YT13 | How this Australian ESG expert built trust in Asian markets 

Can a Caucasian woman succeed in the Asian business scene? Meet Joanne Flinn, she is an award winning business advisor and author assisting leaders to accelerate sustainability through people, planet and profit. She is also the Chairwoman of the ESG Institute. 

In this episode, Joanne takes us on her remarkable adventure from Australia to Asia. She shares insights into her experiences in countries like Thailand and Singapore, offering lessons on thriving as a Caucasian woman in the Asian business landscape.

Discover the power of long-term relationships, consistent presence, and resilience through economic challenges in today’s episode of YanaTV.

Discussion Topics: How this Australian ESG expert built trust in Asian markets

• Joanne’s journey from Australia to Asia
• Lessons from the corporate world
• From million-dollar projects to financial storms
• There’s nothing above human connections – learning from hard times
• Dealing with people in a new country
• Shaping success in an unlikely venture
• Leaving a successful career to move to Singapore
• How is Joanne’s experience of living in Singapore?
• Bridging East and West: Joanne’s advice for aspiring Caucasians in Asia

Transcript: How this Australian ESG expert built trust in Asian markets

Yana: Hello and welcome to another episode of YanaTV. And today our guest is Joanne Flinn, who is the founder and a chairwoman of ESG Institute and an internationally recognized artist. Joanne, I love the combination, business and art.

Joanne Flinn: I tell you they’re both creative.

Yana: That’s a good way of putting it. Can you make money with both?

Joanne Flinn: Actually, you know what? Here’s the funniest thing. Some of the most appreciated assets in the world are art assets.

Yana: Aha! So you can. But today here we are to talk about your life journey, and especially your journey in Asia. That’s what fascinates me and I know quite a bit, but our audience is not yet, so let me ask you a few questions. So it’s like the drum rolls. Where were you born?

Joanne’s journey from Australia to Asia

Joanne Flinn: Okay. I was born in Australia.

Yana: Any particular part?

Joanne Flinn:  Well, for those people who really know Australia, my family is a very long time Tasmanian, but my parents were in Armadale, which is in New South Wales, because he was finishing his PhD.

Yana: I have been to Tasmania. It is so gorgeous. It’s a really wonderful place to be born. So how did a girl from Tasmania end up in Asia?

Joanne Flinn: Well, what happened was dad finished his PhD and he did what any smart, young PhD student does when you have a wife and two daughters, otherwise known as my sister and me and he went where the work was.

Yana: Money. 

Joanne Flinn: That’s what I mean, right? Where do you make the money? So we moved to Canada. We landed in Australia in the midst of high summer. Just after Christmas, it was just New Year and we landed in Canada, minus 40 degrees, like two and a half days later completely crazy.

Yana: And you were like this big? 

Joanne Flinn: I was a big girl. I was two and a half. When you have a sister who’s 13 months younger than you. So we were in Canada and North America for five years and then my parents had the opportunity to go to Nigeria. So they followed their passion and we moved to Nigeria right after the Biafran war and my parents deliberately did not read up on a lot of it because it was a big thing in the news.

So it was all around. But they just said, here’s an opportunity to make a huge impact. So we went to Nigeria when I was seven and then we moved to the Philippines when I was 12. And so that’s actually how I landed up in Asia. My final year of high school was during the year that Benigno Aquino was shot. We lost so many days because of the natural civil unrest.

And then my first year of university I’d actually returned to Australia because my parents thought it would be really good if I learned how to be an Australian. You can be the judge based on my accent.  And, and, you know, and then, you know, the Philippines changed yet again. This was, the middle 80s, mid 80s.

Yana: Middle 80s. So you arrived in the Philippines as a child, as a teenager, 12 years old, how was your experience living in the Philippines?

Joanne Flinn: Oh It was brilliant. We lived outside of Manila, so I used to have to get up at 5 am to catch the bus to school, and that would take us, 60 to 90 minutes.

Now that wasn’t the great bit, but how we dealt with that, we had great big pillows and we slept on the bus necessary at that hour but we had a fabulous community of people where we lived. And so the bus trips, particularly coming back home at the end of the day, we’re just a lot of fun. The school teachers were amazing.

I still have friends from those days. In fact, one of them visited me just three weeks ago, and came through Singapore with his family. And so, like they were family.

Yana: I love that. So I can see that as a child, as a teenager, and also as a university student, right, that was like a very heartwarming experience. The Philippines are like that, you know, people in the Philippines are really, really kind-hearted. So wonderful people. Okay, so you grew up, then I guess you briefly went to Australia because your parents wanted to remember what it means to be Australian.

Joanne Flinn: Oh my God. Now, talk about culture shock. I mean I’d grown up technically Australian because my passport’s Australian. My parents are Australian and if I, you know, my dad had quite a good Australian accent. My mom had an Australian accent that sounded very British. So you know, I had quite relatively neutral, but I’d lived internationally so I didn’t sound Australian. And then I went back to Australia and they used to laugh at my accent. I was the only person who couldn’t make jokes in class because I was the only foreign voice. It was, and of course I had no idea how things worked because it just was so different to the Philippines. So I was a complete stranger in my homeland.

Yana: It happens to every person I think who lives in, definitely, it happened to me, it happened to my family, many people, I know it’s exactly what you said. You come back, and you become no longer local, even though you have the passport of this country. Which is quite bizarre.

Joanne Flinn: Well, it’s, it’s funny at the time I can’t say I was excited to go back, my secret heart of hearts. I wanted to go to Harvard or Cambridge or Oxford and…Big dreams. But that’s okay. We achieved at least one of them.

Lessons from the corporate world

Joanne Flinn: But so I went back and I did a five year degree in Tasmania. I did business and law. I ended up running the biggest business, actually, in Tasmania. We were, back in those days, we were a 10 million business. And I ended up responsible for this. So I was technically chair and woman of this. At a tender age, I was 23. I say I learned more about business and practicalities in the year that I was responsible for it than I probably had in the entire degree.

But it was absolutely brilliant. We had, we had this student, we had 264 rooms for a housing scheme. We had the biggest bar in the state, and the biggest entertainment venue. So it was quite a big complex business in that. It was such great grounding and then I left there and moved to Sydney. And I was with Accenture and then PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Yana: That’s a very good, serious, solid career from the very beginning. You’re like, corporate world. bang! Here I come.

Joanne Flinn: But the funniest thing is, so I joined the corporate world and I rapidly learned there are things that they are completely, at least in those days, bored with. Like, just do not mention this. This is boring and you don’t want to bore people you’re with. So you stop talking about it. So I pretty much found that all of my childhood, that part of my childhood is the piece that’s adding so much depth and wisdom and experience into what I actually do now.

Yana: Yes and I know that I know that after them from Australia, you moved back to Asia and that was Thailand, right? For the, for the big job already. Oh my god, now I’m curious about that because it was also an interesting sort of era and time like you business sharks and sort of very face-on difficult conversations and so how was this experience for you?

From handling a million dollar project to facing a financial crisis

Joanne Flinn: So, I had just taken a job with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and I got a phone call from my new big boss going, We have an opportunity for you in Thailand.

Yana: I like how they presented.

Joanne Flinn: I tell you marketing one on one, right? Yes, and I’m great. I’ve handed in my resignation. My only answer is yes, I’ll be delighted I’ve never been to Thailand. I had an idea and I haven’t proven myself in a new company and I was being sent across to run the biggest project that just sold. Fast forward three years, we’re from the midst of the Asian tigers and that whole drive, the energy, the business that was happening, the way societies were changing.

I mean, it was just a phenomenal period and then the Asian financial crisis hit and we went from soaring like phoenixes into crashing. And I remember because I was responsible for our financial services consulting practice. And so I remember literally having one day We’d cut some invoices. By the time they were paid by our client three days later, we’d lost 25 per cent in the exchange rate.

Yana: That I mean, the market was crushing

Joanne Flinn: It was really difficult and then how do you Hold a business together and work with your clients so that you all get through the process as you know when I look back on it. I like to say, I’ve earned my hair colour.

Yana: What was your biggest learning from that period?

There’s nothing above human connections – learning from hard times

Joanne Flinn: The things that got our business through those tough times were relationships. They were people. They were committing to a small number of the right organisations, supporting us and we basically deliberately kept each other afloat.

Yana: So human connection.

Joanne Flinn: It was a human connection above and beyond. People would do business with people they like and trust. Well even more than that, when times are scary, and you’ve been around long enough to know that if you don’t look after each other, there’s no each other.

Yana: There’s no one else.

Joanne Flinn: Exactly and I mean, I worked with, we had some arrangements with some incredibly big brands that are major household names. They were literally going, we’re not allowed to write contracts, but we need you. I’ll tell you what, you don’t have to write a contract, but every time I put in an invoice, you need to pay within a day. So, I trust that you’ll pay without a contract. You’ll trust that I do the work.

Yana: Thailand, right? You’re working there. What was your experience working with local people?

Dealing with people in a new country

Joanne Flinn: Oh, brilliant. At first, it was very discombobulating. Like I’d had all these things I’d learned about how to be a good manager and how to lead people in the West. And then I get into Thailand and I suddenly feel completely useless and incompetent. And then I started reading books on that in those days, there’s a little workaround cross-cultural communication and different cultures started coming up.

And I was lucky because I’d lived in so many places growing up. I kind of knew that in my bones. I had a lot of skills in adapting to different cultures. I just didn’t have language that said I could do it officially in business. And so what the books did was they gave me the official scientific authority to do what I’d intuitively already learned through my entire 25 years growing up.

And so I had these official things about, this is what we’re meant to do. Okay, great I can officially put this up because big blue chip companies like to know that there’s behind what you do. The culture one and then I found a cultural assessment process from and From Hofstede and it was gorgeous.

So what I found was that in Thailand Every single cultural measure that they had was different to the U. S. and Australia. I think in Australia there was one. And so I’m going, no wonder I’m using that style, the Western style. It didn’t work. And then it gave me a way of talking with my team about what I was going to do that was different. 

Yana: It explains also, right? And the language that is understood.

Joanne Flinn: Exactly and once I enjoyed them because they’re such gorgeous people, but having a structure that meant that I was going to be able to be effective in my role with them, for them to thrive and prosper was brilliant.

And like I was up in Thailand, three months ago some work that I’m doing. And I met up with two of my colleagues from back then. And it’s just realised that I had worked it out and done a great enough job that 20, they still wanted to stay in touch with me for 25 years. It’s pretty cool.

Yana: But you said human factor. I love that. So Thailand, then you moved to Singapore, what was the reason for that?

Joanne Flinn: So you want the real story or the official? 

Leaving a successful career to move to Singapore

Yana: Of course real story, real story.

Joanne Flinn: Exactly. So what happened was I’d been in Thailand for five years. I was running the business So from a lot of metrics it was, look, I was fabulously successful. I was on an international package. I got paid very well and I had very little life. It just looks really good on the outside.

That said, I learned an awful lot, so I had a massive amount of growth. But I hit a point, and I remember saying to my senior partner, the one who had phoned me up earlier on and said, we have an opportunity for you. When he was in Thailand and visiting, because some conversations are better face to face than online, I said to him, I have a question for you.

Should I resign? The look on his face was just the look that was on Yana’s face right now, by the way. And I said to him, look, I said, I need a change. I want to move somewhere else and he’s gone like, I’d basically put the question that way saying, I am serious. This is not about an extended negotiation.

Yana: I’m either resigning or I’m moving.

Joanne Flinn: One way the other change is happening and I said to him, it’s been wonderful here. I said, but think about it, a single white woman in Bangkok and I just like, I said, I’d love to live in a city where I could get a date.

Yana: Yes, I understand.

Joanne Flinn: And so two weeks later he came back and said, we have opportunities and gave me three different cities that we had openings in the business. Singapore is one of them.

Yana: Okay, so you came here.

Joanne Flinn: So I came here It’s literally Y2K.

Yana: How was the experience coming to Singapore?

Joanne Flinn: My god, coming to Singapore was, so I could read the language, I could speak the language. I could read the signs, I mean Thai script is gorgeous, but it takes a while to learn it. So, I mean, I was just going like, oh my god, this is so easy and, some fabulous men came into my life. So far be it for me to complain

Yana: So there was a date and there was a relationship, which is nice to hear. And I think, like a long time ago because you were here for a very long time and then you continue doing the work here. And I know that at the beginning of your career in Singapore, you were focusing on what people call human development or executive development, right?

So for leaders and founders. I don’t know, 20 years ago, I’m guessing so I’m just picturing a white Caucasian looking woman with blue eyes and white hair showing up in the office and going, do you want to work on yourself? So how did that go? Because that is, I mean, now it’s wellness and personal development and leadership development. It didn’t exist. on that scale 20 years ago. So how did you become successful?

Becoming successful in a business that wasn’t so popular

Joanne Flinn: So this is one of those ones you don’t like. That was the thing of Knowing what, the real piece that would create for them would be who they want to become and change into as leaders, as community contributors, as parents, as friends, like, like, who do you want to be?  but the piece that businesses would buy was how does the business needs to change.

What is the business transformation and what will the economics and the financial returns be? And so you can even hear on the way my voice shifts is there’s one voice that’s the business voice and then there’s the human voice, but different place, you know, then it was the business voice was the dominant one, and now there’s so much more appreciation that when you have both voices in the room operating together, it’s super powerful and it’s much more fun.

Yana: Did you have people telling you you’re not going to succeed, and it’s totally delusional to do something like this in Asia?

Joanne Flinn: No, people were, I didn’t get too many people saying it to my face.

It’s really funny. Enough of my colleagues, you know, said to me afterwards, they said, Look, I’ve seen what you’ve pulled off before. You’ve done stuff that no one’s ever been able to do.

So, if anyone was going to be able to pull it off, it would be you. Which is a wonderful vote of confidence.

Yana: Exactly. Those are great friends.

Yeah. Okay, I mean, and you were doing that. So you have been doing that now for all these years. I know you’re very successful.

And there’s now the Institute. So you’re moving again, like a next height sustainability and you’re helping leaders and all those years. Let’s say now Singapore because that’s what we’re talking about. So what was your biggest learning from working and being here?

How is Joanne’s experience of living in Singapore?

Joanne Flinn: Gorgeous. The thing is if I look, at the time in Singapore, we’ve talked about relationships and community, so we’ll take that as part of the platform.

But the next piece that I found that’s been super powerful here is actually how forgiving Asia is. In the 20 years, there’ve been ups and downs, pretty classically bad downs. And, but the support, the support when things weren’t perfect, in fact, it’s just been absolutely phenomenal.

Yana: A human level. When people would reach out and check and forgive mistakes and you know, and edgy moments perhaps and just move on.

Joanne Flinn: And see it as a relationship, not a one-moment event. Not as a transaction, but as yeah, a relationship, which has that implication of time and therefore also variation that happens.

Because that mindset was not part of some of the other environments that I’ve lived in. So if I look back on my time in Singapore, I could say that’s something that I saw. I’ve seen hugely for myself and for others, but very much appreciated being on the receiving end. I like to feel that there are people who could say that I’ve been that for them as well.

Yana:  You know, it’s so beautiful now that you said that I’m also realising for myself, that it’s also one of my biggest lessons in Asia and particularly I think Singapore is exactly that. But I mean, I’m also, you could say partially coming from a Western mentality, not forgiving culture. And people are not forgiving.

So I found in Asia, people are more long-term relationship-focused, and it’s okay to make mistakes. No one’s gonna kick you out, you know. People still give you second chances. And that has been a really, really wonderful experience. Do you identify as Australian, Asian, or global? Like how, how Asian do you feel right now?

Joanne Flinn: Global, first of all. I do see, you know, talk about, you know, the planet is my home. Singapore is my home. I mean, it’s been where I’ve lived for so long. But the funniest piece, is I have a third home. And the funniest piece. in this one, I only realised that because my parents were actually in Boston. My dad was doing a degree at Harvard, and someone asked me, well, you know, where’s home? And my sister and I just said, Boston. And people said, well, what’s Boston like? I don’t know. I’ve never been. But because that’s where mom and dad were, my third home is actually where my family is—that relationship.

Yana: I love that. I think it’s true for all of us. So we, we are, we are our family. So, the final question for today. Just to leverage on all your experience. Now specifically a message for Caucasian like in other words, white people like us, right? Who are coming to Asia and would love to, you know, build family here, have successful business.

Like, what do you think they should be mindful of, should focus on, should avoid? Just a few ideas.

Advice for caucasians coming to Asia to build business – Show up, build relationships, & stay through the downturn

Joanne Flinn:  I think taking from what we’ve spoken about is. Be aware, it’s long term relationships here that make the difference. And to have a long term relationship, one has to put the term in.

So show up going like, my job is to build relationships, which means I show up in community, I do things in community. It might be professional associations. It might be chambers of commerce. You know, it could be clubs, but show up and help other people Because that’s where people get that opportunity to go. I can trust and lean on you.

Yana: Yeah, because you’re here I see you’re consistently showing up. Okay, so show up and consistently build relationships.

Joanne Flinn: And do and stay through the downturn

I’ve seen a number of businesses over the years come in when the economy is booming and as soon as it gets tight They leave and they say that’s economically rational. It isn’t In an environment like Asia, where relationships are the first capital. Because as soon as you do that, you’re just saying, 

Yana: I don’t care. That’s pretty much what you’re saying.

Joanne Flinn: When you stay, and this is also where that support piece shows up. You know, the thick and thin, it’s like, yes, you’re here through the thick and thin. I can trust you when things get tricky, that we can work it out, because you stay and you do not run.

And so, my invitation would be, come, it’s amazing. Commit to staying, showing up and serving. And promise yourself you’re going to stay through at least one hard time. Because that’s the joy on the other side of that.

Yana: Beautiful. And that was Joanne Flinn with us today on YanaTV. We spoke about her journey in Asia as a Caucasian woman, a woman from Australia who was also a global citizen and lived all over the world. And we would love to hear from you guys.

Are there any other people in our community who may have similar life journeys? Maybe you were born in one country. You moved to a different country, maybe several. Let us know in the comments. Joanne and I would love to hear from you. We’d love to connect with you. As we’re saying, it’s all about community and relationships and the human spirit.

So thank you for watching us today. And I would like to. Thank Muse Studio who is hosting piano tv, and our venue and videography partner. Thank you very much for hosting us, and remember to subscribe to the YouTube channel and share an episode with Friends. It’s all about conversations. See you next time.