Shownotes: 

My guest on today’s show is Suresh Raj - Chief Business Development Officer (hunter) at Vision 7. Suresh is a founding member of The Collective, a global mentor for INvolve, the diversity and inclusion specialists and is an inaugural member of McKinsey’s The Alliance. Recognitions include being named to two prominent global lists – (1) Financial Times’ and Yahoo! Finance’s Top 100 Ethnic Minority Executive Leaders as well as (2) the Top 100 LGBTQ+ Executive Leaders. 

In this episode Suresh and I talk about 👇🏾

👉🏾 Growing up in an ethnically diverse household in a muslim country and the impact of multiple intersectionalities

👉🏾 Owning his identity for equality at the table

👉🏾 Uncomfortable conversations on race and history

👉🏾 Efficacy of legislations and policies on targets vs intentional action. 

👉🏾Belonging, CDOs as the quick fix and the need for transformational board level change

👉🏾 The need for brands to live their purpose and understand their target audiences

👉🏾 Ethics as a guiding principle for individuals/organisations, being antiracist and creating action to change the status quo

👉🏾 Being human as a key quality for current and future leaders 

👉🏾 Finding his own purpose in the pervasive lack of inequality in our society and the desire to fuel

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Memorable quotes from the interview

👉🏾 And it was in this country that I actually realised the colour of my skin was less valuable than the others around me and particularly people who were fairer skinned. Like people with fairer skinned to be more valuable. According to, the way corporates work here etc, from an economic point of view, from a political point of view they earned more, they got to better opportunities, they had access to all. And I was very confused that to get to a certain level, to earn a certain level of income etc, it was about your ability to deliver. i.e. that’s got no colour of skin, no labels, that’s an ability, that’s your mind, your heart, your spirit. I actually realised from a corporate environment my identity mattered because it then pegged me at a certain level. Also the outward identity, just the colour of my skin, like everything had like a price tag on it. Which is when I really started to push back because I realised, hold on, you ought to be measuring me on my ability to deliver, not for the fact that this is the package I came in. And, that's when I really started realising I have to press my identity because that is who I am and able to push the boundaries of actually getting equality on the table.

👉🏾 I looked at the PRWeek power book for 2020 which was published earlier in the year and I think there were like 423 names on that list. The majority of those names were still white male, right. So despite it being a majority women led industry, the majority of the powerful communication influencers, leaders of communications are actually men. For me, what really troubles me was when they broke it down to the ethnic minorities, when calculated it there was zero black males in any sort of influential position, zero black males. And I think there were two black women, there were about three or four Asian women and so the numbers just don't add up because we are a diverse society, you just walk outside on the street and that's all you need. That's all the proof you need.

👉🏾 But race, my goodness. It is, such a sensitive subject and everybody shies away from, they don't want to discuss it because they go, well, you know what, it's really uncomfortable. Let’s not hide away from the fact that Britain conquered and colonised about 170 plus out of 180 countries in the world, right. And tried to influence the local cultures and so for me, when it comes back to, okay, let's address the racial issue, everybody shies away from it. Why? Because it's too uncomfortable a conversation and that frustrates me, I think because it makes people so uncomfortable because it brings up history. History that people are probably ashamed about and when they have to reckon with the history, they have to correct that history. And that's too much of a job for lots of people.

 👉🏾 I was talking to somebody, we were talking about diversity at one of my previous agencies, and it was a lovely black lady who was working on one of the floors. And she literally told this genuine human story, when she gets out of the lift, there's a very quick route to her desk. Right. So she turns left. She walks to her desk and that's it. But she always felt intimidated in that building because it was predominantly white. So she always chose to turn right and walk past two black employees. Just so she can see there's, there's more like me. I don't feel alone. And you know, and so she literally just walks that path takes the long path, just so she can feel it, she isn’t alone, in that environment she isn't alone in that company and she's not the only black person on that floor. And that was so overwhelming. You just want to feel like you belong. 

👉🏾 And so for me, one of the things that frustrates me so much honestly, is when people talk about their commitment to diversity and their commitment to equality is, oh we gonna hire a chief diversity officer and they'll hire someone of colour and just go, yay. I've done it. I have fixed our diversity issue and assumes that the chief diversity officer is a) the fix and he's going to fix everything else in the business. And I'm so sorry that couldn't be further away from the truth because it isn't, it's not down to the person of colour who is the chief diversity officer, often the most senior person of colour in the business, right? The issue is literally right at the board level. At the CEO level at the CFO level, at the COO level and CMO level, those are the roles where if we start to see transformational change with diversity and equality at that level. That's when you see the business transformation permeate through every level.

👉🏾 You felt the anger and the frustration of not the six months of Covid, but hundreds of years of suppression, literally bubbled over. That's when a whole host of big PR agencies came out with these announcements. We're committed to diversifying our board. Agencies that have been around for 30, 40, 50, 60 years, right. We're committed. We're going to do this. Honestly and I'm sorry, I'm so conscious. I'm about to swear and this is a podcast don’t swear. What the F have you been doing, all these years? Why is it now? Because it's on the media agenda and you want to look popular by saying you're going to do something to it. No, do it first. Do it, change your business. Show us the business results. How much more empowered your people are because they have been given the opportunity to have an equal seat at the table, at your leadership level. Two years from now, show us that business result, then talk about it. Don't come up and do a big PR stunt showing that you're about to make these changes. The equality and the racial issue has not just suddenly sprung up, it's been around for decades.

👉🏾 There's a piece of research and I think it was Coldwell Banker that delivered this interesting piece of research that talked about the greatest transfer of wealth. It's an approximate number but I think it was in the trillions. The baby boomer generation is going to transfer the greatest amount of wealth in the history of mankind to the millennial audience in the next 15 to 20 years. And this amazing wealth that they've built up is literally going to transfer to a whole new generation that is driven by a very different purpose. When we think about the baby boomer generation saving, capitalist, blah, blah, blah, and the millennial generation and the generations that follow are very much driven by purpose. So suddenly you're going to see how that wealth is actually going to be spent. And if you are not living by purpose, you're not living to the ethics that you believe in, and you're not living to the ethics that your consumer believes in. You will die out.

Biography: 

Suresh Raj is one of the most vocal proponents of diversity, inclusion and equality, sitting in the intersectionality of being a person of colour, LGBTQ+ and of multicultural background. Raj advocates on the job as well as through his activity throughout the larger movement. Raised in Malaysia to Christian/Muslim parents, having lived in the UK and now New York, he is openly gay and of Middle Eastern / Asian descent. Raj serves as a senior counsel for Vision7 International’s diversity, inclusion and equality efforts. Recognitions include being named to two prominent global lists – (1) Financial Times’ and Yahoo! Finance’s Top 100 Ethnic Minority Executive Leaders as well as (2) the Top 100 LGBTQ+ Executive Leaders for the last five consecutive years. Raj is a founding member of The Collective, which includes senior LGBTQ+ leaders from across private sector, government/politics and NGOs; global mentor for INvolve, the diversity and inclusion specialists; an inaugural member of McKinsey’s The Alliance, a global network of senior LGBTQ+ leaders. In July 2020, Suresh hosted and moderated a conversation with Dr Ibram X. Kendi, American author (books include New York best sellers Stamped and How to be an Antiracist, historian and leading scholar of race and discriminatory policy in America discussing the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the current challenges in racism across multiple countries.

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https://www.balancethegrind.com.au/interviews/suresh-raj-chief-business-development-officer-at-vision7-communications/

https://www.facebook.com/287695020270/posts/an-interview-with-vision7-chief-business-development-officer-suresh-raj-a-vocal-/10164011705020271/

https://tl.pace.edu/suresh-raj.html