Asian American Business Roundtable to be Held in January

Diversity is set to become the new disruptor in the U.S. economy, corporations and business leadership. The Asian American Business Development Center today announced that their second annual Asian American Business Roundtable, “The New Majority: Igniting the Future through Inclusion and Partnerships” will be held at The Venetian, Las Vegas from January 11 to 13.

The rise of a multicultural community comprising African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asians to form a “New Majority” in America means changes, challenges and new collaboration strategies for businesses and organizations that seek to thrive in the coming decades.

PepsiCo, Kaiser Permanente, Univision, Cisco, JPMorgan Chase and The Conference Board are among the organizations who have put this significant demographic transformation onto their agendas, and who seek to provide insights, ideas and solutions on how they are embracing the emerging changes.

“Diversity and inclusion have been a mantra for many U.S. companies for some time,” said John Wang, founder of the Asian American Business Development Center. “What’s different now is the growing realization that the so-called minorities in America are evolving into a majority population, and that businesses need to reinvent their approaches toward this new base of consumers, employees and leadership.”

The buying power of minority ethnic groups is growing at an exponential rate. Taken together, the consumer power of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and Native Americans is forecast to reach over $4.1 trillion in 2019. If it were a separate country, this New Majority would be the third largest economy in the world, after the U.S. and China.

The Asian American Business Development Center, a New York–based non-profit group formed to promote business and professional advancement for Asians, is convening a summit to address the powerful and transformational trends associated with the New Majority.

Organized by the Asian American Business Roundtable, “The New Majority: Igniting the Future through Inclusion and Partnerships” will be co-hosted by PepsiCo’s Vice Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Mehmood Khan. "The markets and consumers we serve are becoming increasingly diverse, creating vast new opportunities for companies across industries. This shift demands that companies foster a strong spirit of diversity, inclusion and engagement within their organizations. By embracing diversity and working to promote greater respect, understanding and appreciation across cultures, we will strengthen our communities and enhance our ability to meet the needs of the consumers we serve,” Dr. Khan said.

Bernard J. Tyson, chairman and chief executive officer of Kaiser Permanente, a recognized leader in diversity, who was recently named the second most influential leader in health care by Modern Healthcare Magazine, will be a keynote speaker at the summit, which is expected to draw participants from across the business spectrum.

Summit goers can expect to be inspired by the story of Andrew Cherng, who as a Chinese immigrant to America in the mid-1960s, grew his Panda Inn fine-dining restaurant into the Panda Express empire, which by the end of 2016 will record $2.8 billion in sales. They can also learn about the social, political and economic identity of the New Majority, how to build sustainable partnerships for future collaboration, the importance of supplier diversity, how multi-culture inspires innovation, what New Majority consumers want, and strategies to bring more women into C-suites.