The Modern Exchange Episode 5 — Sue Olivier, Bukky Ojeifo and Stella Zhang

and we are looking we're talking to each other talking to each other my name is Bui Global director of brand Innovation strategic inclusion I'm Stella J and the social media content strategist in Beijing I'm suier I'm the chief people officer for I'm based in Singapore super glad to have you both here so happy to be here and so happy to have you here awesome how have you worked on kind of like thinking about your identity outside of work as it pertains to I know this industry can be kind of like cumbersome and everything is included but like how do you intentionally try to break that up authenticity I think you need to be the same person I think it makes your life a lot easier people know what to expect when you get a merging of your life and your work and you are you just show up as who you are I think it becomes problematic when you try and have a face for work outr with Sue it's always easier for you to always be authentic one of the American psychologist said that genius is the one that most like him or herself so no one knows how to be sty joh better than I am right so I always try to find like what inspires you and to be authentic actually quite a profound idea mhm so outside of work what are your guest favorite hobbies I love this question art has become the center of like how I even just like I find African artists and I will go and purchase their items and find a place so my house expensive very expensive you know like some people Orient their house around Furniture I Orient my house around art sounds amazing fantastic uh well my sister and I are best friends and when I left South Africa 28 years ago we decided that we were going to travel every year just the two of us to catch up so we've been sort of everywhere so one year she picks and one year I pick and you know and then I started to paint and I'm doing a solo exhibition in November so I've been busy with that that's been quite when do you find the time when I'm not traveling that's what I do traveling is always nice yeah my hobby is painting so I started learning painting since I was a kid I found it's a good way for me to express my creativity in many different ways are you naturally good at painting or did you have to like learn my mom found I'm naturally good so when I was a kid like 5 years old I sit in front of the mirror in our house and I just paint the thing in front of my shirt and my mom was like wow you did it so good yeah you should keep doing this that's dope I love that and what's the best thing that you've painted like when you're like I'm so proud oh I think it's about ride race so like in China we Al always say like there's no work like vience in China right now especially for our generation CU you know you just keep work right and to meet a lot of guidelines so everyone said that we are in the r race but you need to think outside of the box right and your passion and what you really want in life great advice I love that so bie how long have you been with us at ogi yeah four months four month oh I can't believe that and how did you get to us well U so I am by like um Trade A brand strategist and marketer right and so I started out my career technically in HR um and what happened was really I started in Talent acquisition and training but one of the things that I really learned through tler acquisition is that in order to get the best candidates your company had to be a company that where people actually wanted to work and I was at a company where it was like it was a great culture but nobody knew about it and they weren't really showing up in places and culture and in events and experiences that you know would Elevate them as a brand to kind of like people would want to work and so I just kind of raised my hand I was like we should show up here and so once we started showing up in these places and our company started to get like some of these like press hits then I just learned that I just had such a love for how does a brand really think about inclusion so ultimately what I found with OK was that there was such an opportunity to be a part of the team that kind of leads that kind of thought

process has always been really exciting for me so I'm grateful be here oh we're delighted that you're here and it's interesting that the the industry is moving absolutely and that thank thankfully in that way you know and like you say there is endless work to be done in that area so and the goal is to make you know inclusion a little bit easier every year for people to say like hey I want to raise my hand and support how this even if you're part of those communities um you want to make sure that you're always like the door open for someone else to make their experience a little easier Stella you so this is the second time I'm a rejoiner like two years ago I rejoined and so I'm an entrepreneur and I'm a co-founder of a fast food company and we secured a series a funding so yeah we did a good job in sales and marketing and we still need to put more efforts on the produ Innovation so I decided you know maybe I can stay back to the stage and like the productor team go forward and before that I'm also a brand strategist in China M lovely lovely so I started my career in South Africa as a client service person I was one of the few African speaking people in which was then the apartate government time I worked in South Africa for many years decided then to go to Japan and ended up in Singapore and then sort of never moved out of Singapore well got pulled back into Singapore many times actually um I was always the training lead in every Market that I was in because it was a natural sort of thing for me I quite enjoyed that piece I started to do coaching and I got a coaching certification and then that became sort of part of the job and then that became more meaningful so I then put up my hand and said I think we need more Talent Development focus in the agency and to my surprise everyone went that's a good idea why don't you go do that then so calling my bluff so I went back to Singapore experimented on Singapore which was fantastic and it was a great learning experience and then it just sort of grew and grew into a regional Talent role so then it was L& D dni Wellness Talent everything so and the region is large we're about 6,000 people in the region very spread out we about 23 officers so and very bued you know from anything from Pakistan to to China I'm thinking about just like how you've been in the industry so long like what are you proudest most of how like it's changed I think it's a lot less fun that in some ways a lot less fun but a lot more professional I think what has always stayed true though is the tribe the people that we attract absolutely the reason why you stay it's you know the smarts the creativity the madness all of that actually makes it so interesting I think you know the job of anybody in the industry now is 10 times more complicated than it would have been 10 years ago yeah there's just so much more to consider AI coming in everything is new every 5 minutes there something like oh in an addition you must now also this so I think there's a lot of pressure on people to do a good job but I think if it is in your blood mhm it is definitely the most fun mhm most fun career that you can have yeah I agree s are you conscious that you are a role model in any way do people do you think about people looking up to you I guess maybe just my interns cuz right now I'm having like interns who are like 10 years younger than me so like they are applying for their graduate study abroad and we can still like Inspire the younger generations and do you consciously do that do what would you say let me put it this way so have you guys watch the movie so by pixer yes so yeah so just like what it puts there you always need to find your spark right so in Chinese culture we call this Zen so it's the way to move forward is to stay present yeah just stay here like the stay in the moment yeah like we right now we are having this conversation with just stay in the moment so why I work with those interns and with my like junior teams together I always tell them you know stay present and then we can fund the

deeper issues from the clients and try to solve those challenges they have yeah not just you know not rush to give the you know the answers yeah well I guess in your job there's a lot of opportunity for role modeling right yeah I mean I think the biggest thing that like I try to always make sure that people understand is that like we have an opportunity to be people's like first yes right and I think that when you think about empowerment it's like it's more than just saying like Hey we're going to give you this program right it's like you know the belief the confidence in them that they can do something I'm always really big about like you know like there's time there's always time on your calendar to make sure or your diary to make sure that someone if they want to have a coffee chat or just kind of talk that you say yes if you know obviously mindful of your schedule but like making sure that you say yes to them and so that they can have the opportunity to learn from you and grow I I've learned the same that by the time somebody gathers the courage to say do you have a minute you know it's never a minute but you know have it anyway because I think those sometimes just a throwaway comment makes a massive difference in somebody's life and I think that being more open to reverse mentoring is a good thing um because the world has change and they are the future and how we bring them into this culture and make sure that they are comfortable in this culture will serve us well I'm so glad we're having this conversation World mental health Day is coming up on October 10th and I just think it's important for us to kind of ground the conversation on just like our mental health and wellness and so the question for you both is just kind of like how have you centered mental health as it pertains to your profession the intersections of your profession and personal lives well it's was one of the reasons one of the happy byproducts of painting you have to really like focus on what you're doing to the exclusion of everything else I think finding that balance for yourself and understanding that you want a sustainable career that doesn't rely on outside help is always a good thing so finding that balance for yourself understanding that you need it that it's not you know I'll do it when I have time you need to do it now because otherwise you won't have time certainly something that we Advocate and encourage people please take your leave you know hero for not taking leave for 2 years right it's not that's not good you absolutely need and we are in an industry that needs insights I think that's such a good point because I think that around like defining it for yourself I think that when I thought about mental health and wellness it's like you're going to a therapist like there was like these definitions of what it was to have mental health like stereotypes right and I was I remember I was like 25 26 and I kept I asked my friend I don't she asked me how I was and I said I don't know if I'm a sad person that just has Happy Days or I'm a happy person that's having a lot of sad days and it was the first day time that I actually can contextualize for myself like I'm having a lot of sad days and so I didn't again didn't have the language to be like am I depressed what is this feeling of just kind of like nothing feels okay and so I think over time one of the things that I started to do for myself is obviously I sought help therapist but also defining what Wellness felt like for me like sometimes Wellness felt like just like sitting in my bed and watching TV and putting my phone on do not disturb because I was like I was always answering people's calls and being a Dumping Ground for like their emotions and I'm like I had nothing left for myself yeah just want to build on that so what is mentally healthy the best answer I have heard is confidence and enthusiasm so if you can nourish yourself it's called confidence and others is called enthusiasm I love that okay if you can nourish yourself that's confidence if you nourish others it is enthusiasm I think also what's happened is that there's sort of a destigmatizing happening of mental health and the one good thing that came out of Co is that I think after that people went you know what it's okay not to be okay and it's okay to talk about it and I hear many more people talk about it openly so I think from the agency point of view in work well obviously in our families as well but for me that has been such an amazing turnaround that in even what I would consider to be sort of quite conservative markets that people are quite willing to now like mention it what do you do when you're in a mental rut to kind of get yourself out of it I go box like get some aggression out hit something hitting someone ra rooms on

feed dial I would go to karaoke and my go-to karaoke song is Shake It Off yeah I I'm a big Swifty I love that what's my karaoke song what's the littlez song I put my hands on baby how you feeling good as hell that's the song that I will sing when I need to fill a little bit just and karaoke I avoid karaoke but if I force it will probably I will survive this karaoke song I think one of the things that is really important when we talk about like mental health is like the generational differences around it so and even just like cultural like I know South Africa Singapore China like how do you kind of like think about how we think about mental health around generational and cultural differences it seems that the younger the generations are the more easy they are with talking about mental health I think it's much more natural it's something that people will I think the as you get older into the older Generations I think it's harder because it was less acceptable to talk about yourself in work never mind your mental health issues on the cultural piece every Market Finds Its level of how comfortable they are to talk about it I think massive part of it regardless for any of us of any of the offices is leadership when the leadership is okay with it then everybody's okay with not just the off office leadership but team leadership right so it's hard to say where where I would sort of put my cultural Roots at the moment but I think Singapore although it's a modern city not that comfortable really generally talking about mental health issues openly but then place like India that was quite happy to talk about mental health which is sort of surp so surprising but I think in general what I see certainly for Asia is that there's a rise a lift of awareness which I'm delighted about I don't know if you feel it still we do see the rise of awareness of mental health in China as well uh I think for my parents generation they don't talk that much right Chinese parents always compare their kids to others kids right and so my parents generation they don't know how much it can hurt a child right how that can impact the child's you know mental health at that time for the younger generation I guess let me share a social media trends in China last year there is a big Trend starting and the hashtag is it's called reparent yourself reparent yourself and so accept yourself and fend yourself love yourself and always express yourself yeah I think even from a generational perspective and from a cultural perspective I'm Nigerian and American right grew up in you know I have Nigerian parents grew up in Nigerian culture and like there's not a thing of mental health it's like yeah you're good like you're fine and then also but growing up in America especially in like churches it's like you pray away like any of these feelings that you feel and so it's always been really interesting to me as like we kind of evolve from kind of like you know these are truths these are things that people have shared with you and you think that like that is like law right and so almost breaking out of that the ideology of like you know you can pray away your problems or like the things are tough enough like you don't you're not really going through the things that you're really going through and then you look back at like some of our older you know our aunts and our uncles and your moms and your dads and you're like oh I think that they were actually battling depression but the way that it kind of manifest is like being work working a lot or being quiet or recluse and so I think that one of the things that I'm really kind of inspired by as we continue to grow it's like having conversations with my mom these days around like yo I'm not feeling great what do you think about like family members can affect our mental health oh family absolutely yeah I think good and bad yeah I think your family and because life and work is so integrated whatever happens at home is going to show up at work and what happens at work is going to show at home of course so I think the more support you can get from either your spouse or your extended family and I think in work we have work families we have work sisters and brothers right who you will lean on right and I think that's quite amazing and I think us as an agency is actually pretty good at that where you have really people that you can go hey you know just like give me some time I need to unload on somebody and people will give you time there's so many things that people deal with on a daily basis we think that like it's depression or anxiety like those are the two things that you can

fall in but there are so many different ways that mental health impact people I love that you the wpp employee assist program actually sort of says here therapist help yourself right and often when issues come up that I would say to somebody you do know that we have this program and they're like it's almost like they need just the permission from somebody to sort of say I think you should go right and at least try you know some professional help because some of it is just beyond our ability right but the fact that it's available mhm amazing yeah right it's amazing what it's heartening I think is to see that our big clients and of course we work with the biggest clients that it's so much on their radar you know we can see it in the type of questions they ask you know in rfbs like you know like Yay many D but do you find and I know that New York maybe more than anybody else gets involved so much with clients in their own programs I mean more recently Coca-Cola drove the P's power with Simone biles where you know in the 2020 Olympics in the to in Tokyo she took a pause for her mental health oh yeah that was a big controversy right huge and I think that what was so powerful and even four years later seeing how like she's become the most decorated gold medal G geminus ever and I think that what that really does signal across from athletes to everyone is that like taking time and pausing allows you the opportunity to actually accelerate your growth much far beyond what you can think about and I just found the campaign so inspirational because it really gave a access to understand like even the world's biggest athletes in the world can say I'm pausing right so if a athlete if some B was can to say I'm pausing I too can say let me pause for a second and then you realize that those is and it's powerful and it actually gives you the spring board no un intended to really go to your next level I think Simone BS is such a resounding proof of concept that's a powerful star have you ever in it could be personal or professional like decided like actively to take a pause and like where has that kind of springboarded you into the next level of your career or your professional life or personal life I remembered we have another training at a called the trusted advisor so back in that class we discussed an interesting question you know so when you as a consultant when you enter to the client's room how will you present yourself the biggest thing I learned from that classes to we always emphasize to show showing like how much you care before showing how much you know so maybe before entering to the client's meeting room pause yourself a little bit and then see like how much you can show you care their business you care about their challenges what they can do then show your expertise I love that you talked about a little bit about like the client work and espe what you're doing in China but what kind of cultural like slang or phrases do you guys have in China that you can share I remember once we work with a client the they do like new energy stuff and every time we started the uh weekly updates with the clients we asked them to meditate for like 3 to 5 minutes mhm so in Chinese culture we call this Zen as I just mentioned cuz I feel like recent years in the western culture they always say the CH Chinese speed so we build up the buildings really fast we build high speed real base and we be like busy cities big cities really fast in ch Chinese speed way but in China we also do things like stay in the zone and do it in the Z way so I think for me I'm a Nigerian American right so I'm going have two different phrases so the Nigerian part is Niger don't they carry last which really just means like we'll never carry last we're always first are very proud so one of the things that I always am really like conscious of is just like you always got to be first we're always very competitive and then I think for American and just kind of like grown up in culture we say like period which is like really just like that's it that's the end of the sentence it's over Sue what about kind of like culturally around like food South Africa like what do you o food from a phrase point of view Singapore is sort of famous for Singlish it's like Singapore in English which is the most economical way

of speaking English like instead of saying would you please turn off the light you will say off it or on it or so one of my favorite English phrases is why like that why are you like acting like this is the long hand so that's always fabulous and funny um in terms of food Singapore is like food maker in Asia best best I think most people will associate Singapore with chili crab massive Sri Lankan crabs that's done in a chili sauce serious and healthy and fantastic best South African food barbecue which we call Bri so never barbecue because you know that's not what we do but it's a very meat heavy culture and the best food ever love it food I need food I think for Chinese people hot go to thing right and we love people get together and share the same p and everything you jump put it in the P it will be delicious I don't know why but it is and the second thing will be dumplings right ah okay cool cool what about you culturally I mean I have to talk about Nigerian gelof rice of course there will always be people that say that they're the bestan sisters and brothers but Nigerian gelof is always the best in a Goosey soup those are things that like it's like Comfort It's Like Home to me so you cook well I didn't say all that Sue but I can eat I guess the final question is you know our theme for this year's mental health is welcome which is meant to be an invitation for employees to kind of make sure that they understand that at ogul V your mental health is welcome it's not a place that it's not a company where you have to kind of hide what you're managing you're dealing with outside of the company and so any last pieces of mental health Wellness advice for employees at oui as they kind of like navigate the es and flows of work in professional experience like they say on the Airline safety briefing put your own mask on before you help others so I think you have to take care of your own mental health to be able to help your team you need to be in the best Work Fit condition that you can be to help your team to be the best they can I feel like people needs to be seen and to be heard also you also need to see yourself right hear yourself also so like Su just said before listen to others try learn how to listen to yourself I really love what you said about like you know mental health is welcome for people and themselves and I think that one of the things that's really important is that like defining mental health for yourself I think that when we think about welcome we think of like someone else gets the opportunity to welcome me into their space right but I think that it's important that mental health is wcome for you like you welcome mental health into your life and your space and your the power comes from you to welcome yourself and I think that that's one of the powerful things that we can do is that we Define it for ourselves we think about it we solve it for ourselves obviously with external help but mental health has to be welcom for you first before it can be welcomed and validated externally by anyone else thank you for joining us for this modern exchange episode we are the talent we are the culture we are the modern Exchange