Asian entrepreneurs have an under-representation problem
When you think of an entrepreneur, who do you envision? Is it the people you see on the magazine covers? On transit ads? Celebrating their latest wins on LinkedIn? Or is it the folks you see working long hours at their family-run shops and restaurants? Even then, what do those people look like? And how often are they of Asian descent?
Forbes’ Finest List shows that 41% of individuals identified as Asian. Further to this, 42% of companies that have turned into publicly-traded companies in the last few years haven at least one Asian founder. The alarming statistic here though is that AAPIs account for one third of the United States population, but are only represented in single digits in the c-suite in the technology industry.
A Statistics Canada report from 2021 shares that over half of Metro Vancouver’s population identifies as a visible minority and that 46.5% of that group identify as Asian.
While there is yet to be research that provides a breakdown of the region’s entrepreneurs that identify as part of the Asian diaspora, it is hard to ignore the erasure or omission of Asian Canadian business stories in mainstream media and its downstream effects on understanding what entrepreneurship is and introducing that as a viable career path for Asian youth or folks looking for a career pivot more aligned with their values and goals.
“I was raised with a traditional upbringing where you had to fall into one of the main career paths. I chose engineering because of my interest in numbers and both of my parents are engineers,” shares Katty Wang, now co-chair of Vancouver Startup Week (VSW). “After a number of years, I realized that my passion was using similar problem solving skills, but to connect the dots where it matters, building a community by making connections within my network.”
This is the spirit that fuels the Beijing-born entrepreneur and community leader – as she and…
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