Whilst born and raised in China, I moved around with my parents quite frequently and lived in Singapore, Nottingham and Leicester in the UK for a total of five years up until my teenage age.
Although picking up a foreign language or new accent was not something difficult, I have struggled as a child to adapt to a new environment and culture that was completely different to that I was born with. Re-adapting and rehabilitating to a former culture proved to be even more challenging, I found myself switching my personality and behaviour whilst dealing with my different groups of friends and colleagues, gradually finding myself with a self-identity crisis of “who I am” and “where do I come from”. Being able to “blend in” was my only goal then, and I have found myself to observe and compare how people behave and speak and try to act in the same way in order to conform to the unspoken norm.
Reflecting on my background, I have started to find myself with growing zest and passion about raising awareness of ethnic diversity and gender awareness in the working environment in my second year of joining PwC.
I became a member of the LeanINsurance that looks to support women rising through the ranks and ColourBrave Action Group with the objective of encouraging staff to discuss more openly about differences in race and ethnicity in order to better emphasise, and promote team collaboration. Being one of the key members to initiate the Colour Brave event on Insurance Day, we brought the people from all backgrounds to openly discuss differences and make their personal pledge in creating a truly inclusive workplace. Coming up with the idea of “Colour Brave Podcast”, I helped to create a video of partners sharing their overseas work experience in Japan and how they have brought it back to London.