“Conversations with Women” Series.
Diane Mak: On why she went from investment banking to a not-for-profit and the first social impact bond.
Diane is a Director of International Development at Social Finance. A not-for-profit organization that partners with government, social sector, and the financial community to find better ways of tackling social problems in UK and beyond. As part of the Asia Global Fellowship, Diane and I are traveling to China to meet with leading state and private organizations. We agree to do the interview on our train journey from Shanghai to Beijing. After all, we will be confined to an enclosed space for the next 4hrs and 28min. After a skillful exchange of seats with other passengers, we manage to sit next to each other. We settle in and hear the first automated announcement related to “social credits”. Misbehavior on the train will result in a reduction in your credit score. Diane, a native of Hong Kong (as she puts it at the start of the conversation), was born in UK but by the age of one, her parents relocated back to Hong Kong. At first to give Diane a chance to master Chinese (Cantonese) language. In ten years, moving again back to UK to master English. Our conversation involuntarily starts with the differences between Western and Eastern styles of parenting.
Would you make the same decision that your parents made? Moving between Hong Kong and London, the way you did.
It’s difficult to say. if I hadn’t moved to UK I would probably not get into Cambridge, I wouldn’t have met my husband there, and I wouldn’t have had my daughter, Alexis. But at the same time I do think that if I’d stayed in Hong Kong for longer, I would have done more to understand the Chinese culture and context, and would have had more opportunities to support the development sector here.
Let’s talk about western vs eastern approaches to parenting. Many books have been written about it, and many have debated which method is better. Did you feel your experiences growing up were different from other kids that went to school with you in UK?
There are some reasons behind these stereotypes. Asian parents are very intense and care a lot about their kids’ education. From their perspective, it’s a way of getting equal opportunity for their kids. To achieve something greater in the future. One example is my parents deciding which instruments I would learn in primary and secondary school. My husband, on the other hand, was asked by his parents to choose an instrument. He chose a violin. I ended up playing piano because my parents wanted me to. In my case, there was enforcement of practicing. For my husband, it was much more relaxed. In the end, my husband is more musically inclined than I am. Although, he does sometimes wonder, what would the result be if he was pushed more and had done his 10,000 hours of practice.
You have made some bold decisions in your career choices. You went from a high paying high stakes world of investment banking to a non-for-profit. How did that decision come about?
One of my big influences in Cambridge was a female economics professor. Doctor Sriya Iyer. Her focus is on gender, religion and development economics. She got me thinking — how can I contribute in this area? She also gave me some pretty good advice when I left university. “Try out different things to see where you add the most value. Don’t close doors too early “, she told me.
Many of my classmates were applying to financial services after college. I figured gaining some private sector experience would not hurt, so I joined a bank as a financial analyst. But my goal has always been to gain experience and then move on to International Development. After I felt I gained as much knowledge as necessary at the bank, I made the decision to resign and went to work at Transparency International. First in London and then at their headquarters in Berlin. While at Transparency, and in partnering with a number of other NGOs, I got a good understanding of what the advantages are for working in the non-profit sector. But also, some of the challenges the sector as a whole faces — financial sustainability, scaling up their impact and funding structures that tends to lead to working in silos. I started thinking how the private sector skillset could be applied to the NGO sector.
Do you think it’s possible to change the way established NGOs operate, to help them scale, or is it easier to start from scratch?
It is often the external environment that forces NGOs to be rather reactionary. Some of the funding is very irrational, short-term. It prevents NGOs from planning ahead with a longer-term horizon. A lot of the sector’s resources are spent on writing funding proposals and there is not enough core funding to support capacity building of NGO’s, including e.g. building out a quality management team and setting up data and performance management systems.
Going back to your career path — one thing that jumps out is that you worked in the government of Liberia. How did that happen?
After Transparency, I applied for a Master of Public Administration in International Development at Harvard Kennedy School. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (former President of Liberia) came to do a speech at the school, and she made an open invitation to anyone who wanted to support her government and work for her. A bunch of us were inspired by her — a female peacebuilder leading a country that just came out of the civil war. She spoke of her “iron ladies” that included a finance minister and the chief of police. Powerful and amazing women she convinced to come back to Liberia. I was very inspired by the passion of these women to return and serve their country. Once in Liberia, we were stationed in different Ministries. I was working under the deputy finance minister, advising her on taxation and revenue schemes. Others were stationed at the Ministry of Gender, Ministry of Transport, Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We all lived together, and dinners at the kitchen table were our mini “cabinet” discussions.
Is it fair to say that two strong women, Doctor Sriya Iyer, and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf influenced your career trajectory and shaped who you are today?
My grandmother was the third influencing factor. She was a school teacher and she had to drop out of education and work because of the war in China and having to look after her family. What she taught me was to have resilience. Persistence to carry on and see through the objectives. As women in modern times, we have a lot of priorities pulling in every direction. Whether it is to achieve something in your career, or to be a supportive wife, or to be an amazing mum, or even to be a good friend. My grandmother was tireless in persisting with her priorities. The second thing that she taught me was the importance of community. Whenever we were out together she would always talk to everyone. There was an auto garage downstairs of where we lived in Hong Kong. The mechanic working at the garage was covered in in oil and grease all the time and very few people would stop by to talk to him. She always made time to have a conversation with him when we passed by. For my grandmother, connecting as human beings and caring about the community around her were so important.
What about women at work, women that are your supervisors or your bosses? Do you think there is a strong network and support system of women in corporate environments?
I currently work in the not-for-profit sector and I’ve been lucky to have very good mentors, both men, and women. I certainly felt in a corporate setting some proactivity would be helpful. To some extent, there is still a dominating male culture in more traditional industries such as finance. I had a tight-knit circle of peers when I worked in the private sector — all amazing ladies in their own right — who supported each other through challenges, and that made all the difference.
Do you ever doubt your decision of moving from banking to non-profit? Ever think, “if I stayed in the corporate world I could have had a more comfortable life”?
I don’t regret the kind of moves I made because I really felt the need to move at the times when I did. Distance between commercial and non-profit has shrunk to some extent, for example in terms of the emergence of social purpose organizations that both aim to make financial returns but also try to achieve social impact. In the field that I work in, impact investing, it’s a lot of hybrid ways of thinking, approaches to financial and social impact. Projects that I work on have many different dimensions and require different skills from different sectors. I prefer to think of it as constantly refreshing in my mind what is the best way to generate positive social impact, rather than defining my work in terms of what sector I’m in.
Would you do anything differently if you had an opportunity to go back in time to your schooling days?
I think the one thing that I would have done differently is perhaps to try and explore more career pathways before determining what career path I should take. I would talk to more people to get a lot of perspectives. I was choosing between two career paths — engineering and economics. In terms of the education system in UK, it’s not easy, unless you are very proactive, to get a sense of the subjects outside of A level subjects. Economics was one of the A-level subjects, engineering wasn’t. The closest you got to engineering was probably physics. It was harder to understand what skills you needed to be an engineer. For some subjects, organized apprenticeship opportunities would be helpful to open doors and minds to what opportunities are out there.
Why do you think we’re still talking about gender and female empowerment in the 21st century? It seems we’ve been very good at making progress in all the other areas but have been struggling to provide equal opportunities to women.
Expectations in society and the workplace still dictate some of it. I have seen friends take additional time off work if they have one or more children. Mainly due to challenges around childcare. Some of them don’t want to outsource childcare, or can’t afford to, so they choose to leave the workforce. In most countries, maternity and paternity leave are not set up in a way to encourage equal sharing of parental duties. When women do come back to the workforce because the way work is structured is often not friendly to working parents, women (and sometimes men) end up taking a position with less responsibility to achieve work-life balance. More enlightened parental leave and workplace policies can support women in breaking through glass ceilings.
Do you think women can have it all? Is it possible to build a successful career, and have a happy fulfilling life at the same time?
It depends on how you define having it all. If we want to reach 100% in everything, then no I don’t think we can have it all. Working 24/7 to get where we want to be and at the same time spending enough quality time with the family. I don’t think that’s possible. But if we define having it all as a job that we love, a job where enlightened employers are supportive of work-life balance. A job where we can contribute and our efforts are recognized. The right support system — within the family, community or through government policy — in which we raise our children. Then, yes, we can have it all.
At the moment not enough women have access to the right support systems, yet they are told if they work hard enough they can have it all. That’s just not realistic.
