Friends, I am OBSESSED with this episode with Yulin Ling. As a long-time nonprofit executive and social change warrior, we talk about the importance of money mindset in raising money for the cause. Yulin discusses her own background as a daughter of immigrants and how we tune into what is possible and how to flood ourselves with the messages that we want. In a world that feels like it’s full of despair, Yulin teaches us how to harness the power of our minds and mindsets to be the light and the bridges that the world needs. Do yourself a favor and listen to this one a few times!
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“Our one and only job in the world is providing hope to everyone else” – Yulin
Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:05
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listeners! Rhea Wong is with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. I am so excited because y’all today we are talking about one of my favorite topics of all time, the money mindset. I am so pleased to welcome my friend Yulin Ling.
RHEA WONG 00:24
She is a global chief strategy officer and consultant whose leadership has helped transform and grow over 250 nonprofits, corporations, and startups worldwide. Her global experience spent 30 plus countries throughout Asia, North America, Africa, and Europe. And she has been a lifelong nonprofit mission-oriented professional. I will let her introduce herself. Yulin, welcome to the show.
YULIN LING 00:48
Thank you, Rhea, I am so pleased to be here.
RHEA WONG 00:54
I’m pleased to have you. Okay, before we jump into the topic, again, which I know we’re all excited about, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey in the nonprofit world.
YULIN LING 01:04
I started back in the early 90s. And back then, the world looked different than today, which is a good thing that things have progressed. At the time, I was the first person in my family, an immigrant family, to go away to college. So my mom had a second-grade education. They grew up extremely poor in China and were peasant farmers there and fled to Hong Kong. And my father, in order for him to have an education, he actually took a boat to Jamaica from Hong Kong to work in his uncle’s factory and be able to send somebody home while he was going to school. And so that really motivated me.
YULIN LING 01:43
In my entire life, we grew up working in our family’s restaurant. I started working when I was five. My siblings did similarly. This whole idea of a work ethic but more that you had to go get an education in order to make it here in the US. That was just drummed into me from being very small. And a lot of it was based on racism, unfortunately. Being in that kind of background, it was a lot of customers always right.
YULIN LING 02:10
And if we had very racist customers, which we often did, or were in those environments, my dad’s answer was then you need to get an education, and then work in a place where you don’t have to be subjected to this where you have options. And so that for me a lot when I was in college, and I was studying neuroscience, as well as identity development and organizational structures, doing a lot of research in that, and I was being courted by the Big Six consulting firms.
YULIN LING 02:38
But it didn’t feel right to me to go into that field that it seemed, wow, this is a situation for me where I get to be the first and to do all this and have this access to education and to college. I want to provide that for other people in the community, as well. And so much to the chagrin of my family and my father, I decided to go into nonprofit versus going into the big six. So that’s my foray. Actually, that was my background.
YULIN LING 03:04
That was quite a sacrifice in a lot of ways to do that. Being Chinese, our families are so important, especially our parental kind of approval, and then my family was working class. And so for me to go into nonprofit, at that time, making $20,000 was a decent salary for a manager, right? And so crazy. So that was the foray into that.
YULIN LING 03:27
And then staying within that kind of realm, and understanding through my coming out process and all that also through college, how important it was to do the social justice elements of it because you look at kind of ethnic lines, racial lines, income disparities, gender, queer, versus like straight or heteronormative stuff. And there’s a lot to tackle there. So even working within nonprofits wasn’t enough for me. I really needed to then also do a lot of community work for our communities that at the time weren’t represented at all in nonprofits.
RHEA WONG 04:01
Okay, so I’m going to double-click on all of that because I have a very similar kind of background coming up as a Chinese-American person and this idea of you just have to work hard and put your head down and don’t make waves. Don’t ask for a raise, just work harder. So talk to me about how you got to a place where talking about money mindset and financial freedom became part of your purpose.
YULIN LING 04:30
I’ve studied mindset ever since I was young. It was just something that I was always interested in. I was quite a nerd in school. And that was a way I think, for me to have been able to survive being in a very predominantly white working-class environment that was pretty racist. And then my family was working so hard. It was my escape to be there. It had to be a better way. There had to be something else. Life couldn’t look like this, honestly. And I started them reading a lot more. I grew up as a Christian fundamentalist.
YULIN LING 05:03
And so the Bible was a huge part of my life. I was a Bible School teacher, too. But there’s a lot of actually stuck in what we call the Old Testament and Christian, right? And the New Testament is around mindset and asking, you shall receive. And that’s a lot of them how I formulated my ideas of, hey, if I can just gear myself to thinking about what life could be, and what I really want to ask for and have faith in that, and vision that, then that’s going to happen.
YULIN LING 05:33
It’ll happen and actually being able to go away to college and go to a private school, nonetheless, leaving my family to do that from the restaurant. And that was a really big thing. Because being the first to go away, being one of three siblings who we work at the restaurant all the time, it was a big concern about my parents, being able to even get my father to say, I want you to do this, I want you to go wherever you can get in. And if you get to the top schools, then go there. I’d rather sacrifice here than otherwise.
YULIN LING 06:02
And so I saw how things that I wanted and what I dreamt about, and what I could envision could happen. And I had no idea that my dad would be that way or my mom because my other aunts and uncles did not allow their kids to do that. They had to stay local to go to school so that they could also work. So starting to see how the world actually shifts and people around, you can even shift around something that you just fervently believe. Not only can happen, but needs to happen.
YULIN LING 06:32
And I think that kind of drive was what led me to the financial part. Back then, I knew money was important. I was still sending money home while I was working in nonprofits. Sometimes my cats would eat better than me. That’s just a part of life, right? When we are trying to balance our familial responsibilities with that and also what we want to be passionate about. I accepted that responsibility. But it wasn’t until my dad got sick. I was flying all over the world working with different NGOs.
YULIN LING 07:03
And my dad became ill. I was based in Boston at the time. I had to move back. I had to move back to New Jersey. They were living there then. Then I slept in my parents’ basement. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have any resources other than this small amount of savings that I had. And my father, in the midst of having his cancer was looking into all of these alternative treatments. And they were very expensive. And his whole thing with me was if you had gone on that path, and stayed intact, and instead of going and trying to help everyone else, now you can’t even help your own family.
YULIN LING 07:45
And I think you could probably hit you in a different way and so that immediately made me start thinking about how can I have the best of both worlds. And what does that even look like? And even then I went from working at a startup where I had a huge potential to make a lot of money, I miss being in nonprofits. And so I went there, again, much to my father’s disappointment. So knowing that he basically passed away even though I took care of them, gave up my work and career, and everything in Boston to take care of him.
YULIN LING 08:21
That was just an expectation. That’s what you’re supposed to do. And to start over in New York City, it was challenging, but I was still able to do it. I had faith that I took care of him. And that was what I had to make amends with. But then a couple of years later, our parents’ restaurant burned down. My entire family’s livelihood went up in smoke. And then my mother had cancer. So that was the game-changer, right?
YULIN LING 08:48
There was no way in hell, I was going to go through that again. And it still brings up a lot of stuff for me, but it made me then realize that money is important. Money is not something that, hey, the most important thing is doing good in the world and making the world a better place or the one. No, if you can’t make the world a better place in your own home, that makes it really hard to do anything else. And I was devastated.
YULIN LING 09:17
So at that point, I decided that I wasn’t going to do that again. And I would be able to contribute to my mother’s health and her treatments and make her as comfortable as I possibly could. But also I want to be able to have the income so that it wasn’t going to be a strain where I’m not deliberating over cans of cat food versus whether or not I want to buy a balanced meal. So that’s what kind of started me on a trajectory of knowing the importance of money and understanding it down to the very core of my fiber and what that would look like.
YULIN LING 09:52
And being a nonprofit at that time still doing community work. That wasn’t going to happen, but the EDA I was working with was making 75k In New York City. I was making 60. So if you could imagine living in New York as you are now, and then trying to also afford your family’s livelihood, as well as when they’re ill, something had to shift. And so I started doing a lot of then mind-setting around money, right? I was able to do it wrong, both stuff around, how do you have an abundance mindset?
YULIN LING 10:23
How do you shift from having a scarcity mindset to one having a growth mindset and abundance mindset, I hadn’t really focused on the money aspect. And I had to. I didn’t feel like I had a choice. But through that effort, my mom somehow miraculously, her stage-four lung cancer went into remission. And I always had this burning desire to move to California. So again, no job, I didn’t really know a lot of folks here except for one of my BFFs, who allowed me to have a place to stay while I bought a one-way ticket and moved out here.
YULIN LING 10:57
And I basically said to myself, am I praying to God around this, I was also very heavily involved in Buddhist practice, and spiritual practice, as well. So it’s not just the Christian God, that if God can, this is something I ask, I’m gonna just say that I just said, God, continue to use me for the highest good but also enable me to be able to take care of my family. And if this is your wish for me to go to California, and do this, I will trust that and that’s why I bought the one-way ticket. And I said, if I don’t make it in two to three months, God, I’m moving back, and I’m going to take care of my mom. So I’m still here in California.
YULIN LING 11:38
So it worked. And not only did it work, it propelled me in ways that I couldn’t have found them back then at all. I worked. I took a job working for a startup. That was a multinational startup that did construction in war zones, actually. And they had a children’s foundation as well, which was based in Asia. From there, from just joining the startup to be able to help grow their organization to then say, hey, but I’m interested in this foundation. The CEO then flew me on a plane to the Philippines.
YULIN LING 12:12
And after doing some strategic plan with the crew, and everyone there, he said, I need you to stay here. I don’t want you back in the US. I need you here. And that decision to then live and basically turn around the foundation launched the world’s first and only Department of Education International School Certified K-12 for orphans, 444 orphans. That put me on the map. That put me on the map of then being able to go into corporate in a way that I couldn’t when I had my nonprofit experience without really being able to shift that and turn everything around.
YULIN LING 12:51
And throughout that entire time, I was working probably from five in the morning to one in the morning every day. My team was working six days a week as well. So not as much. But certainly, that’s the effort it took. And being able to show that my wherewithal, my skills, and talents that had worked so well in nonprofits also could translate for this startup that is multinational as well as this foundation, and to prove myself to all of them, that none of them had a nonprofit background.
.
RHEA WONG 13:27
Can I just pause you there? Because I feel like there are so many nuggets that we need to pull out like that. This is really good. But a couple of things I just want to pull out because I feel like folks in the audience and myself, in particular, resonate so much with this idea of you have to work hard, you’re gonna have to work to grind yourself down or to sacrifice yourself and in this sort of like precariousness around finances, which I want to talk about scarcity mindset, too.
RHEA WONG 13:56
Because I think, in my own life, I’ve seen the ways in which changing my mindset has really yielded some incredible outcomes, like this idea of, what if I’m wrong about the way the world is? What if I’m wrong that people aren’t generous? What if I’m wrong that money is scarce? What does that mean? So let’s get into the mindset. So because I think that’s so interesting. First of all, let’s get into definitions. Like what do you mean when you say, mindset, in particular, money mindset?
YULIN LING 14:25
So we actually all have a mindset already, whether it’s intentional, or whether it’s conscious or subconscious, right? We grow up in environments that really form our views and our choices. So we take that kind of mindset. The scarcity Mindset also comes a lot from our environment. And so there’s a kind of thinking that your environment influences how your thought processes work, and what your understanding and choices of the world look like and then move you forward into adulthood.
YULIN LING 14:56
And so if your environment is always such that there’s not enough, you’re in a low-income situation, or you’re having to deal with racism all the time and sexism all the time and heterosexism, all these things you’re gonna start looking at, hey people like me aren’t ever going to get a fair shake. And you can see this, and this is where it kind of generational trauma comes from, as well. From that space, it’s really hard to move out. And it could pertain to money. It could pertain to your career, it could pertain to relationships, and it could pertain to a lot of things.
YULIN LING 15:29
And so when you start breaking through of saying what is possible, maybe like you’re saying, maybe what I think, or thought isn’t necessarily the case. But as much as we might think that, we need to really believe it, because it doesn’t shift automatically. You can say, hey, I’m going to have a job where they’re going to pay me a million dollars. You could think that you can hope for it, and you can believe it. But until that million-dollar check comes in your hand, it’s not real to you. But when you have enough instances where you start believing in the what if this is possible, what if it can happen?
YULIN LING 16:01
Let me see. And I’m going to be open to it. I’m going to be open to it because I’m going to suspend my judgment, then that changes things. And then when you start getting proof of concept over and over again. The small things can be small things. I’d love to be able to have dinner at such and such a restaurant. And then lo and behold, someone says, Hey, you want to come to dinner with me? And I have a gift certificate. I can’t use these. These are actually things that have happened. So things like that, then you start thinking, wow, I can actually have some influence around that.
YULIN LING 16:31
And so when it comes to a money mindset, the same thing applies. It’s a maybe coming from an immigrant family and being Hakka Chinese and having grown up in these very racisms, but also being a nonprofit. There’s no way. I don’t know how I can do this. But I’m going to be open. I’m going to say, what if an opportunity can come around that? What if the salary things that I’m thinking about aren’t necessarily the case? Let’s see. And when you say, let’s see, and you’re open to it, and then you see it actually happening, again, proof of concept, then you understand that concept even more.
YULIN LING17:09
And that’s why simply having a money mindset, or just thinking, I just need to shift my mindset, it’s so hard. There is a part of it, where not only believe it, but there need to be small, and very large, tangible in my hand, situations that happen. And sometimes the gap between my belief and where that tangible thing comes in real life does take a while. For some people, you give up, right? So that’s where the scarcity mindset then gets reinforced.
RHEA WONG 17:39
So let’s talk about those because that’s helpful. I’m just gonna play devil’s advocate for a second because these are some challenges I’ve faced myself in doing training. I fully believe in the mindset and abundance and training yourself to look at what is possible. The pushback that I often get from folks is to look at the world, look at the generational trauma that we’ve experienced the history of racism and enslavement in this country, like racist policies that have kept wealth out of the hands of folks of color. And yes, all those things have happened. How do you square that with this idea of what if I can also make a million dollars?
YULIN LING 18:19
One of the things around doing mindset work, as is constantly radiating and almost like bombarding yourself with what is possible, filtering out the noise. And when we look at what structural racism looks like, when we look at the reinforcement of racism, there is no way, there’s no movie, no news channel, no YouTube, no social media that you can look at that isn’t going to reinforce that you’re nothing, that you don’t deserve a chance that people like you are not welcome here, are not wanted here, and you’re never going to make it.
YULIN LING 18:53
No wonder why. Any kind of it’s true, right? These things have happened. But part of it is how society and these structural things work is they keep bombarding you with the same messages. So even if you have something like Black Wall Street, this information is hidden from the news. It’s not teaching you any of this. You don’t watch Black History Month. Why is it only a month? This is ridiculous, as an Asian American with all of these things, where you have to carve out an exception and just a few days’ worth to learn your own history.
YULIN LING 19:27
And not only history, not the history of that oppression that constantly is nailed into your brain. But the history of success, the history of your communities of people in your communities who have broken through these barriers. You’re not told these things. You’re not taught these things on purpose. It’s very methodical and you can see it now with the whole CRT thing, but you can see it now with the Santas and Florida banning almost any reference now of Africa- American History of Black history, whether it’s enslavement, whether it’s Rosa Parks, it doesn’t matter, whether you write books, you’re not going to be able to read them.
YULIN LING 20:07
And all of these things are understanding that is also what racism looks like. That is also what systemic racism looks like. That’s also the messaging that you’re going to keep getting, and your families are going to keep getting, your communities are going to keep getting, and you’re gonna keep getting. So in this respect, it is imperative to look at yourself and we talked about nonprofits, not siloing. In this instance, you have the silo. In this instance, you have to be the one who says, I’m going to tune that out because it’s not true.
YULIN LING 20:37
Because I know it’s not true. Because I see myself, I see my friends, I see my family members, and I see how hard they work. I see how smart they are, and I see what they’re capable of. I am not going to believe that we are less than, and I’m going to believe that there are opportunities for me. Now, when we look at movements, when we look at civil rights movements, it’s also important to note they leave out white people. They leave out allies, right? And very importantly, they leave out the massive amounts of money it takes to run civil rights and to run change.
YULIN LING 21:11
The Gandhi in India, do you think they got independence because of their own people? No, it did. It required a huge amount of that, but also acquired millions of dollars being set to fund these causes so that he could travel. It’s the same thing with MLK. Same thing with our movements, any of the movements that we’re talking about when we’re talking about LGBTQ rights, or we’re talking about Asian American stuff. It requires allyship. It requires funding, it requires money. But that’s stripped of the narrative.
YULIN LING 21:42
So we get hidden more and more constantly. It’s us against them. And then not only that but even within our communities, it’s us against other communities of color. And then even within that, it’s our own communities that are then pitted against each other as well. And that is the cycle. That is the wheel that keeps this going. And so when we think about, for instance, Viktor Frankl, right? The mind, your mind is the only thing that they cannot control. And when they can control your mind, they have you.
YULIN LING 22:13
And so that is also something to really keep them. It’s very hard to have faith. And that’s why faith, sometimes is so important. Faith in anything. It’s not as nondenominational. But that’s a lot of the law of attraction as well. And other things that take a very long time to go into in some ways. But I just want to reinforce, no matter what is around you, and you could be in a cyclone and a lot of us are, there has to be the inherent belief that something’s going to change. And hell or high water is going to happen, and it’s going to happen with me.
RHEA WONG 22:50
I also love what you’re saying about what you pay attention to because what you pay attention to is where your energy flows. And so if you’re paying attention to the news and like terrible, racist things that politicians are saying and whatever, that’s where your energies get stuck. Whereas I think if you actually, to your point, silo yourself and actually choose to believe and reinforce that belief with inputs, that something different and better is possible like you will start to live in that space. That to get to a bit like vibrate in that energy. Talk to me about…
YULIN LING 23:26
You hear like Oprah, Steve Harvey, all the folks with whom I’ve have broken through will say the same thing.
RHEA WONG 23:32
I know. I always say, Oprah. We’re like, people, like Cardi B. People of color can’t break through. Oprah is always my answer. I’m like Oprah, if it were not possible, then Oprah would not exist. I think Oprah is the answer to everything. Anyway, not the point. What would you say? So one thing that I have been noticing, too, when I’ve been doing this training, especially with younger folks and millennials, and Gen Z, is it inevitably gets into this whole conversation about.
RHEA WONG 24:01
It’s capitalism. Capitalism is the problem. And it is true. Capitalism has produced some great inequities in the world. And yet, this is what it is kids like, I don’t know what to tell you. So how would you respond to that because I’m a pragmatist? Look, I would love to live in this perfect utopian socialist world where everyone got exactly what they needed, and like we all sing Kumbaya, love to beat. We’re not there yet. So how do we operate in this world?
YULIN LING 24:26
I think especially for us, those of us who are nonprofits, we are constantly holding the vision of where it could be. That is our job. Our one and only job in the world is providing hope to everyone else, including the communities that we serve, but also to our board members, also to our funders, also to our donors of what life could be. We would be very remiss if we don’t acknowledge that capitalism sucks things up. Okay, it is and people will say, oh! But it’s great. No, unfettered capitalism is completely wrong.
YULIN LING 25:04
It is completely wrong. And I will be the first one to raise my hand on that. Because it requires a system where you have people who work under you, right? And it is. That’s the kind of idea, working for you to mass wealth upwards. It’s not about sharing or distribution. That’s not what capitalism means. So if that’s where you start getting, oh, that’s socialism. So this is where young people, millennials, Gen Z, and those who are after them, have it right. It’s us who have it wrong.
YULIN LING 25:39
We have been to the nude with ideas that, hey, the system is too big for us to change. It’s not going to work. I don’t know how we’re going to do it. The systems have been changing. The systems have continued to change when we look at the difference between what happened in the 1960s and 70s. And now what’s going on? You’re seeing the huge backlash because now the movement has been more and more successful. And white folks are those who are in power and are seeing this.
YULIN LING 26:03
And that’s why you’re being deluged with even more negativity, or, Fox News and all these other folks, these conspiracy theories because they’re also holding out the hope. And they do it really well by using the fear that somehow all these people around, and if we squash them enough, we will have a better world. That’s what white supremacy is, right? In the same vein, we have to be even more diligent and say, yes, we know that capitalism exists. And this is the system that we’re working within, but how can we look at changing it, and how we look at changing it also is here, right?
YULIN LING 26:39
Believing that you are more than your capital, you are more than your labor, that you are more than what your salary looks like. And that in and of itself, you look at how often when you meet someone new, hey, so what is it that you do? Where did you go to school? Almost the first hey, how are you? What is it that you do? I hate that question. Because I do a lot of things. I do whatever at the FBI went on. And if it happens to be leading nonprofits or consulting or flying around the world, I’m gonna do that. Right?
YULIN LING 27:10
But that’s not the answer people are looking for. What the answer people are looking for is how can I judge you and view you as whether you’re my equal, whether I should respect you, or whether I’m gonna look down on you. And a lot of that is not only around educational elitism is all about salary. Right? There’s a big difference to say, hey, I went to community college then it is that I went to Harvard or some other Ivy League, or Stanford, which my beautiful wife went to.
YULIN LING 27:39
And so in these respects, we do have to trust that the efforts that we’ve made to move these things along to educate to hold out these visions, we’re seeing the success of that in our younger people. And so we can’t then say, but no, you now have to accept this when we didn’t. You yourself with a breakthrough. You are saying we need to do more. And we can raise more. If someone were to say, but Rhea, that’s not reality, capitalism, right? You’re not going to get people to do that.
YULIN LING 28:11
How quickly that would have probably taken not only that out of your sales, I’m sure this has also happened, right? But you had the indelible belief of, I don’t care what that might be. I’m going to believe that this is going to be possible. And so we have to, not only hold the vision of what’s possible, but we also have to foster that in our younger folks that starting very young.
YULIN LING 28:32
When I was talking about how mindset gets implemented, mindset actually starts if you’ve ever taken landmark, you start learning about how systems and opinions and judgments get made and decisions that you’ve made, based on how your experiences were when you were just this huge sponge before you had discernment. And as you learn discernment.
YULIN LING 28:54
And you started making these decisions. You also took on the discernment decisions that your parents made, or those who are your guardians made. So now, we have to be stewards to young folks, younger folks around that. We have to be the ones who say, I’m going to trust that you have this vision. You understand what capitalism is and how fucked up it is. So now, what do you think? What are you proposing as possible for you? What do you think is possible here? And let me listen to that. And that’s the part there that I strongly believe in. That’s why doing work with young people is so important and mentorship.
RHEA WONG 29:31
It’s so funny. It is funny how the universe works. I was listening to a podcast this morning with Jay Shetty and he was talking about the Sanskrit concept, which is imprints that you get before you’re even conscious of getting the imprints. What are the imprints that your parents put on, that society put on, and that your school put on, all these things that we then accept as being true because we’re imprinted so young that we don’t even realize we’re being imprinted? And then we carry that story forward to our whole lives. Some of us know or even examine that, because of just how it is. You said something that I think, I want to get back to, which is this notion of value.
RHEA WONG 30:08
So in my Chinese upbringing, the value of a person was equated with the labor that they provided, right? If you’re not working, then what use are you? And I think for folks of color, particularly, there’s this belief that we need to form around our own intrinsic value, regardless of how much money we make, regardless of what schools we went to, regardless of what other people think about us. I don’t know what the question is, do you agree? Are there strategies that we can use to really fortify ourselves in a world that tells us that we have no value if we don’t go to Harvard and make six figures a year and etc?
YULIN LING 30:46
I do want to say if you’ve made it to Harvard, great! As a person of color, or as BIPOC, it’s amazing. Do it. Go to every Ivy League, Stanford, or whoever you can go, okay, and get accepted. And because a lot of these schools now are Uber wealthy based on the labor of BIPOC. They do offer scholarships, and funding for those who meet certain income eligibility. Get a free ride to Stanford if your family makes less than 100k. People don’t think that and this is not advertised out there. But it’s possible. And these kinds of things need to be taught.
YULIN LING 31:17
But the other part of it is cultural context. There’s a reason why, for me, and for many of us, who are Chinese who have had immigrant parents from China, from Asia, why labor is so important. You have a billion people. It’s a communist country. It’s very authoritarian. If you do not provide labor, you died. And that’s literally what happened with my own family. So you had no choice because the disparities between the haves and the have-nots are so strong. If you didn’t labor and you weren’t working, and you weren’t toiling, you had no worth, because I could just hire someone else, or I could just bring someone else.
YULIN LING 31:53
There are no labor laws in the same way that they’re here in the US. There are no educational access opportunities the way that they are here in the US. And I’m not in any way, disparaging either of these countries. I’m not also promoting either of these countries. But what I’m saying is the cultural context of that. When you learn that, if I don’t labor, I have no worth and your government is also holding that in. And your income disparity is so profound, that is going to be the judgment that your family is going to have.
YULIN LING 32:24
And it’s going to be ancestral connections that are going to be fed to you. And this because we’ve come here to the US, the land of opportunity, doesn’t mean that we can rid ourselves of all of that history and understanding of how they made it. For a lot of our families, they left these countries because there was an opportunity and because they couldn’t see how there would be a chance. And so they believed in this dream. And so if you are talking about mindset work, that is why you see immigrant entrepreneurs doing very well in terms of they have the singular focus, and in terms of when we’re talking about millionaires and billionaires.
YULIN LING 33:03
I’m not saying everyone does very well. I’m simply saying that a singular driving focus is what contributes to that. And that belief in the dream, whether it’s true or not, for our generations with the seeds, not the dream that they thought was. But when you’re in there, and you’re starving, and you’re looking at the survival of your family, anything looks better. So this is where understanding cultural context, understanding where our families, our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, were their stories were learned and told and what had to happen.
YULIN LING 33:36
And so this is where we’re talking about kind of ancestral trauma, things that kind of come down to you is important to understand that. Because if you don’t have that understanding, and you think, oh, my parents just wanted me to work all the time, and they just want me to make as much money as possible because of all that. Yes, it’s true.
YULIN LING 33:56
But also understand that we can also allow a little bit of compassion for them because of how they grew up. And then, in turn, we can allow a little more compassion. And I would hope, for a lot more compassion for ourselves, and understanding why we grew up in these situations. And as that bridge, it takes more work for us to change that. So a lot of compassion is necessary there.
RHEA WONG 34:17
Okay, last question, because we could talk forever. And actually, I’d love to do part two, so we can talk about the systemic changes. But right now, focusing on the personal changes, I know that lots of folks, including your lovely wife, listen to this podcast and they are fundraisers of color. And I know a lot and I’ve been in conversations with people around feeling burned out when having to navigate this predominantly white philanthropic space, and they’re talking to older white people who make their microaggressions sometimes or macro aggressions. And so I’m curious about how you might advise if fundraisers of color who are face to face with the systemic problems and these stark income disparities every day.
YULIN LING 35:05
So what is the acknowledgment that is true? And when we look at capitalism, we understand why philanthropy is a part of that. And when we look at what that system is when it is predominantly white, straight men and women of wealth, who are determining, who are ought to be acceptable to be funded in our communities of change, there’s no way that’s going to be possible. And when Audrey Lorde wrote about the master’s tools, right? It wasn’t just about that, it was also who are the voices that are being listened to, as a black lesbian woman.
YULIN LING 35:45
And knowing that in this space, this white feminist space black women were being tokenized. But also, she’s the only queer black woman who’s even allowed a tiny bit of space to be able to speak at a conference. We’re not listening to enough of those voices. Even in our nonprofits, we look at folks as constituents, right? We look at folks as oh, we need to help. And so the shift around that is our voices are important. But also understand that we are the gap. We are the bridges between our constituents and our communities, and this white wealth world.
YULIN LING 36:20
So what is important when we’re in that bridge, understanding, again, cultural context, and also very important, cultural fluency, wealth fluency, this is also another language that we have to learn if you haven’t grown up with it, and you haven’t spoken it. So if you’re talking about we go into this situation where everyone there is speaking French, and you didn’t learn French, because you’re speaking Spanish, because you’re speaking Chinese, whatever it might be, to speak French, you have to diligently learn.
YULIN LING 36:53
You have to be in these environments, and you almost have to immerse yourself, right? But what I mean by that is, when we have wealth all around us, we self-censor ourselves from being in these spaces, because we think we don’t belong there. The practice is to start going to these spaces, and what I say for folks here in Boston, is go to the Four Seasons, right on Market Street, and sit at that bar and have a soda. You can afford $5 for soda, most likely, and you might be able to even expense that so that you have comfort now speaking and learning the fluency of wealth and being surrounded by that.
YULIN LING 37:40
Because if you don’t understand what that fluency is, and it continues to be a foreign language, it is a lot of othering that we end up doing. And when we’re othering, we’re not that bridge. And the purpose of being fluent is that language, and we’re in other countries so that they also understand us, right? It goes both ways. If we need to be able to understand that and also be able to have those conversations, but also have those conversations translated to our communities. That’s really hard work. And I’m not saying it’s not easy, but try it. Yeah, it’s an experiment.
RHEA WONG 38:18
I love that you said that. Because I think when that past couple of years, its notion of code-switching has been pointed to as a negative thing. But I actually think calling it cultural fluency. It is very empowering. I can speak all of these different languages. And it’s almost like being a secret agent, right? Like, you can go in and be like, I can pretend that I’m in here, and I gather information, and I want to bring it back. So I love that. This has been so much fun. I definitely want to make sure we do a part two with you. Because I think their bigger issue like the big systemic questions that I want to get into, but I know that you have a training coming up. So tell us a little bit more about that if we want more of all of this that you’re throwing down.
YULIN LING 38:59
So after my conversation with you, Rhea, one of the things that I do offer is around money mindsets, and financial freedom for women and trans folks, and especially around our BIPOC communities. And so with the nuance of this last part that you just mentioned, how about for us in nonprofits? It is a very different space to be in than for us dealing with it in the corporate or nonprofit spaces. And so I wanted to tailor something because I’m doing this podcast with you.
YULIN LING 39:29
That also involves folks who are in nonprofits, because I do think that we should be doing more deeper dives of this around the very things that you mentioned. And you and I will talk but we’ll figure it out. Probably be about three to four weeks after this podcast. I’ll set up a workshop. And we’ll work on that in terms of actually what the date looks like, but very interested to see how I can help our community around these issues, and move the needle that much further.
RHEA WONG 39:54
I love that in the sense that I can be helpful or help co-create or provide resources. Please, let me know So I’ll make sure to put all of your info in the show notes for folks who want to connect with you via LinkedIn. But in the meantime, Yulin, thank you so much. It’s been such a great conversation. I feel so energized.
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