AiLun Ku, CEO of The Opportunity Network (OppNet), was just 10 years old when she moved to the United States from Taiwan with her family. They settled in a predominately white town in New Jersey and immediately felt out of place.
“I think the town hadn’t seen an immigrant family for probably decades before we arrived,” says Ku. “It just felt like everything around me was not made for me and that the people around me wanted me to know that. That’s what it felt like, all the time.”
Going to school was even more jarring. Ku started classes just two days after landing at Newark International Airport, and her teachers were unprepared. They didn’t know how to offer support to Ku and her siblings, and as a result, tended to leave them in the margins. Ku recalls one memory during 6th grade when a classmate turned to her to ask for help. The teacher saw and said, “Why are you talking to her? She doesn’t even speak English.”
But that didn’t stop Ku from working incredibly hard and excelling in her academics. After graduating from high school, she attended New York University.
“For the first time, I was in a work and education environment where I felt like I really belonged. That experience with the education system — it really informed my worldview and my purpose.”
That experience now guides her work at OppNet, an organization that supports students from underrepresented communities and helps them navigate and succeed in college and the professional world. Ku recently spoke with us about this work, how students of color can thrive in college and in their careers, and how their classmates, colleagues, and organizations can be better allies.
Can you talk a little bit about the career opportunity gap?
The opportunity gap is a historic and systemic outcome that is the result of hundreds of years of exclusion, oppression, and racism. It affects us in two ways:
1) Generative effect: For folks who have generally had access to opportunities throughout their lives, your family will likely also get access to those same opportunities for generations to come.
2) Degenerative effect: If you, your family, and your community have historically been excluded from opportunities, that may continue for generations as well, and you might not even know what you’re missing.
In the context of today’s workforce, the opportunity gap starts really early in terms of the careers that different communities are exposed to, the options that young people in those communities feel that they have the agency to pursue, as well as what other people deem as appropriate for them. This has a really long-term effect, which creates an almost self-fulfilling prophecy. Historically, underrepresented young people of color have not been made aware of the opportunities that are possible for them.
So it’s important that every young person, especially young people of color, learn about as many career options as possible, and understand the variety of ways to access those roles. We can’t feed into the narrative that there’s a prescriptive way to get to a career. It’s different for every person.
So what can students, and especially students of color, do to really set themselves up for career success while they’re in school?
I think the key is to believe in your own greatness. And remember that asking for help does not diminish that. For so many of us — especially those of us that are either first-generation college students, immigrants, or students who are coming from families who have been historically underrepresented — asking for help can feel like we are inconveniencing somebody else. It can feel like a sign of weakness, like we haven’t done enough. But none of those things are true. It’s human nature for all of us to need help, and normalizing the act of asking for help is critically important.
Get into the habit of going to your professors’ office hours to deepen your grasp of your studies, regularly visit your schools’ wellness counseling and academic advising offices to tend to your well-being, and to ensure you’re making consistent academic progress, and go to the Dean’s Office to find out what funds and resources are available to you to maximize your college experience.
How can classmates, particularly those from historically privileged backgrounds, be better allies?
For fellow classmates, you can help your peers by making them aware of the opportunities you come across. And really hype up your friends. Tell them, “You’re going to get this, you’re going to be great.”
There are numerous studies that show that helping others is directly tied to happiness. Become the person with the most diverse and talented network of friends. Be generous. Especially for white students who might know about some opportunity exclusively through their families or connections — there’s no reason why you shouldn’t share them with your other classmates.
We don’t have to be in constant competition with one another. The concept of competition for the sake of competition supports the narrative that there’s never enough for all of us, and it carries through from the school into the work environment. We have to dismantle that because it’s just not good for anyone. It’s exhausting.
What advice do you have for students of color in terms of the training and internship experiences they should pursue?
I’d say don’t limit yourself only to the opportunities you have been exposed to. When looking for internships, you should look for experiences that will help you build two types of skills:
1) Generalist skills: Early on in your career, it’s ideal to build a really strong base of generalist, or transferable, skills, like critical thinking, communication, problem-solving, collaboration, and a learning mindset. You can gain these skills everywhere: student leadership opportunities, part-time jobs in any industry, research projects, and volunteer work. These skills will help you land future roles, and you can take them with you into any job or industry.
2) Functional expertise: Functional expertise refers to the skills and knowledge you need to excel in a specific job industry (data analytics, finance, human resources, education, social work, marketing, etc.). But to figure out what skills will help you succeed in your area of interest, you first need to figure out what you’re interested in.
Ask yourself: Is there something I’m intrinsically talented at? What are some things I’d like to work more on? What doesn’t feel like work because I’m just really excited about it? What gives me purpose? The answers to these questions will help you choose more fulfilling opportunities, specifically opportunities that will teach you the skills you need to perform well in your passion areas.
Understanding your values is also especially critical here. Values are what you hold important, and they motivate your decisions and behaviors. You might value autonomy over collaboration, financial security over creativity, or family over service. If you end up working in a place where your values don’t align with those of the organization, you will probably not be happy.
Lastly, as you’re considering opportunities and early careers, think about who you want to learn from and where those people work. That will give you an idea of what direction you might want to go as well.
Is networking an important piece of finding these opportunities? How can students build their network?
At some point, networking became this icky word tied to handshakes and cocktail parties. But actually, if you boil it down, networks are just how we relate to one another and networking is a part of our everyday lives.
You both receive from your network, and you contribute to your network. That give-and-take approach, it’s the same thing that you would do in helping a neighbor. It only starts feeling icky when you’re only doing it for a transactional purpose.
My advice is to build a personal “board of directors,” or a group of different people in different roles that you call upon, depending on what challenges you’re facing.
On your personal board of directors, you should have your “cheerleader” — the person who will always be there, who will hold you in a positive light, and cheer you on. Sometimes you just need a cheerleader. Other times, you need a “truth teller,” a person who’s going to look you in the eye and say, “I know you don’t want to hear this, and I know it might be hard, but I have to tell you the truth.” Your truth teller will show you what you’re not seeing, where you are failing, and where you’re making mistakes. You will also want someone who has some technical knowledge — perhaps you’re not good at editing your own resume and cover letters, it’s good to have someone on your board who is willing to be a copy editor for you when you need them. Then there’s your “sounding board.” This is the person you can talk things through with.
Other folks in your network may be your “mentors” in the truest sense of the word — people who are open to sharing their experiences with you and guiding you through your own. And then there’s your “sponsors.” A sponsor is someone who is going to advocate for you when you’re not in the room. They’re going to raise your name and say, “I recommend this person for that role.”
One day, you may even be ready to position yourself to sit on somebody else’s personal board of directors. Remember that networking is mostly about building long-term relationships. It’s about supporting a community. It’s not about one singular transaction.
When it comes to actually finding a job, do you have any advice for how students of color can find entry-level jobs that are inclusive? How can they know if an environment is going to be inclusive before actually taking a job?
There are so many things that you can read up on, and there’s so much research you can do. But nothing will compare to the actual experience of being there. One of the ways to make sure a workplace is inclusive is to go through your network (or LinkedIn) and find somebody who has worked or is currently working at a company you’re interested in. You can ask them for an informational interview, and ask questions to get a true sense of what a day in the life at that company looks like. That opportunity is not always accessible, which is why this is really hard.
It’s also important to use the job interview process to help inform your decision-making. The interview process is a true conversation for both the employer and the talent to assess fit. It’s not just for the candidate to sit there and answer endless questions. You can ask questions like, “Can you tell me a little bit more about what it’s like to be one of the few staff of color here? What programs do you have to support my development? What programs do you run to make sure I’m connected to a community here? Do you have employee resource programs?”
The answers to these questions can give you indicators for how the employer might invest in your sense of belonging. That might not equate to a truly inclusive experience, which is why you won’t actually know the full picture until you get there. And if you get there, and it’s not what you expected, it can also mean that you have the opportunity to shape it. Nothing is static.
On the other side of that, what can workplaces and employees do to ensure that their companies are inclusive?
Sometimes, the most seemingly small behaviors can actually mean a lot over time. For example, this happens a lot with women at work, where you look out for one another and say, “Hey, you are constantly being interrupted. When you’re being interrupted, I’m going to stop that other person from interrupting you.” There’s an active kind of participation in setting new norms that contribute to inclusion, belonging, and supporting diversity in your workplace.
If you’re in a manager role, or even if you’re in an entry-level role, it’s your job to make sure your colleagues of color are not being overlooked or underestimated. If there’s a new project coming up, and your colleague’s name doesn’t get mentioned, you should ask, “Well, why isn’t he or she not being considered? They would be a good fit for this. Why haven’t you thought about them?”
That kind of active engagement, amplification, and centering of your colleagues — that’s important. It might seem like small behaviors, but over time and with consistency, these behaviors have a huge impact on the culture at your organization.
