Ascend Foundation Thought Leadership Paper Elevating Asian-Black Allyship in Corporate America
Dear Ascend Community,
Ascend maintains a long-standing objective of creating a space for courageous conversations for our members, partners and sponsors to build allyship and stronger relationships that enable AAPIs and allies to become better leaders, innovators, role models and catalysts for workplace and societal change. Since the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, as part of the #AscendTogether Series, we have accelerated exploration of how we can collectively drive more positive impacts through awareness, education, and forums to share and discuss approaches.
Inter-Asian and cross-cultural allyship, focus areas of the Ascend Impact Fund, align to our 5-Point Action Agenda core tenets of promoting inclusion and denouncing bias. To foster allyship and enable companies to create a culture of belonging for all in the workplace, we initiated our Asian & Black race relations work to engage in thought provoking discussions around Asian-Black allyship.
With an objective of bringing greater focus to promoting relations between different multicultural groups, we are pleased to share our latest thought leadership paper, Elevating Asian-Black Allyship in Corporate America.
This paper focuses on and provides a perspective on the experiences of professional AAPIs and Blacks in the workplace, including their commonalities and historical plight in the United States (U.S.), reports on the reasons for the lack of stronger workplace partnerships and identifies actionable practices to consider.
In June, we will present #AscendTogether Forum: Allyship & Belonging in the Workplace - Elevating Asian-Black Relations to examine shared lived experiences of Asians and Blacks in the U.S. and discuss findings from the thought leadership paper. We look forward to your participation and the dialogue at this forum.
With our continued focus on allyship and belonging, I want to remind everyone to join us on April 20th, for our Global #AscendTogether Employee Resource Group (ERG) Forum: Fostering Workplace Belonging Through ERGs and stay tuned for upcoming programs we have planned in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May.
Thank you for your on-going engagement and support. Please share this message with your colleagues and let’s #AscendTogether!
Anna Mok
Ascend & Ascend Foundation, President & Executive Board Chair
Ascend Pinnacle Co-Founder