2019 Annual Honours — Person of the Year

Small streams nurturing lasting change

Early last year, Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) reinstated its Head of Asia position after a four-year hiatus, clearly demonstrating the importance it places on Asian business and its determination to expand it.

Franky Wang, previously BNZ's only Chinese partner in its large corporate banking division, was the natural choice for the role. He began his 2019 journey of further exploring and advancing Diversity and Inclusion, referred to below as D&I, in the year of his Chinese zodiac sign.

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BNZ: Asian business and Asian staff supporting each other. After becoming Head of Asia, one of Franky's most important initiatives last year was arranging a visit to China for the CEO and board, helping BNZ continue to lead the development of international digital banking and customer experience.

In China, the bank's senior leadership also visited leading businesses, including prominent e-commerce companies. They gained valuable insights and strengthened their confidence and determination to advance Asian business. As New Zealand's largest bilateral trading partner, second-largest source of investment and second-largest source of visitors, China's importance is self-evident.

For Franky, the role has a deeper significance: the bank's leadership has recognised his efforts to explore and advance D&I, giving him a broader platform to continue his unfinished work.

D&I, a new approach to corporate culture championed by many large businesses in recent years, emphasises respecting and preserving each employee's differences. Building on that diversity, it seeks to enhance the value of individual uniqueness and ultimately achieve workplace equality.

Respect for individual differences extends beyond gender, ethnicity, religion and age to physical condition, sexual orientation, personality and more. Auckland is an international city with particularly vibrant ethnic diversity: Asian people currently make up 25% of its population and have been its fastest-growing ethnic group over the past five years.

BNZ has always valued ethnic diversity among its staff and employs many Asian people across its operations.

Previously, these Asian employees worked simply as individual members of the bank's workforce.

Now, under Franky's leadership, Asian employees are bringing their influence together. They receive greater attention in both their professional development and personal lives. Through community and business activities, they have also developed a strong cultural connection and sense of belonging to the bank. These feelings are being channelled into better customer experiences and people-centred service, enabling the bank to serve Asian communities more effectively.

For three consecutive years, BNZ has held Chinese New Year celebrations, including red envelope giveaways, alongside Mid-Autumn Festival events.

After becoming Head of Asia last year, Franky increased BNZ's efforts and investment in traditional Chinese festivals such as Mid-Autumn Festival and Chinese New Year.

During Chinese New Year, BNZ continued giving out red envelopes and organising lion dance roadshows. It also decorated outdoor ATMs with festive Year of the Rat backdrops and used major mainstream media to help the local community better understand Chinese history, culture and traditions.

In more than twenty years in New Zealand, whether studying or working, Franky has consistently sought a clear sense of purpose: “Do not lose your own cultural heritage in the effort to fit into local society.

We are Chinese, and we should keep a Chinese heart, always speaking up and working for the local Chinese community.

” He sees himself as a bridge, helping Chinese people understand local society and helping local society connect with and understand Chinese people, their culture, needs and ideas, encouraging mutual integration… Franky has put this thinking into practice. He found that consistently serving Chinese community clients benefited both them and himself: gradually, BNZ came to recognise the importance of Asian business through his work, while he progressed within three years from a mid-level frontline salesperson to the leader of BNZ's Asian business.

Ngāti Whātua: understanding and accepting others, and society's imperfections

Banking may appear to be a business dealing with money, but at its heart it is a business dealing with people.

Balancing the bank's risk controls with customers' best interests depends greatly on the ability to assess and choose people. “When lending, what really matters is the individual receiving credit rather than the business, because businesses are ultimately controlled by people.

” Franky therefore places great importance on diversity among people. “Over time, exposure to more people helps you understand them and naturally develop an internal standard for how to conduct yourself.

” Most clients he meets through work have relatively strong financial backgrounds, but they do not represent the whole of society.

Franky believes that meeting different groups in his spare time and helping people in need is deeply meaningful. It offers insight into human nature and society's imperfections while allowing him to meet recipients' immediate basic needs. Contact with people facing both emotional and material deprivation has also taught him to appreciate what he has and give back wherever he can.

This motivation is coupled with his longstanding interest in Māori culture: “The connections between Chinese and Māori people are said to date back 1800 years.

The more time you spend with Māori, the more you discover shared values and similar ways of doing things. As ethnic minorities, Māori and Chinese people have inseparable economic and cultural ties, which can greatly support both communities' development in New Zealand.

” In 2018, Franky joined Kāhui Tū Kaha, a non-profit organisation of the Ngāti Whātua iwi, becoming its first Chinese director. He helps set its direction and strategy for the next 3–5 years and addresses critical matters as they arise.

Today, alongside his busy work schedule, Franky is learning te reo Māori through BNZ's Māori language classes.

For him, diversity and inclusion extend beyond the workplace, any particular ethnic group and even racial differences. The real limits lie in what we think we know about the unknown; the task is to explore the unfamiliar, stay true to our original purpose and learn humility.

Frank also believes that learning governance in business management can help build his future. Alongside putting it into practice, he recently became the first person of Chinese ethnicity invited to the Institute of Directors' year-long 2019 Mentoring for Diversity programme. He is learning leadership, governance and decision-making from the chairs of several New Zealand listed companies.

Cure Kids: bridging the gap between recipients and supporters

Franky's reasons for joining charitable initiatives are always simple.

His interests led him to a Māori organisation's board; his child's premature birth at 29 weeks led him to New Zealand's largest funder of child health research,

Cure Kids: “Our child received so much care from so many people after birth that I wanted to give back and help other children.

” Franky has been a Cure Kids charity ambassador for 4 years.

In 2018, he took the lead in organising a major charity dinner with Zhao Kai, general manager of SkyCity's Huami restaurant, raising NZ$8000 for Cure Kids.

Franky believes an individual's power is inevitably limited, but he can act as a bridge connecting care and hope. Last year, one of his clients manufactured face masks. Remembering children supported by Cure Kids who had respiratory conditions, he introduced the client to the charity and helped those children obtain protective masks.

When the bank's magazine Kia Ora recently featured the mask manufacturer, Franky suggested including a section promoting Cure Kids, hoping the publicity would bring the organisation more support while fulfilling a social responsibility.

2020: focusing on more of New Zealand's ethnic minorities

Perhaps because he is used to dealing with people, or because of his longstanding commitment to D&I, it is easy to find common ground in conversation with Franky. Take his simple New Year wish: “Safety, good health and world peace.

” Asked to elaborate on his plans and goals for 2020, he says his focus remains D&I. “I constantly remind myself that my role is Head of Asia. I need to care about the entire Asian community, as well as Chinese employees.

I will also work with colleagues to involve BNZ more deeply in the community life of different Asian ethnic groups. Beyond our relatively well-established work in the Chinese and Indian markets, we need to keep expanding into Japanese, Korean and other communities.”

Recently, Franky has been studying the theories of Dr Fons Trompenaars, a prominent scholar whose work focuses on integrating employees from different ethnic backgrounds culturally within large organisations.

This is also the direction Franky has chosen for his own future: selecting the right people and putting these ideas into practice through different avenues, including banking and charitable organisations.

Since the start of this year, Franky has delivered talks for leaders and staff at several major companies, including SkyCity Entertainment Group. Sharing his D&I experience, he discusses how members of New Zealand's ethnic minorities can help themselves and their communities advocate for their interests, navigate their careers and enhance their value.

Franky says his ultimate ideal is financial freedom, freedom of mind and freedom in life: being his own master.

By then, he will surely be able to do more charitable work, help more Chinese people, speak up for more ethnic minorities and take further practical steps towards diversity and inclusion in New Zealand society.