Friends, join me and my brother from another mother Ron Rapatalo to talk all about the Asian things.
In this riveting podcast episode, the incredible Ron Rapatalo chats about being a leading advocate for AAPI representation, allyship, and girl dadhood. Ron, a visionary author of “Leverage People: What I Know About People to Personally and Professionally Win,” shared his enlightening views on AAPI invisibility, collaborating with other BIPOC leaders, embracing fatherhood, and finding inspiration in Elsa. Join us as we delve into Ron’s powerful insights and connect with him on LinkedIn at Ron Rapatalo LinkedIn and grab a copy of his book on Amazon.
“People have to earn the full dimensionality and vulnerability of who you are” – Ronald
Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:05
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown! I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Podcast listeners welcome to the addition of Nonprofit Lowdown. This is going to be spicy today. We’re speaking with my buddy, Ron Rapatalo, about AAPI leadership. We’re going to talk about a lot of things but we’re just going to start here and we’re gonna go and walk about. Ron, welcome to the show.
RON RAPATALO 00:27
Rhea, it has been a minute as in seen you for a couple of weeks, but nice to have you as a longtime friend to just have me chop it up with you and just have a recording.
RHEA WONG 00:37
Yeah, man! We’re always talking about all the things. Okay, but before we get started, before we jump deep into all the things for the people who don’t know you, which also like who doesn’t know you? Ron, you are a multi-hyphenate man. Your day job, your Clark Kent jobs so to speak is there an associate partner at agility, you’re a talent shepherd, you’re a men’s stylist, you’re a fitness beast, you’re a coach, you’re a talent manager. What else am I missing? You’re a dad. You’re a husband.
RON RAPATALO 01:09
That husband is an aspiring antiracist New York City sports fan. Even though the Yankees in the company, the Yankees got a long season. You got a long season. I think you got all the right strokes there in terms of all the things I like doing and good to do it.
RHEA WONG 01:29
You know, it’s funny. Ron is that you and I almost feel like we’re brothers from another mother. Like I grew up West Coast Asian. You grew up East Coast Asian and yet here we are meeting in New York City. Let’s talk a little bit about being Asian in New York because I think being East Coast Asian is a little bit different than being a West Coast Asian. What does it mean for you to be a proud New Yorker and an Asian-American in New York?
RON RAPATALO 01:52
Yeah, I think those things merge a lot of my experiences in New York City and so let me give what the Ron Rapatalo superhero origin story. So my dad came in 1970.
RHEA WONG 02:04
I also like being talked about yourself in the third person but sorry, please continue.
RON RAPATALO 02:08
I do a lot of that. It’s like I will go first and third and like switch it up a little like Tony Morrison when I speak, moving timezones and identities. My father came in 1970 and had a college degree. So in the late 60s through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, a lot of Asian-Americans were coming out from their countries of origin to America, because my dad had a college degree in immigration. He was desirable, right?
RON RAPATALO 02:33
And so he petitioned from a mom and the first six, so I’m the only one who was born in American 75. My family came to America months before Marcos instituted martial law in the Philippines in the fall of 72. They came in April in 72. Jonathan is a happy accident, right? I think there’s some divine timing there. But my parents be able to get out before all that stuff happened. I was born in 75 and splat bushing. Do folks know anything about East Flatbush in Brooklyn, the East Flatbush?
RON RAPATALO 03:01
It is a predominantly Caribbean-Jamaican neighborhood that has been since I’ve known it, Flatbush in the 50s and 60s was a lot more mixed racially, right? So you’re the townies of Puerto Ricans, that black folks, and there was some Asian-American families, including mine and Filipino families, and a big apartment building on the corner of Midwood Street in New York Avenue.
RON RAPATALO 03:21
And I think a lot of that story gives a lot about how I see New York as an Asian-American and Filipino-American, else’s in New Yorker like grittiness, and nosh, being direct, because we’re moving fast, but also being really kind and generous. All these things make from what I see it being Filipino, which is getting along with people, literally taking the shirt off your back for people, right?
RON RAPATALO 03:44
There’s this kind of deep Philippine culture of value that I’ve learned about getting along and this other thing about interconnectedness. I think the Tagalog term is called Kapwa. Right? And so the interconnect, and this really hits a lot about my New Yorker and Philippine experience, because if you would have seen the friend groups I had early on, and then you fast forward to today, if people look at my LinkedIn, there’s a breadth and depth, multiracial, multi-sector that matters a lot from shops by folks.
RON RAPATALO 04:11
There you go. That just has always mattered to my New York City experience because that is who my community and my network, and my friends and my family. I don’t know any other way to contextualize my Asian-American New York City, Filipino American experience, without seeing it through those lenses, because that’s just how I grew up now.
RON RAPATALO 04:29
However, in New York City, Asian-Americans growing up? Absolutely not. We know that segregation, redlining, and all those things are deeply real. So you see communities who just have never really interacted with each other much. It’s politics. That has not been my experience because of just the way the neighborhoods that my parents opted into.
RHEA WONG 04:48
Let’s just jump into it because I think there’s something really important here. So it’s May, and we’re an AAPI Heritage Month. And I think the in the last couple of years, certainly when we’ve seen the anti-Asian, racist attacks on Asians. I’m just wondering, from your perspective, what would it look like for us to truly create a coalition that is multicultural and at the nexus of intersectionality? Because if I moved to New York in 05, it feels like it was becoming more and more segregated. And we’re getting further apart rather than closer together.
RON RAPATALO 05:24
Yeah! So I’ll give the story of how I’ve seen coalition building happening in my own life. So if I go back to my NYU undergrad days, right? I was a proud student activist, and an agitator to get into the Asian Pacific American Studies program at Institute NYU in the fall of 1996. I became an undergraduate major a couple of years later because it takes time. I don’t want to bore the details.
RON RAPATALO 05:49
But when I think about that coalition building, it wasn’t just strictly us, talking with other Asian Pacific American leaders, students, and faculty, and it was multiracial. Robin Kelly, was a professor at NYU at the time, an African American professor who was really down with it, right? And was backing it. There were Latinx professors who were very much behind it. There were some white professors who were behind it.
RON RAPATALO 06:18
I think he ran Africana studies. So he’s African who was born in the continent of Africa. Remember all countries, so forgive me, back the initiative, as the chair of Africana Studies, and so my own experience then was learning about coalition buildings, ultimately about defining shared values. Like you have to start there. That does not mean you get to share solutions all the time. That’s always the harder one.
RON RAPATALO 06:41
But I believe that good coalition building starts at its core seeing where there are people who have shared values. Let us be clear family. We will not be creating the first time ever that is a multiracial, multi-sector, multi-generational, multi-income, like coalition. Let’s be clear in this country that when those things are created, it’s dangerous. Look at Satin Black Panthers.
RON RAPATALO 07:06
You don’t call this stuff out and read the history. Like you realize like why would people create this? Wasn’t Dr. King trying to create this in the Poor People’s Campaign? Yes! What happened to Dr. King oversimplifying like history here? He got assassinated. Unless you’re thinking like, oh, just wasn’t a random thing. Because it is just doing civil rights for black folks.
RON RAPATALO 07:28
That’s one thing all we want to get people involved is all game about racism. Because a lot of people down who don’t have means are white with that intersection, then we have a different conversation here. So that for me, you can’t get to coalition building without shared values and figuring out the hard work of what’s solutions and what are people willing to give up and that feels uncomfortable, especially when you’re talking about I think marginalized communities because we systemically give up a lot, right?
RON RAPATALO 07:55
But still, some of us can get far with it, right? But that’s not the way you want to create a really good coalition as what can we do to get all of us to fight before this and maybe there’s work where it’s like particularly committees aren’t getting what they want. How do you still advocate for that?
RON RAPATALO 08:09
And still fight for it knowing that as a collective what are people willing to sacrifice for the greater good? is easier said than done? In my experience? Sometimes it just takes the right people and the right conditions, but I don’t die trying to figure that out and I don’t know why I live.
RHEA WONG 08:26
What strikes me as well is this GOP DeSantis did to erase history. And if we don’t know the history of Black and Asian solidarity, if we don’t know about intersectional coalition building, then we believe that it never happened and it did happen and it’s up to white supremacy if that happens because we’re gonna get all together and be like, wait a second here. You know, what’s really problematic? Systems of oppression?
RON RAPATALO 08:57
Yeah! If you look at so much of fiction, right? If you look at Marvel Comics, I think Marvel Comics in a lot of ways and the X-Men and others those stories of the Marvel comic universe, I think if I remember reading something from Stanley way back in the day, it was an allegory on race in this country.
RHEA WONG 09:15
You’re like to get it all these people come together. They have the least. They’re fighting against power and oppression.
RON RAPATALO 09:21
Oh, that’s as powerful as anything. Oh, but once again, the systems are designed to like really keep us but not believing in our fullest potential to actually more one demonize each other because we think we have less and therefore, we’re trying to get where we can get survive.
RHEA WONG 09:38
That’s right. And it comes from a really deep scarcity mindset of there’s only so much and I gotta get my slice of the pie, as opposed to be like, maybe there is no pie. Like maybe the pie is way bigger than any of us ever thought. And we don’t need to find…
RON RAPATALO 09:52
We’re getting meta there. You didn’t bring me on to talk about my spiritual intuitive leadership. That may be a different episode different podcast.
RHEA WONG 09:59
Oh, anyway, let’s talk there for a second spiritual intuitive leadership because I’m there. I speak.. in Northern California, continue.
RON RAPATALO 10:07
So I’m coming from an idea of understanding that there’s an abundance from everything that we have, and everything that we need has already been created for us. So I watch the movie, everything everywhere all at once. I think there’s a lot of what I took from that movie that the creative energy that we have, actually we can access. Michelle’s character isn’t special. Everyone wants they’re tapped in and have that ability, right?
RON RAPATALO 10:32
To be able to go into all things that have happened, to everything that’s happened is already happened, and therefore the energy and the time, and the interdependencies that we have exists, whether we want to be conscious of it or not. And for me, all I’m saying to give that headline to this idea of spiritual intuitive leadership is that interconnected.
RON RAPATALO 10:53
This is in our being whether we want to believe it or not. So I’m in this separate body, like my energy, what I feel with people is always felt deep interconnectedness, and therefore can take all of that energy and realize that we take that energy that can move physical things that we can then create things beyond their wildest dreams.
RHEA WONG 11:13
Today, I was thinking about, I was literally just before it’s called thinking about the 3D illusion, and the fact that everything that we see is just an illusion. Like, we believe that it’s real. We believe that we’re separate. We believe that there’s you and me, there is no you and me, there’s only us. And when we start to get to the realization of like energy and connectedness and interconnectedness, that’s when we see some really magical things happen in the world. Am I right?
RON RAPATALO 11:40
Yeah, it’s some level like you, I can understand how when I think about my opinion, religion has been used to organize social movements, right, this faith, you think of the black civil rights movement, the deep involvement of the church. Faith is just energy and the five senses world. Spirit, when you can manifest that, oh, I’m telling people that it’s the power that we all have access to. It is not that none of us are like superman, superwoman, or superhuman, it’s we all have this amazing gift. And so part of like, my other evangelization is to help people understand that the gift has always been accessible.
RHEA WONG 12:23
Okay, yes, we do. We can have another podcast. It’s a whole other conversation. I am down with it. Let me switch here. I know, like, we just want to call everyone. Okay, wait. So this weekend was at the Asian-American Foundation showing a 38 at the garden, which is about June, and we have 38 points at the garden and how he was never seen as a real basketball star until he just popped off.
RHEA WONG 12:54
And all of a sudden, everyone was paying attention. And you talked about how he waved off his team during the Raptors game. My question to you is why is it? Do you think that Asians and in particular Asian men are seen as emasculated not leadership material and so on and so forth? And do you think that’s changing?
RON RAPATALO 13:20
Changing in pockets, right? Let me get to the 50,000-foot view. I think it’s changing in pockets. Right. You have lots of examples of Steven Young, and John Cho, right? For me, all I want as an Asian-American man is the full breadth and depth of our manhood, our humanity that people can be like if I went back to 10-year-old brown like I was as nerdy as a nerd can get. I’m still really nerdy, but I present. My wife would say I still present nerdy, but I think I present less nerdy, but that’s my perception.
RON RAPATALO 13:53
I think it’s still quite nerdy. But I think the idea that Asian men are like the perception is shifting. I think I just look at what’s out media. That’s where I pay attention to it because images and stories are how we transmit perceptions of reality, not rocket science, that so much money gets spent over things that government folks a lot of money. They want to change a narrative. They use images in media and stores. It’s so fundamentally human about how we communicate and take what our brains are actually perceiving and not really fully seeing neuroscience majors, it’s true.
RON RAPATALO 14:32
And being able to like to reconcile that back to what you want to see of yourself. It’s all these things are really at play here. I think on a personal level. It sounds cocky. I sometimes get really offended because I work out and got out to my boy at ironbound performance athletics. There’s a number of us that are Asian, particularly Filipina, that all work out like the powerlifting competition I was at this past Saturday. Half of the crew that went to the competition were Asian men, oh, I was the only Asian but like Asian women and Asian men who worked out at this gym.
RON RAPATALO 15:10
And we’re pretty athletic, and strong and fast. And so for me, like my lived experience, I’m like, wait a second, like all these dimensionalities that you don’t see, it’s because of what images and stories have been put before you. And we have a society where it’s really easy to stay in a box, right? To be able to say, wait a second, the way that white folks get to be anything that they want. And the definition of whiteness is an Asian-American man, at times when I present the way that I do extroverted and confident, all these things are always so different in light of the fact that like, I’ve been like this since getting 75 in Brooklyn.
RON RAPATALO 15:48
If you didn’t know about me and that you have not known me doesn’t know any other Asian-American men like me, there’s a whole range, why can we be the whole range? That’s the stuff that’s I think all that any marginalized group wants, like I could show up, as I am. But to be clear, to show up in a certain way can be really dangerous and affect your career, affect your money, and affects lots of things, right? And so I can understand the perception of Asian-American manhood. Sometimes some of us have been conditioned to think that’s the way we should be. Because then that allows you to skate on by you push against the norm. Folks don’t like that oftentimes. Right?
RHEA WONG 16:30
I was just thinking, if you ever wrote your memoir, you can call it a dangerous Asian man. So let me ask you this, because I think this is an interesting point, and obviously have a point of view about being an Asian-American woman, and not fitting into that mold of quiet, submissive, or because I think you’re right, we’re limited by the narrative of as Asian women. You’re either like a dragon lady, or you’re a submissive sexual object.
RHEA WON 16:58
And until we can actually make room for all kinds of narratives and all kinds of stories, we’re gonna continue to pigeonhole people into one little thing. This brings you to an interesting question coming in from Celine, quite as soon as I know, Ron, I busted out of the room allowed. So as someone who deals in talent, what advice would you have for Asian execs who really are looking for those higher positions, leadership positions, CO, or ED roles, and have to consciously be aware of the fact that there are stereotypes about how Asian leaders are?
RON RAPATALO 17:42
I think one that often see is the idea of being quiet, and submissive, but are you are focused on the word quiet? Be clear, why leadership, I think across identities, particularly nonwhite men, doesn’t play well. I used to be a quiet white man be very successful as I was so thoughtful. Oh, he’s so into, Oh, wow. He loves to be behind the scenes, but he liked to create those systems that culture and like, when you think about it, right? Why did it leave?
RON RAPATALO 18:19
So my advice is, you got to show up with who you are. And people have to earn the full dimensionality and vulnerability. So there’s a little bit of both, where you’re trying to thread the needle from like my hiring perspective, doing executive search for a living is what I often coach people across multiple identities and multiple dimensions, etc. And particularly for Asian-American men is that you are a little bit quieter by nature when you interview and you’re the hiring process.
RON RAPATALO 18:47
It’s matchmaking. If you watch matchmaking shows, what I have seen I think that it bears this out when people study this stuff that extraversion plays generally better in many processes versus introversion because if all I did was talk like this on the podcast do you think your viewers would be really excited to chat with me. Now I can talk about it and sometimes actually do to me totally but see this really plays better I did that I thought like this really, oh! He’s so gauging.
RON RAPATALO 19:15
There’s a little bit of a bounce about not being so over the top of being a little bit more demonstrative, which I think sometimes folks find it harder to do, but you can coach that. I was reading Seth Godin, his latest blog and he was talking about, may you rest in peace, my favorite male R&B artist and male singer of all time, Marvin Gaye, Marvin Gaye was very shy by nature. But you went on the road with Stevie Wonder. Barry Gordy said, wait, Motown makes money by being on the road in concert.
RON RAPATALO 19:47
So he would have been but he also knew Marga was competitive. I think people think that quiet people are not competitive. Quiet people are silent and they’re the most competitive people I’ve ever met in my life, generally speaking, right? Not extroverted but competitive. But so when Stevie Wood does his thing work the crowd is really energetic. Marvin Gaye figured that wait a second. I’m on it. I kept saying like, I gotta be like that.
RON RAPATALO 20:15
Oh, so you fast-forward now. If you’ve seen Marvin Gaye singing the national anthem, at the 1983, NBA All-Star game, well, you want to talk about gripping charisma, tripping moving the crowd. So it is a learned skill. And I would say until we come up with hiring processes that are a lot more equitable, to be able to have people assessing and processes really believe that being quiet isn’t a bad thing.
RON RAPATALO 20:46
Then I think what I would present to Asian-American male leaders, and frankly, any leader that tends to be more introverted and quiet is to learn some extraversion things to show up in an interview because then it comes across as more confident that it’s all like leadership voice and stuff. But as you could still be once you’re in your quiet leadership will actually be the thing that’s better for organizations. And here’s the answer. Not every Asian-American leader and I’m not quite like I jump in, I would you know what I’m saying.
RON RAPATALO 21:15
But there are still some cultural things there. I would say you need to know like, I want to be collaborative, I want to make sure people are getting along, right? Sometimes, I don’t like conflict. So everyone has a different flavor. And I think that all of us in all the damn countries of origin that we have all need a certain way. It’s like because I was just thinking about the numbers. Wait, two plus billion people across the globe… That makes sense. It makes zero sense.
RHEA WONG 21:39
But the thing is, and I think this is stereotypes being true, and why it’s so harmful is this idea of, I have this idea in my mind. And I’m going to stick to that idea, despite data to the contrary, right? So like, Jeremy Lin, if you look at history, it’s that you like this guy’s a superstar, yet, he was not drafted, because people couldn’t see past the Asian like, there’s no way this Asian kid can deliver as an elite basketball player until he did.
RHEA WONG 22:07
And then they were like, wait, where did he come from? And so it’s like, your mind isn’t actually able to accept the evidence because your perceptions and your stereotypes are in the way. It’s the angry black woman, right? I think that’s a meme and a trope that needs to die. I’m going to switch tacks a little bit here because I think there’s so much that we can get into. May is also mental health month. I want to talk to you about mental health in the Epi community.
RHEA WONG 22:39
I don’t know that there’s a question here other than I think, from my perspective, growing up, it was very taboo to even consider that you had to go to a therapist or be in therapy. Oh, what’s wrong with you? I think I hope that it’s changing. But what I’m seeing a lot of are starting to be conversations about the deep trauma that our community experiences, both from an intergenerational perspective. And that happens every day. I was afraid to walk down the streets of New York City for the last couple of years. I’m wondering, from your perspective, are we starting to normalize mental health and healing of trauma? Or do you think that there’s more to go?
RON RAPATALO 23:23
My perspective, at least what I’ve seen on screen and seeing more Asian Americans talking about it like I certainly lean towards that. So I’m watching Asian-American influencers, and therapists that are talking about mental health more publicly. So I think that narrative is slowly but surely shifting to talking about trauma, this deeper stuff that took. All of us do not necessarily come in the same way as Americans and Asian Americans.
RON RAPATALO 23:51
You have to look almost country by country and segment by segment. There are Filipinos that come into this country, I think the term that was used TNT, Tago Ng Tago, which was the description for an undocumented Filipino, right? For some time, and hopefully, they change this term because it makes me feel wonky. The idea is that when you’re coming to this country, you’re not coming with stuff and then coming here and trying to survive and build and thrive. Let’s be clear, there’s a lot of systemic forces and things that like English language learning. Being able to support your experience in the classroom but you have all these things that say things.
RON RAPATALO 24:31
I was talking about it with a buddy of mine. I was recording, and people were interested, it’s coming out soon. about this idea of just talking more deeply about things. And we just had this really honest conversation about the way that life how we’ve been dealing with our mental health and for two men of color to talk about that openly, one that is just not super common. So I think the idea of deepening the conversation about trauma, I think I take pretty seriously as someone who’s not professionally trained is like, you would need folks who are like, professionally trained to support that because someone who has all the right tense in the world can actually be quite harmful, and not even know it.
RON RAPATALO 25:16
So I think you start at the root of is like normalizing that mental health is a conversation to have, just like folks saying they want to have a bubble bath. But that’s very surface level, mental health, and wellness, right? Like these conversations around being able to say, if I am not feeling well up here in my emotions, that is something that is okay for me to have a conversation about and talked about the whole you take Elsa song from Frozen, let it go. If I think it was a way to think about mental health and not let’s say you let it go like that, right?
RON RAPATALO 25:51
But I think people often need dependent on what they’ve experienced and often need stages to be able to go through their emotions, because if you let something all out, that may not always be the best way for that person their context. And so for me, the conversation about mental health is really starting to move a little bit more. But I think deeply about normalizing it, you need it in schools, you need it at work, and you need it in so many dimensionalities because in everything I experienced.
RON RAPATALO 26:15
I was abnormal to go to the SPARC program and talk about the intercultural issues I was having with my Indian Hindu girlfriends. For me to do that? So the teacher saying that I really think you should talk to John Markoff is why Mr. Donnelly seems really angry? I am. Maybe I should talk about that. It’s a fight against it means you need this active effort. And people are to be really committed to it because the norm is.
RHEA WONG 26:52
Let’s talk about this. Because I think my own evolution of leadership and myself as a person is that vulnerability is actually strength and growing up, I was really taught to suck it up. Don’t cry, at least we’re not knee-deep ricefield in China. And so I’m just wondering for you, personally, this evolution of vulnerability and particularly as a girl dad, I think it’s really interesting to think about, what does it mean for you to be comfortable with being soft with being vulnerable with asking for help?
RON RAPATALO 27:26
That was understanding how to be a model for my girls, right? It’s a very proud girl dad. That means also, as a dad and as a parent apologizing for times I’ve been angry or apologize for times I’ve been too jokey, right? With my oldest I’ve shouted at Eva a little bit too strongly, being tired and whatnot. If some of it is like thinking about constantly restoring relationships and apologizing, we do something wrong and I just want to do it.
RHEA WONG 27:56
It’s such an Asian parents thing, right?
RON RAPATALO 28:03
It’s a lot. That’s stressful for me even to do that, right? But for me, I did like, for me as a girl, the idea that vulnerability has been such a source of strength in my personal non-parent, especially in the marriage I have with my wife, that the more vulnerable I’ve gotten, the more I’ve been able to trust it ask her for help. Or to say I think we need help. The deeper our marriages flourished. I think that’s any relationship right? When I think about that, across the span of people I’ve gotten to know.
RON RAPATALO 28:34
When I lead with the spiritual currency, my vulnerability and not to say you get vulnerable from the get out of this thing that happened to me was like people, like there’s a level of I think levels to it. And some of it is just understanding that I think when you share that, that they that activate something so deeply human that people just want to be seen and heard. That’s really all it is.
RON RAPATALO 28:58
The idea of being vulnerable from my standpoint, is allowing people to also feel like they could be seen and heard, but often my vulnerability online and in this podcast, is with my daughters, with my wife, with my close friends with my family, it just allows an opportunity for people to be seen and heard because it’s soon to be age 48 I feel like I’ve had a lot of opportunity to feel seen and heard. And now I demand it. I don’t know any other way.
RON RAPATALO 29:25
There’s this hetero male me talking I’m just like, I’m just going to man be seen and heard. I’m going to make a room and I’m not entering that room. I just that’s the way I’m gonna roll. And how do you offer that space so other folks can see that being seen and heard is not necessarily people coming into that person’s room? You’re going to come into my room and see that in this room. Me being seen and heard, this is me up more powerful than that.
RHEA WONG 29:51
You know what I advise people and I advise myself, I go what would Chad do? Chad is like the mediocre white male who feels completely entitled to me and I’m like, yeah, what we’re trying to do, I’m gonna do that. Like, really nitty gritty, for all the folks listening, how do we become supporters, advocates, and cheerleaders for Asian leadership?
RON RAPATALO 30:20
I think this in similar ways that you would ask how can you be an ally, black folks, Latinx folks to LGBTQ folks, and so women of color, like the name all the different life identities that tend historically tend to be marginalized, right? Some of it is starting from the get of believing someone’s story. I think when you believe someone’s story from the get now that is really hard to do because sometimes you hear stories is so different than your experience. You’re like, let’s be clear about sometimes what’s really going on, if you get inside, like inside out, get excited, things that you really think about that person, right?
RON RAPATALO 31:03
Whose experience is so different than yours and can’t be true. Truth is everywhere for it. So some of it is I think to hire other Asian-American leaders to believe who we are when I show you who I am. And know that there’s a lot more to it. Because if you give me your vote vulnerability gift about where you are, and where you stand, I’ll show you a little bit more, because that has to be, right? And so when I think about, like, I’m gonna geek out with like, my executive hiring brain of like competency, rubric, equity, selection, training, being able to get evidence, the evidence will speak volumes that are willing to listen and hear it. We’ve always been great leaders that’s like, really?
RON RAPATALO 31:52
And it doesn’t mean that the talented Asian-American leaders that there are growth areas and places where an individual Asian-American leader can get better. But how do we change the system and people’s mindset to say, from the get, this is all non-white men applying for roles and leadership? We’ve always been ready. I’m ready at this moment. The idea of readiness, and matching in hiring is just at some level for me getting married.
RON RAPATALO 32:18
And so that’s where I really tried. It’s easier said than done and in these processes, it seems someone’s humanity first and foremost as a candidate and building a prosperous see that and really then trying to figure out the other side organization, hiring manager, the search committee and all these dynamics to figure out what the matches because it’s not a singular matches, like in the world of like a relationship, like one to one.
RON RAPATALO 32:43
This is one person with a whole constellation of people. Imagine if, at a matchmaking episode, one person was going to marry an entire family. And at some level, subcultures are really like that, right? But imagine if that’s how the hiring process feels. And so to figure out that dimensionality, where all of those people don’t all have the same values and experiences and identities, right? And so how do you come to a middle ground here to be able to find the match of the one to the many, and whatever that culture in that dynamic feels?
RHEA WONG 33:14
But let’s talk about that for a second. And more than just Asian-American leaders, I recently interviewed, I assume from Princeton, he was talking about the phenomenon that we are seeing now of organizations, hiring folks of color, and expect, let’s call it what it is. Black women, usually, to be in charge of a hot mess, and to try to clean up something that is really like you just didn’t know all of the skeletons were buried there. So I don’t know what the question is other than Is this a phenomenon that you have seen? And if so, what do we do about it?
RON RAPATALO 33:50
Yeah! So I’ll be honest, I’ve seen a lot of what I call the short checklist, like you’re a person of color, you’re a woman of color, oh, you’re a black woman, you could solve it. I think what I’ve tended to see in the leadership space when someone’s being hired to be the leader, or they’re looking for equity leadership as a strong competency, I think there is a look, particularly to black folks to be the ones that saw that in singularity and pull themselves up by the bootstraps, done everything right?
RON RAPATALO 34:25
And that’s the dangerous narrative is that the single leader, which is the mythology of America, well, you can do anything that you want, just work really hard, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and just take everything. And so if you fill in the blank, whoever that is, in my experience, that tends to be black women, for leaders, but there are many others, right? Sometimes Asian-American leaders, but I often find that in my watching of lived experience, black leaders are coming into the situations because they have brought their totality. They got the humanity to it.
RON RAPATALO 35:01
And yet the organization and particularly folks in leadership, obviously don’t want to change in the way that being pro-black would do in an organization. Let’s be really clear about that. Right? Because the folks, you hired for it, but once you feel like, oh, now I’m a gold gaslight you and make the stone comfortable for you. Do you know what I’m saying? And you fill in the blank around those types of leaders, right?
RON RAPATALO 35:30
And so some of its this becomes, how much does the organization particularly leadership, how much have they done their own work to understand the dimensions by identity, what it really means to do the work, which is not what you’re willing to give, it’s what you’re willing to give up? There are many brilliant people I’ve heard on podcasts at events who talk about this idea of giving up when you have power, especially when you’re white and in power, what are you willing to give up?
RON RAPATALO 35:52
And especially if you’re a person of color, don’t think you don’t have a little bit of something to give up when you’ve been somewhere for so long? Because you carry power, too. It may not look the same as a white man. I got some, I’m trying to expand it. I’m not trying to release it all until I die. Do you know what I’m saying? Like, you got to hold enough of it to be in conversations because I think without that energy source, sometimes it’s easy to get washed.
RHEA WONG 36:19
Yeah, let’s talk about that. And then being Asian in a world in a conversation that feels so black and white. So just a personal anecdote. When I read an organization, I had a younger staff member leaves, she was a young black woman and we did an exit interview with her. At the time, I was an executive director., I had a white woman as a program director, a Latina, as a CEO, and a Trinidadian man as my CFO. And her last words, as she was partying with, like, I just can’t work in an organization where the leadership is so white, and I was like, I’m so confused.
RHEA WONG 36:57
So I was like, does she think that I’m white? And what was interesting to me was obviously an Asian person, like I do not identify as white. And it was, like, baffling to me that this other person of color that I feel an affinity with identifies me as not a person of color. So I’m just, at the same time, I think that there is some privilege with being, I don’t know, perceived as white. So I guess the question here as an Asian person in the fight against racism in being anti-racist, like, what is our privilege? And where do we need to be taking up more space?
RON RAPATALO 37:37
Everyone’s privileged as an Asian-American is going to look different. I think there are patterns that I’ve seen. I’ll name my pattern, right? When I’m not in summer. And I’m less brown because when I hit the sun, and give me two weeks, I’m very brown. I’ve always had this spidey sense that I’ve treated a slight bit differently when I’m brown. It’s subtle like it’s hard for me to describe other than like I interacted with others differently. When I’m in winter, I haven’t had as much sun.
RON RAPATALO 38:06
I had been able to go on vacations to get browner, I’ve lived experience as a Filipino-American, who grew up in New York City around a lot of people, especially around a lot of white people in some of the neighborhoods I grew up in, and the schools I went to, and the places where I was socialized. I’m getting to a point here, right? So I was in high school at New York University. Shout out to one of my mentors, and one of the people in my book. There’s just a level of I think my lived experience says I lived what adjacency because of the things white people will tell me they would never tell someone who looks like…
RON RAPATALO 38:53
They’re startled because someone’s not bad. You’re so kind. You’re so vulnerable. People tell you anything. I’m like, let’s be clear. Why people have told me things they would tell me? But not a black person. Is that the way it is? That’s not what I’ve seen t because I’m literally hearing two conversations and talking to you versus a black person. But I think at times, like for me, the continued growth edge for me is how I have the privilege whether I want it or not.
RON RAPATALO 39:25
There’s a privilege and having it from my perspective, how I live of being in multiracial, light kind of dimensions, is understanding that I at least can start a conversation with a white person in my life and at work that can get them to see things from a perspective where I understand enough about how they have seen things because of my wide adjacency and the way my attendees interplay. They’ll say have you thought about it like this? Some of it is like language translation, to be honest with you.
RON RAPATALO 39:56
And let’s be clear, it’s not like I’m saying anything different than the black person was in my experience. Now, their experience writ large will be different than mine. But what I’ve noticed anecdotally is that there’s a safety and if it comes out of my mouth because of power and perceives that perception in large part because comes from our identified as an Asian-American, Filipino-American, by definition I’m safer. So nice. He’s not angry.
RHEA WONG 40:32
So let’s get into the nitty-gritty then. Okay, so I think there’s a double-edged sword here, right? Because on the one hand, we can use our privilege on behalf of other folks of color, specifically, black and Latinx folks, and still think that there’s an invisibility in being Asian, like when we’re not allowed to take up space, not allowed to talk about the issues that are facing the Asian community. So what’s the net that I’m asking you for all the answers, but yeah, how do we reconcile this tension of yes, I want to be on the side of anti-racism? I want to be on the side of my brothers and sisters of color. And I think we also need to talk about the fact that Asian-Americans face specific challenges as well.
RON RAPATALO 41:24
if I make a false confession, I think that’s something that I can understand. But I will say my own lived experiences as an Asian-Americans that Filipino-American. The idea of feeling invisible is probably less what I experienced in the last 10 to 15 years in my life. So some of this, like, frankly, like being vulnerable, this is going my way back machine when I was like, 2025, 30-year old Ron, which is very different Ron, where I did.
RON RAPATALO 41:49
I don’t want to get into that feeling like feeling more, this tension of being invisible, and yet wanting to also be a co-conspirator for other identities, particularly black folks, brown folks that are trans folks, is this idea of once again, believe in their story to doing my own work about what biases and things that I have. And like, when you build trust with people, I think one of the beautiful things about feedback, when done right, is that people will tell things that you just never would see about yourself. Right?
RON RAPATALO 42:20
And then you have to reconcile what that is, right? Because some of that is really just about that person. And maybe not about, but sometimes it’s a little bit of both about that person to bias that you can. That tension about Asian-American invisibility, I think is something we have to be in coalition with other groups because there are varying levels and visibility that happen in all these groups of people.
RON RAPATALO 42:42
There are so many black people movies online, not as many as you think like maybe percentage-wise, it’s more like when you play with the numbers, but in terms of the mutuality, in terms of story is it still, once again, we’re all fighting for a really small piece of the pie because we perceive we have a small piece of the pie. Do you know what I’m saying? So, I think that’s the part where Invisibility is your coalition. But ultimately, we have to do that work ourselves to about say that our stories have always mattered. And investing in the stories of folks who are willing to put out those stories.
RON RAPATALO 43:13
And then being a coconspirator and allyship is really about understanding people’s lives, and history stories, being community people, and seeing how they want to solve the way that systemic oppression and racism have hit them. And hopefully, be able to aggregate that stuff and come to solutions that work for most everybody in different ways. But also figure out how to solve and like individual levels, how to like, and tweak things, so things can be solved for people, too.
RON RAPATALO 43:39
So my headline is at this the optimist me. If there’s a belief and change of mindset, and like how we’re all really interconnected, and how unpeeling systemic racism and oppression will take a lot of active work to understand that it like just comes at you from at different levels. So it’s not like you saw one thing and falls apart but you have to solve it for many different instances, many different life circumstances, and many different times, right?
RON RAPATALO 44:08
It’s not something that I think we have been taught aside from the myth of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps if you want solutions, everything gets solved. Systemic oppression and racism were designed to be so insidious. It doesn’t get solved overnight. With active woman energy. I’d like to think you should have this optimism.
RHEA WONG 44:34
I think we have time for one question. Allan, you had a really good question about diversity training. Jump in here and ask.
ALLAN 44:43
Hey, Ron, and thank you for this. I’m sorry, I’m late. And Ron, I’ve been a fan for a long time. Love your work of your leadership. I was talking to a friend, I actually to my sister-in-law who’s dealing with some issues at our school. And the word trust came up for me that all the DEI work that’s going on. There should be another letter in front of the D and that is the T. Now jumping into this, and notice the time being spent on the trust, which in many ways translates into the vulnerability question.
ALLAN 45:23
So, Ron, question. How much time? Are we devoting enough time to the trust? I can reveal my vulnerabilities. And there’s research that shows that this is so true about people trusting you. The amount of time and do you see that we’re spending enough time on the trust part, what are you seeing out there? And what can we do about it?
RON RAPATALO 46:50
Yeah! I think in some instances, my writ large observation of white supremacy traits is a sense of urgency to solve that, in my experience in my Filipino-American bones, I mean, community with a lot of different people who don’t look like me. People look like me to be clear, is a trust just takes. I think there’s a natural impatience around like, oh, well, I’ve been through what the training. I’m going to be all over the state. In a perfect world, where the systems have been redesigned to be able to have people able to be that way when you get outside of the training, and so the training is just a bubble, right?
RON RAPATALO 46:28
It’s like saying, all of a sudden, oh, I learned how to swim well because I put flippers on. I could be a really good swimmer, if I put flippers on. Now, I’m not training, I probably should have trained with flippers because I think it will help my swimming. But I think the idea that when you’re in an environment, you add things and then you get out of it. And you’re just going to be like you weren’t in that training environment is that doesn’t make sense.
RON RAPATALO 46:49
So I think that a lot of the translation is in my lived experience of talking to people about like, where those training fall short, is, how do you think the trust that’s built into personally, the building of awareness of one’s vulnerability into interpersonal change and systemic change? And this is where our organizations really care about and want to make space to create cultures and organizations and policies and procedures that might, in fact, have people have to get to like, wait!
RON RAPATALO 47:18
Maybe I shouldn’t be the leader or white man? Wait a second, where’s my space in this? That’s a very real conversation. I’ve had with white men and white what, like, where’s my space, there’s a sense of loss. And when I get a little bit cynical about it, I say it probably more softly and gently and like your lived experience. I know you may not want to see that. But I will tell you from where I sit in my experience, you have so many connections. Do you know what I’m saying?
RON RAPATALO 47:48
Then you start to get that, and particularly a white man, you get that work and that thing. If you could sell it, you could do other things. Now, it’s just a matter of maybe you have less choice than you may have had in the past. where you started from out here. You got this much. You got a choice we generally have as like marginalized communities, people of color like that. And so some of it is just having people step out of themselves and understand the way that systems and cultures a policy like that then becomes the conversation I think people are and leaders and more scared. Because the giving of that money, and power, play with people’s money and power in America, what happened to you?
RHEA WONG 48:39
I have a reaction to that to Alan, which is I agree with you. And I think the building of trust and the building of interpersonal relationships has become harder in a virtual world. We’ve forgotten how to be in space with each other. We’ve forgotten how to be in dialogue with each other. I don’t know how we get back to this space of hearing each other at the risk of being so woo-woo. Like, how are we mindful of each other?
RHEA WONG 49:13
How are we just able to share a space, share a conversation, and share different viewpoints without demonizing each other? I think it starts with conversations like this, but I don’t know why one podcast at a time. Ron, we could go for hours and hours. But unfortunately, we do have to jump. I want to put your LinkedIn in the show notes if folks want to get in touch with you. Any last thoughts as we sign off?
RON RAPATALO 49:41
I just appreciate this opportunity to break bread with you and I can’t wait for you to be a guest on my podcast. But I will say I’ve shared a perspective that is very much grounded in how I lived and see the world. I would not say that’s the way that every Asian-American, Pacific Islander leader thinks about leadership. This has a lot to do with like how I live. And so we have to have room for like how we all lead and figuring out like how we can all experience that like the humanity being seen and heard that we all crave and so I wanted to offer was a perspective and some observations.
RHEA WONG 50:18
Everyone, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much. Have a great week.
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