Mei Qin tells WP how she grew her book and overcame negative stereotypes, backed up by the team at Edward Jones Canada
Mei Qin came to Canada in 2003. She was a single mother of a seven-year old boy, newly arrived from China seeking a new career. Now she’s one of the top advisors in Canada, and a paragon of achievement at Edward Jones. Qin’s journey from new immigrant to top advisor did not come without challenges.
As a new immigrant, a woman, and a visible minority, Qin is open about the challenges she’s encountered in her career. She’s faced stereotypes and negative biases, cruel jokes and assumptions, but she’s - worked past them through her “laser focus” and with the support of a team at Edward Jones Canada that believes diversity is their strength.
“If I have a strategy [for negative biases], it’s to stay laser focused on what I want to do,” Qin says. “Of course, you don’t want clients or colleagues to have a bias or stereotype, but gradually I have overcome that challenge. I was fired up by my passion for a new career in a new country. I believed in Edward Jones’ career development process too. They have a recipe to follow, that includes my strengths as a bilingual, bi-cultural advisor, and I followed it.”
Qin started her career in China, as a marketing executive at IBM. She says she made the continental shift to Canada and financial advice because she wanted to learn more about investing and growing wealth. After immigrating, she worked as an advisor at a major life insurance firm and a big bank. The salary and benefits at the bank, though, didn’t offer much more than what she was getting back in China. At Edward Jones, Qin found a platform that enabled her to work flexibly, offer clients a wider universe of solutions, and enjoy the fruits of her labour as she grew her book of business.
Qin says that for the early years of her career in Canada, she didn’t notice negative stereotypes directed her way. Cultural politeness, multiculturalism, and high levels of education in Calgary meant that her experiences of naked bias were few and far between.
At a party hosted by one of her clients, though, Qin ran headfirst into bias. The client’s adult child was at the party, newly arrived from out of town. Introducing themselves to Qin they asked her if she was the new housekeeper.
Of course, Qin’s clients were embarrassed and immediately corrected their child. But in that moment Qin saw some of the unstated biases many Caucasian Canadians hold for female visible minorities like herself. As an immigrant with an accent, Qin says that she often faces the assumption that she came to Canada without an education or work experience. She has a Master’s in Computer Science and a CFP designation.
Qin’s experiences with stereotypes haven’t dampened her belief in human connection or commitment to her clients. With the ongoing support and training offered by Edward Jones, she grew her book by serving clients who valued the insight, knowledge, and level of service she could bring. By Edward Jones’ internal metrics for client service, Qin scores 100%. Encouraged by Edward Jones, too, she used her language skills and cross-cultural understanding to bring in clients who share her own background. While Chinese Canadians aren’t the majority of Qin’s clients, they’ve been a great contributor to her growth.
The resources provided by Edward Jones, Qin says, have been instrumental to her success, from connecting her with other visible minorities who have succeeded in the industry, helping her improve her public speaking skills and providing her with an optimized practice coach to further deepen her client service to name a few.
Now Qin is helping others at Edward Jones Canada, as the area leader for the firm’s team of female diversity and inclusion specialists, a group of associates whose important work is woven into the cultural fabric at Edward Jones. She says she stepped up to provide that leadership because of a lifelong belief in fairness. She wants to help other women of diverse backgrounds get a fair opportunity at Edward Jones.
Qin was given a platform by Edward Jones and used it to leap into the stratosphere. Now as a top advisor, she’s working to help her colleagues do the same. She’s working, she says, to build equity for her clients and her community.
“Diversity is a fact,” Qin says. “And the right thing to do is acknowledge it, celebrate it and work to create more equity. It’s a job that will never be done but focusing on progress is the key. We must keep working and learning and welcoming the diversity that makes us all better.”
