My Journey to Becoming a Woman of Colour Career Coach

I thought working hard will get me success

My story starts when I immigrated to New Zealand from China at the age of 12.

My family had a culture shock. We didn’t speak the language and my English was limited to “Hello, how are you? I am fine, thank you.” I finished my primary school education in China and went straight into a New Zealand intermediate for three months then onto high school.

My high school was about 50% Asian but there was a lot of discrimination back then. There were times that I wanted to dye my hair blonde just to fit in. I changed from bringing chicken and rice for lunch to sandwiches. I wished I was white. I excelled at school because that was the only way I knew how to survive and I didn’t mind conforming to the Asian stereotype of being smart.

As a Chinese daughter, when it came to what to do after high school, the answer was a multiple choice out of being a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer or a doctor. So I followed the expected path and studied Law and Commerce at the University of Auckland and qualified as a lawyer.

My graduate job was at KPMG Auckland as a Tax Consultant. Geez, I thought I really scored big back then because KPMG is a great brand, looks good my CV and what an achievement to have made the cut out of thousands of applicants.

I naively thought that being successful at work is the same as getting A grades in universities, I just need to work hard. I quickly found out this was not the case. I felt the need to assimilate to the Friday night drinks and the talks of fishing/golf but they were really not my cup of tea and still are not.

At work, I chose to not see colour in myself. I didn’t speak of or show my cultural heritage because I thought it was irrelevant. I conformed to what the “ideal” worker should look, behave and sound like. I was struggling to piece together my seemingly separate home and work identities.

This trend of not seeing colour in myself and not acknowledging the challenges it brings continued for a long time. It wasn’t until I was an Agile Coach through Nomad8 contracting at IT companies and having to do my own business development that I really felt I did not fit the mold of what a consultant would look like in Wellington. I started to doubt my effectiveness as a coach because of my race, gender, age and height.

The unconscious bias and ally skills trainings at Xero helped me to have the vocabulary and the structure to sort out these struggles. I was becoming more and more aware of my intersectionalities and their impacts. I knew things had been difficult from the beginning of my career but I thought it was just me. I didn’t appreciate the larger systemic forces at play.

Also the further I climbed the corporate ladder, the more alone I felt. I was often the only woman in a leadership team or the only person or woman of colour. I saw no role models who looked like me at the top and I started to question “Do I have what it takes to succeed?” and “Is there more to my career?”.

For the last two years, I have been very lucky to have been able to move out of agile coaching at Xero and into career coaching. I knew that the professional coaching world is mostly made up of Pakeha coaches but like always I was just concentrating on being a great coach.

Then this amazing coachee said to me in the middle of this year: “Suki, I have been looking for you. You know what, you should be the best Asian Woman Coach globally. Why not, we can’t help but look different so might as well make use of it!”

My jaws dropped. I reflected upon my client base and it was clear from the beginning that the majority of my clients are women of colour. They come to me for a reason. We relate in backgrounds and challenges. This was when I started to accept and value myself as a woman of colour coach.

So here I am embarking on this mission to help women of colour rise and encourage you to become the role model that you want to see. Whether you are an organisation who is starting out on the DEI journey or you are a woman of colour who is getting into your career or the next leadership role, I am here to support you!