In the late 1980s outside of Seoul, South Korea, a woman got pregnant with twins. She was 18 years old, she’d had a one night stand, and she was not able, for reasons we do not know, to keep the babies, so she gave them up for adoption.
Two baby girls were born and they were given the names K881901 and K881901. Because most people who adopt babies want one baby the twins were immediately split up and put into foster homes.
For the first five months of their lives they did not know each other existed.
Eventually a couple from New Hampshire, USA wanted children with siblings and adopted both babies. K881901 and K881902 were reunited and flown over to the United States to grow up under the watchful gaze of their Italian American father and French Canadian mother in a US state that is 98% white.
K881901 was renamed Emily Kim Ae Sun Hunter and what were are about to hear is a story I got to hear live a few months ago when I gave a speech for Manulife at their first ever Global Employee Summit. Manulife is a global financial services company of over 35,000 people with a number of divisions such as John Hancock Financial.
Unfortunately I had to follow Emily onstage! She dropped the mic with her personal story, the one I’ve just started sharing with you here, which received a giant standing ovation from the audience. She talked about finding yourself, navigating your race, being a person of color where you’re always the minority, and about how we discover our identities in a world of grey.
We recorded this conversation at the Manulife Head Office in Toronto between our afternoon speech to the Western hemisphere employees and before our late-night speech to the Eastern hemisphere employees. I want to say a huge thank you to Manulife CEO Roy Gori, Director of Global Communications Brooke Tucker-Reid, and of course Emily Kim Ae Sun Hunter for helping make this conversation happen.
Let’s go!
What You'll Learn:
How do you react to racism?
How do you find yourself when you’re far from where you’re from?
How do you grow your career as a woman of color? (And how do you think of the spectrum between ‘submissive’ and ‘confident’?)
How can you find the meeting point of all your worlds?
notable quotes from emily kim ae sun hunter:
CONNECT WITH Emily:
word of the chapter:
Resources Mentioned:
Emily’s First Book [9:42]
Emily’s Second Book [20:37]
Emily’s Third Book [30:52]
A Midwife’s Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous by Dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson
