American dream
WHAT is it about the US that allows migrants to thrive, succeed and rise to the top jobs in a span of a few years?
The new Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, joins a distinguished list of Indiaborn business leaders who are heading up major multinational companies stateside. At 37, Agrawal is among the younger members of this club, which also includes Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Sunder Pichai at Google, Arvind Krishna at IBM and Ajay Banga at Mastercard.
Indra Nooyi, who headed PepsiCo until two years ago, paid tribute to her adopted country, saying it welcomed migrants and had an environment that allowed them to flourish, irrespective of where they came from.
It’s a different picture in the UK. To be sure, there are Asian and black ministers, but across corporate boardrooms, the number of non-white CEOs do not – in general – reflect the diversity in the country’s population. It is why quotas are recommended, although critics argue it should be about getting the best person for the job, rather than it being a box-ticking exercise.
In his previous life as a banker, health secretary Sajid Javid recalled how as a young graduate from Exeter University, he failed to secure interviews at British banks as he was not part of the old boys’ network.
However, he got through at US bank Chase and in a matter of only a few years, rose to become one of their youngest vice-presidents.
Despite all the negative headlines around controlling migrant numbers, the UK remains a destination of choice for foreign students, predominantly from India and China, but with its array of world-leading universities, the US is attrative to many of the subcontinent’s brightest talents.
Observers have also pointed to how Facebook and Google were created in the US, and there is no equivalent in the UK.
Britain last week set out plans to increase the intake of non-white students into higher education. It is hoped this will help remove obstacles for ethnic minority students in postgraduate research. But ministers will have to work with the private sector and do much more in order to attract and keep foreign talent and provide the conditions that allow them to reach their potential in the UK.
It should be ability and talent, not skin colour, ethnicity or class that dictates a person’s career prospects.