Nancy Wang Yuen is a sociologist and expert on race and racism in Hollywood. She has been an award-winning professor for 14 years. Currently, she is a senior diversity and inclusion consultant for organizations ranging from non-profits to tech companies, Nancy is the author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (2016), which examines the barriers African American, Asian American and Latina/o actors face in Hollywood and how they creatively challenge stereotypes. She’s also the co-editor of Power Women: Stories of Motherhood, Faith, and the Academy (2021). 

She is the host of The Disrupters podcast, interviewing artists like Min Jin Lee and Gene Luen Yang. She has co-authored multiple media reports including, “Tokens on the Small Screen: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on Prime Time and Streaming Television”(2017), “Terrorists and Tyrants: Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Actors in Prime Time & Streaming Television,” (2018), and “The Prevalence and Portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders Across 1,300 Popular Films” (2021). 

She has consulted for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Dreamworks, Lionsgate, and Netflix. Her work has been featured in CNN, Elle, Gizmodo, Los Angeles Times, NBC, Newsweek, and Vanity Fair. She has appeared on PBS, NPR, MSNBC, CBS News, NBC News, BBC World, Turner Classic Movies and Dr. Phil. Nancy is currently writing a book about her life through the films and television shows she grew up watching. 

Topics:

  • Despite having the highest educational attainment, highest median income, and lowest unemployment rate of any racial or ethnic group in the United States, Asians are underrepresented in U.S. leadership positions—no matter the industry. In this talk, Dr. Nancy Wang Yuen will address the “bamboo ceiling,” or the invisible barriers keeping qualified Asians from attaining leadership positions in the United States. Breaking down how Asian stereotypes like “perpetual foreigner” and “model minority” get perpetuated by popular culture, Dr. Yuen discusses how they ultimately hurt Asian advancement in the workplace and discusses how organizational leaders can take an active role in circumventing these discriminatory practices when hiring and advancing Asian employees through mentorship and integrating diverse advancement practices.

  • In recent years, Asian filmmakers, actors, and actresses have enjoyed unprecedented breakthroughs in the mainstream film industry. Box office successes such as Crazy Rich Asians to critically-acclaimed films such as Parasite, Sound of Metal and Minari, Asian stories have entered a golden age of representation in the western media landscape. While these breakthroughs should be celebrated, they need to be understood in relation to the history of whitewashing and racism in Hollywood. Dr. Nancy Wang Yuen will present the history of Asian Americans in Hollywood, providing context on the stereotypes, challenges, and barriers that have warped Asian representation in Western society and how recent successes have the potential to re-shape perceptions of pan-Asian and Pacific Islander American identities and narratives in our everyday lives from how we build community to how we diversify the workplace.

  • For women to truly unite, we must understand how various forms of inequality, particularly race and gender, intersect in unique ways. In this talk, Dr. Nancy Wang Yuen explores how stereotypes look for different women of color in popular culture and suggests how to build solidarity through recognizing these overlapping, but distinct forms. From the challenges to end violence and abuse for API women to building solidarity with other marginalized communities who are often compared through racial resentment, Dr. Yuen shares insights into the complexities of these cultures and guides audiences on how to build bridges for collective advancement for women.

Twitter: @nancywyuen

Instagram: @nancywyuen