doing account management where you're working with clients, you knowyou have to do some of those networking type activities. 

It would be great if you could remember your client's significant other's name. It would be great if he could remember they have three kids and a dog, or they like to show their puppy. It would be great if you could remember those details so that you can ask about them in future conversations and it builds trust and it builds relationships and all of those things build into better business relationships. 

I feel it's the same when we're exposed to something that's different than us, whether that's LGBTQ, whether that's someone of a different race or of a different descent, whether that's just someone who is doing a job that you know nothing about. Being willing to say, hey, I'm curious about you. What do you like to do outside of work? Or, do you have anything you're working on learning right now? Opening those conversations and then paying enough attention to bring it up later and show that person that you really care. 

I'll tell you, that's easier said than done. I'll be 100% transparent when I say I use my phone. When I add a contact into my phone, I mean, we all have CRMs, right? If you have a CRM, that's your easy solution. If you don't, when you add that person into your phone or into your Outlook contacts, just put in the note section a few things like significant other's name, or they mentioned these hobbies, or what have you. That way it helps you to relate back to that person from a genuine point, which may be where your heart is. Even if your memory isn't always kicking in and helping you with that particular bit of information. 

Amy Huang, Guest
I love your piece about navigating minefields. I think this is especially important for people who don't have this trajectory. Something I've really liked about the pandemic is seeing how parents and children have become more connected because the parents are home and the child's being homeschooled. I've heard great stories about parents saying, like, I loved learning this lesson with my kid. I saw my teacher teaching my kid about this and I thought that was great. The kids are learning what the parents are doing. 

One of my friends is a CFO and was talking to a client and in the back she heard her seven-year-old son scream, like “it's about the money!” And the kids are really absorbing all of this as you're with them. I think this is a tremendous opportunity to learn. I feel like if you haven't had that background, if your parents don't have that background and you're navigating this world yourself, it's I think really challenging. And the norms are really challenging. 

I have a lot of anxiety around this. In fact, I had a client visit very recently, and I think we're all rusty at this because of the pandemic and being at home and may have said some things that were like, oh, why did I say that? And so we're gonna make mistakes. 

Diversity, equity and inclusion is messy. We're going to need to learn words. We're going to need to stand up for each other. We'll talk later about things that we can do that are very helpful for this. And you do need to pay attention, like you said, and have your filter on and remember that this person is a client or a business relationship, and that there really are things that are really inappropriate to speak about. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Amy. We have talked about some of the things that you felt were really good first steps, or maybe perhaps clarifications on how someone can be a bit more supportive and lean into creating an inclusive environment at work specifically around the LGBTQ community. Would you share those with us? 

Amy Huang, Guest
Absolutely. I'd be happy to. I think first and foremost, you gotta read the room and you need to know that your organization stands behind you, that your organization has a clear policy that HR will support you, that they monitor the workplace, that they take complaints seriously. Because if you are working in a place where those things aren't there -- I had an experience where I didn't feel that I had a strong HR and a lot of people don't report workplace harassment because they don't know what's going to happen and that retaliation does take place. 

If you are a leader in an organization, you're going to want to set clear policies, make sure that your colleagues and team members feel comfortable and safe. That psychological safety of coming forward, and then being taken seriously when they do come forward. I will share with everybody that when I have reported this to HR, it was taken very seriously and HR has to do their due diligence. 

There were a number of testimonies that I had to offer repeatedly and those can be retraumatizing. Just for those who do have an experience and are going to report it, you may be asked to go over that experience a few times to make sure that all the details are there. 

If you have the comfort in your HR that you know things will be taken care of, I really recommend that you do so, and you can be an ally and be committed to building an inclusive environment for your team. Be an upstander, right? So we talk about bystanding, but how do you upstand. If you hear something and you hear a joke that's really inappropriate, or you hear somebody say something -- I was on a zoom call recently, and a person was making derogatory comments out loud about the female speaker’s appearance.  I couldn't even believe it, their mic was on and they didn't know they had a hot mic on, and then another man on the call said, hey person, your mic is on. You may not want to be sharing those things with all of us. 

Upstanding - standing up when you hear something that is really unacceptable is great, and then you need to feel safety to do that as well. 

The clear policies training for colleagues, supervisors, and managers on how to identify it because there can be a gray line. And then there's certainly clear lines. How do you identify it, how to report it, how do you support your team members if it does happen to them? Monitoring the workplace, taking the complaint seriously.

Leila Ansart, Host
May I add something in here and I would like your honest take on this Amy, because you're living it and you're a champion for this cause and I'm by no means an expert and just trying to do my part. I think something that I have learned -- I have a middle-schooler and there's a lot of conversation going on right now in that particular age. I'm sure in high school as well, I just don't happen to have a high schooler, but there's a lot of conversation around gender identity and sexual orientation and who is and isn't what, and there's so many new terms lying around that I thought I was in-the-know and have increasingly learned more and more. One of the things I wanted to bring up is I think sometimes it comes back to just coming back to a place of humility that I might make a mistake, again bad apples aside. 

But sometimes I think we make mistakes because we don't think through what we're saying. Or perhaps we've said something before and not realize how it could come across. I think coming back to just humility for a genuine apology in the moment to say,you know what, that doesn't represent how I would like to come across, or that doesn't represent how I actually feel. I apologize for saying that, I've had to learn that because of my middle schooler, she has called me out on some things that I had no idea were even remotely, slightly, angled towards derogatory. I just hadn't thought of it that way. When she said something to me, I realized in that moment, okay  I've got some learning to do. 

I think everybody is nervous about missteps and about making mistakes. I think just coming back to realizing that it's better to take a step towards being an advocate and being the kind of person you want to be. If you make a mistake, you own up to your mistake, you apologize and you move on. I would imagine that is just a good reminder for all of us to have. 

Amy Huang, Guest
That is a hundred percent true and it is messy, terms change constantly. And we're learning that ourselves. We do have family members who have come out as trans, who have come out asexual, who have come out as trans and asexual. There's a lot of stuff.  I'm told that I'm an owl - an older, wiser, lesbian. There are terms that I learned as well. 

We're learning all the time and I love what you said, because in yoga, it's called the beginner's mind. So we can't expect to know everything and there are so many, really kind of racist things in our everyday language that we've never thought about. So even things like when people say “open the kimono” or “a game of Chinese whispers”  which was the first time I've heard about it this year and that I said, can we use playing telephone instead of Chinese whispers because the origin of that is people had thought the Chinese language was just incomprehensible. 

It's really fascinating, right? That there are very common things that we say that have these undertones that we may not even be aware of. And then there are very positive things that we can do in the workplace. Something I try to do is just really take gender out of everything. Instead of a job description, “he removed servers”, [say] the technician, the technologists, the candidate. There are definitely things that we can say because we have folks who do not subscribe to a gender, or consider themselves differently. And why do we even have to speak in that way? There are some languages where gender is very important and there's changes in there as well as like how can they remove the gender aspect out of language and just make it equal. 

Imagine that. An equal language. The words are so important. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah. Asme wrap up, Amy, what do you think is maybe that one quick takeaway that you'd like the listeners to take from today's episode? 

Amy Huang, Guest
I think we talked about this earlier. I think the one thing I'd love our listeners to take away is to have that beginner's mind and that humility that you talked about and that we don't know everything, we're not going to get it all right. The world is shifting and changing. We have an opportunity to really learn and have meaningful conversations about our colleagues, what they're going through, if they are comfortable sharing that and recognizing when they're uncomfortable. And then making apologies if we do perhaps make a mistake and we will make mistakes, all of us make mistakes, that's human. So to move forward together with the intent that we're here to make lives and our workplaces safer and more enjoyable for others. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I really appreciate you being willing to come on and share some of your personal story and what you've experienced. I think it's really good for people to hear from others. What life feels like when you're in a different camp than the listener is, for whatever that is different in any different way. I really appreciate it because that's not always an easy story to tell. I appreciate that you were willing to be there and share your passion for DEI and the work that is being done in that field. 

Amy Huang, Guest
Thank you so much for having me. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Absolutely, Amy, great to talk to you.