AAPI Heritage Month – Alex Leong Q&A

In honor of AAPI Heritage Month, we spoke with Alex Leong, Casualty Underwriting AVP at Admiral, to learn more about his heritage and family traditions.

What does Asian American and Pacific Islanders Month mean to you, and why is it important to celebrate AAPI?

I believe it is important to recognize the complex history Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have with the United States. There are uncomfortable truths and incredible difficulties throughout the development and growth of the U.S. that should not be forgotten, but we can recognize them without minimizing the tremendous strides in maturity and growth that have been achieved by Americans. There is a broad swathe of cultures and people that AAPI encompasses. Recognizing and celebrating all of them includes individuals from the entirety of the Asian continent, as well as the Pacific Islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

The celebration, recognition, and discourse are incredibly important to prevent us as a country from sliding backward, especially given the tense climate in a post-9/11, post-COVID-19 world.

How did you get interested in insurance?

I fell into it by accident. My major in undergrad was Economics with a heavy emphasis on econometrics (statistics with an Economics twist). My initial interviews outside of the Wall Street financial firms were with insurance carriers for actuarial positions. However, I had loved studying the application of statistics rather than creating and finding the determinants, so my focus shifted to underwriting. My college had no insurance classes so there were a lot of self-discoveries for me.

Do you and your family have any traditions that are important to you?

Coming from a Chinese American family, we still celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year. When I was younger, my father would bring me out for Qingming or Tomb Sweeping where we would clean my grandparents’ and relatives’ graves and honor them. We celebrated the Autumn Festival (or Lantern Festival) more with food than the customary practice of lighting lanterns. There are certain traditions that we have held onto as well, as my extended family has spanned from 1^st generation Chinese Americans through 4^th generation Chinese Americans alive all at the same time. Naming conventions and, admittedly half-hearted approach to feng shui still linger.

Interestingly, we recognize Jewish holidays and keep kosher due to a subset of the extended family as well.

What makes you the most proud or gives you the most joy about your heritage?

This is a fantastically endless list, but I need to give the top 3 as they are all equal to me. First, I mentioned that we have Chinese-Jewish American relatives. My family’s history and ancestry here in the U.S. is very much representative of the microcosm that New York City represented in the 1950s through the 1980s. To me, there is something very cool about representing the diversity of those eras.

Second is the very recent recognition by the U.S. Congress of the contribution of Chinese American service members during WWII and the Korean War; this resulted in my Great Uncle finally being recognized and awarded a Gold Medal for his service in the European Theater of WWII.

Lastly, I have a written family tree that goes all the way back to the Ming Dynasty (1600s). There is a poem attached to it that participates in my family’s naming traditions, and we have a written overview that brings the family name (Leong/Leung) back to Zhuge Liang of the Three Kingdoms period (although I suspect this is more fantastical than having historical accuracy).

Why is it essential to have a corporate culture that embraces diversity?

For a company, embracing diversity means embracing new and different life experiences, ideas, and approaches for problem-solving. The analogy I like to use is if everyone is similar, we might all be providing hammers as a solution to the questions or problems a corporation may face. While the hammers may be different sizes, shapes, and material composition, at the end of the day, they are all still hammers.

Embracing diversity means broadening the toolset and giving the corporation a multi-tool instead of a set of hammers. That multi-tool might have tweezers, hammers, saws, screwdrivers, levelers, measuring devices, and maybe even a compass, fork, spoon, and scale. So, instead, of just smashing our way to a solution, we can approach the solution with nuanced and measured responses.

There is also a component here that makes the corporation or company more approachable from the outside. The U.S. is incredibly diverse, and reflecting that diversity may mean a more favorable perception from the public, which improves the environment in which the corporation operates. For Admiral, this might mean better relations with our wholesale brokers, the retail agents, the Insureds, vendors, or perhaps even favorable responses from plaintiffs.