50
NEW YORK LIFE ‘CACHE’
FOR ASIAN-AMERICAN
EMPLOYEES & CONSUMERS
No. 3 Top 10 Companies for Asian Americans
Business Type: Financial Services
Corporate Headquarters: New York, N.Y.
Number of U.S. Employees: 8,280
Annual Worldwide Revenues: $11.1 billion
New York Life (NYL)’s strong commitment to reaching
domestic and international Asian markets and a strategy of recruiting at diverse urban campuses with high
concentrations of Asian Americans has resulted in the
insurance giant’s spot on the DiversityInc Top 10
Companies for Asian Americans.
Katherine O’Brien
Vice President and
Chief Diversity Officer
Angela Coleman
Vice President, Human Resources
“We have a presence in China,
India, Hong Kong, and these are
growing markets. So from the
international perspective, it has a
lot of cache for Asian Americans to
be affiliated with a company that is
growing by leaps and bounds in
Asia,” says Katherine O’Brien, vice
president and chief diversity officer.
The cache that O’Brien is referring to has translated into 28 percent more Asian Americans in
management than the DiversityInc
Top 50 ( 10 percent vs. 7. 2 percent), 36 percent more Asian
women in mid-management than
the Top 50 ( 8 percent vs. 5. 1 percent) and a 92 percent retention
rate for Asian Americans.
“One of our cultural markets is
the Asian-American cultural market,
where we sell specifically to the Asian
population products and services, so
the New York Life name is out there.
And I think all of these forces help
hold together the attraction of Asian
Americans but also retaining Asian
Americans,” O’Brien says.
Surprisingly, Asian-American
employees don’t have an employee-
resource group specific to them at
New York Life yet, but one is being
launched. Many Asian Americans at
the company take advantage of
career-development programs to get
promoted into management. “We
have a Women’s Leadership [Project],
which is a very diverse group of
employees, as well as our Minority
Interchange,” O’Brien says.
NYL’s Women’s Leadership
Project and the Minority
Interchange provide a forum for
insurance professionals to develop
their skills through mentoring.
NYL has taken full advantage of
the talent right in its backyard—
New York—which is home to 1. 2
million Asian Americans, according
to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“If you look within the New
York City area, there are a number
of colleges where there is a very
heavy concentration of Asian
Americans,” says O’Brien. “We are
always looking at bringing in the
most qualified candidates in the
country as we target universities
that have diverse demographics.”
