PICA Member Spotlights
Q&A with independent consultants who successfully “made the leap” and created the consulting career of their dreams
Q: What is your consulting specialty?
A: I specialize in enhancing leadership and organization effectiveness by applying organizational psychology principles. I get to integrate my Fortune 100 Companies and my research background to generate positive business outcomes through inclusion and the employee experience. As a consultant, I help the client identify a specific pain point through a series of assessments. I then develop a customized solution based on internal and external data. My aim is to create sustainable change grounded in research.
Q: Why did you decide to go into independent consulting versus some other path in business?
A: By bridging a much-needed gap between research and application, I believe I'm making a difference on a broad scale. As I continue to work with clients in various industries, I have the opportunity to be innovative while addressing a client's needs. Ultimately, being independent allows me the creativity and freedom to approach the client's work uniquely. Also, as I was coming up on a big birthday, I had a significant shift in thinking, and I asked myself, "How much time do I have to live? How do I want to spend my time?" Freedom, flexibility, variety, and creativity. These ideas drove me toward independent consulting.
Q: So how did you actually make the leap?
A: Well, 2019 was my second time leaving corporate America. The first time I decided to leave a Fortune 100 company and "go independent," another Fortune 100 company called me, and I decided to follow that path and delay working for myself. But this time, when I thought about how I want to spend my time, how I want to work, and who I want to work with, the answers led me to focus on the areas that I'm interested in - leadership and organization effectiveness and applying organizational psychology principles. I learned the valuable lesson of specializing in my work instead of being a generalist. This concept has helped me to continue to finetune my approach and helped me to build my consulting practice.
Q: I believe the other half of the equation is credibility. I know you've been doing some things to boost your credibility in the business world. Can you tell me about that?
A: In the past three years, I've spoken 20+ times on panels, conferences, and webinars. My perspective is that I have corporate experiences relevant to people and work, so my goal is to share in forums where people can benefit. Participating in this way helps with community building, establishing networks, and creating knowledge. An unexpected benefit is that each time someone shares the event on social media, business leaders, potential clients, or like-minded colleagues will remember me. It builds credibility and serves a greater purpose of knowledge sharing.
Q: What about building credibility through writing, like book publishing or contributing to a book? You've been doing some of that as well, right?
A: I recently published a research article about supporting Asian women leaders in a peer-reviewed journal. In the article, I propose several recommendations for organizations to better facilitate the professional growth of women of Asian descent. It is a significant accomplishment because publishing in a journal is a grueling process. It took my co-author and me over a year to complete this manuscript. The link to the article is here.
Q: What's next in your consulting business or for you?
A: I'm going into year four as a consultant. For the first two years, I said yes to everything to explore different types of projects. This year, I've been more selective about projects. I am working toward building a consulting practice to create inclusive organizations and leaders. I am also doing more coaching, so I added executive coaching to my service offerings. I completed an executive coaching certificate program and have found the experience gratifying.
Q: How can people reach you if either they want to find out more about contributing to Consulting Diaries or to find out more about your consulting services?
A: My business email is the best way, which is hello@yonconsults.com. Of course, people can learn more about me via LinkedIn or my website too.
