In 2022, Equileap, an organization that provides data and insights on corporate gender equality, published its report, Gender Equality in Asia-Pacific. Of the 1,181 publicly listed APAC companies analyzed, just 4% of CEOs are women. While there is room for more women in the C-suite, for those women who are already there, finding camaraderie and support is crucial.
YPO, the largest community of chief executives in the world, is where many women leaders are turning to connect, learn and grow in their leadership journeys.
“YPO makes it efficient for us to connect to those who share common goals and values,” says Norma Chu , YPO member and CEO of DayDayCook, one of China’s most popular lifestyle and cooking content provider. “We can all learn together; we can all have fun together; we can all explore and expand together as individuals. I think that goes above and beyond any kind of professional networking that you would get in other organization. Plus It’s kind of rare to be able to identify these lifelong friendships at our stage in life. because we all get so busy and our 24 hours is already filled, right?”
Chu and three other CEOs share their experiences with YPO and its professional and personal impact on their lives.
Shared experiences and cultures
A friend introduced Radhika Gupta, Managing Director and CEO of one of India’s top 15 asset management companies, Edelweiss Asset Management Limited, to YPO, but she was initially hesitant.
“I’m an introverted person, though I do like to meet people,” she admits. “But I realized that as you rise in your profession, having candid conversations with your team becomes very difficult. I didn’t want to join for networking per se; I wanted to join for the quality of relationships.”
With a mindset of quality over quantity, opportunities like the Women’s Business Network, which connects members and promotes engagement around topics relevant to the female executive, were perfect for Gupta. Despite the network’s vast global footprint, it was easy to connect with women executives around the world.
“I think the experiences that women go through as they navigate their career and homes, they genuinely don’t have borders. The context can be different, because you’re in India or the U.S., but especially across Asia and South Asia, I don’t think there are borders,” says Gupta. She recalls a time she connected with another member in South Africa at an event. They stayed in touch and Gupta ended up addressing more women from that region at another event. “I got as much out of it, probably even more, than what I gave,” she says.
Joanne Goldman, CEO of THEANIMALS, an Australian apparel and lifestyle brand for humans and pets, had a similar experience.
“It’s just astounding how you’re on completely different ends of the world and have very different cultures, yet you come into a meeting and immediately you’ve got so much to talk about,” says Goldman. “I feel really privileged to have exposure to such incredible people and have them there if I need support or advice. I reach out to them more than my oldest friends.”
Managing Director at Anaika Collections Sdn Bhd, Lavina Melwani Valiram found that type of camaraderie globally and regionally, within APAC. APAC’s geographical proximity, background and history, their commonalities — from cultural milieu to daily challenges — help them connect and support one another, she shares.
“When we engage, whether it’s from a space of how we work, how we deal with our companies, how we would think about taking our companies public, how we would handle our financial problems, it’s a very shared culture,” she says. “So if we sit down together, even though we speak different languages, we’re speaking the same language.”
Discovering different perspectives
Being able to relate and connect over similarities is undoubtably beneficial. But being able to connect and discover new perspectives outside of your own is just as valuable for today’s leaders. That’s where YPO’s global community really is unique.
For Chu, her forum (a small, tight-knit group within YPO that forge deep, trusting relationships) has been a place for support, but also a place of discovery. She’s learned about the work her forum mates do across various industries, and that some of their challenges aren’t too far from her own. But then again, some are – and hearing about those differences are just as helpful.
“Some of the challenges they had were completely foreign to me. But just knowing what other people were doing in businesses I think just broadens my world,” she says.
Radhika agrees, sharing that it can be easy to solely focus on your sector exclusively, but having perspective from different industries, especially during tumultuous times like the pandemic, has helped her in her own leadership role. She also has found it beneficial to be in a forum with members representing a wide range of ages. As she is younger in her career and recently had a baby, so she can learn from the experiences of those with decades more life under their belts within her forum — and vice versa.
There is also something to be said about diverse gender perspectives.
Valisham remembers a time that one of her companies was failing. She was feeling shame, and unsure of what to do because the company was so visible publicly. A man in her forum gave her blunt advice: No one cared; and if it was failing, no one was paying attention. Cut your losses and move on. His feedback helped her get out of her head. “It was so simple and so profound that I had the nerve to just shut the thing down in the next 12 months,” she says.
A place to fail, grow and thrive
Failure, or at least conversation about failure, is what Valisham has really come to appreciate from her time with YPO.
“That interests me more than success because nobody talks about failure. When you can examine the holes, and admit and accept what you didn’t know and what didn’t work — even in a seemingly perfect business or company — you learn a lot from that,” she says. “There’s a sense of relief when you share your own mistakes, just admitting them and hearing yourself talk about them makes it okay to have made them. YPO provides a platform where you don’t need to be afraid and you’re not judged.”
Goldman has also found YPO to be a place she can confront fears and take on new challenges.
“I think what I gained the most was that I learned to really think about what I wanted out of my life and what I wanted to do,” she says, sharing that she always felt that she wanted to do more, to have her own business and be an entrepreneur. But circumstances had led her to various CEO roles to support her family. “Being in forum helped me realize what I wanted out of the next stage of my life. I gained the courage to walk away from a very big, significant role and take the plunge to launch my own business.”
Chu’s biggest benefits have been more abstract.
“I think the impact is less on the day-to-day execution side of things, but more on how we mentally prepare and develop ourselves to face different obstacles,” she says. “It’s more on a higher level, like mental toughness training; and it’s really effective.”
