Canadian financial planner Julia Chung explains how she turns the tables on people with false, pre-conceived ideas
Looking younger than her years, and being of Chinese heritage, Canadian financial planner Julia Chung experienced some unpleasant pushbacks as she built her career. But she chose to use the spite to motivate her to succeed, she told Wealth Professional.
“Numerous times people have said certain things that stuck with me and made me very angry,” said Chung. Chung initially worked as a stockbroker before co-founding two Canadian companies, Spring Financial Planning and Admin Slayer.
One stockbroker once told Chung she could not succeed at client facing roles because clients like to look across the desk and see someone who looks like them. Another told her: “Asian women are always support staff”; and more than once she has been asked if she is taking the notes for a meeting.
To the note taking wisecrackers, she replied: “Yes, and I’m leading the meeting. Now, follow me.”
“What I try to do is take [disparaging comments] and not push back in an angry way, but say, ‘You've actually given me a bit of power here. I'm going to turn that on its head, and you're going to be so embarrassed when you realize how badly you screwed up here that you're going let me take the lead.’ ”
Chung’s thought is nuanced and she explodes easy - lazy - assumptions that would categorize her experiences as sexism and racism. What she observes is human nature responding to societal and systemic pressures.
Workplaces stem from the industrial age, which is why until recently workers were treated like robots and expected to be male, said Chung. “It’s tough on men and it's tough on women,” she said.
Racial discrimination is another fall out of the old world order, which forces hiring for “cultural fit” a problem Chung sees lasting for at least another 10 years.
She applauds the emerging, agile way of doing business, which her companies have embraced, offering fully flexible working for all employees. “You’re allowed to bring your whole self to work … be a total human being,” said Chung.
Her advice for women is to not believe everything they’re told; to pay close attention to the behaviour of colleagues and what this conveys about their future at that workplace; and to not stand for bad behaviour.
“Don’t make allowances for people,” said Chung, who advised women to stand up for themselves and their careers. “You don’t have to hold yourself back,” she said.
