Asian Leadership Insights and Growth Network (ALIGN) hosts mentoring roundtable

Our Asian Employee Resources Group, Asian Leadership Insights and Growth Network (ALIGN), hosted its first mentoring roundtable event in our New York office on May 4, 2017. Wei Wei, a vice president at AlixPartners and one of ALIGN’s leaders, moderated a panel of four global executives on the topics of personal branding, mentoring, and career challenges. The distinguished panelists included:

• Wesley Hom, executive advisor to Ascend and former managing director at IBM
• The Honorable Samuel Mok, managing member of Condor International Advisors, LLC and former chief financial officer of the US Department of Labor
• Zia Rahman, Global Alliance Lead and business development associate director at Bristol-Myers Squibb
• T. Tony Zhang, principal in the patent prosecution counseling practice at Fish & Richardson PC

Some key themes that we discussed included:

• Understanding what you want your brand to be, what it is now, and how to manage it actively
• Understanding that people can jump quickly to stereotypes, but you can shape that conversation to break the stereotype in a productive way
• Understanding the difference between mentorship and sponsorship
• Thinking of mentoring as a two-way street; how to provide just as much value to your mentor as the mentor provides to you

ALIGN’s mission is to unlock leadership and networking opportunities for individuals at all levels who share Asian ancestral, social, or cultural experiences and build a multicultural working environment.