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Purpose, Strategy & Culture

Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Investing in Your Growth Series

During Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month, The Hershey Company API Business Resource Group hosted a learning and development series, called Investing in your Growth. The series featured AAPI leaders from across the company.
Dongming Tang
Staff Scientist, Chocolate R&D Front End Innovation + API BRG Pillar Lead

Key Takeaways:

    The Hershey Company is committed to creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace in partnership with our Business Resource Groups (BRGs), including the Asian & Pacific Islander (API) BRG, by celebrating and promoting diversity. In celebration of Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, the API BRG hosted a series of events focused on career development and growth. Hershey leaders shared their career growth learnings and advice.

  • The Hershey Company is committed to creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace in partnership with our Business Resource Groups (BRGs), including the Asian & Pacific Islander (API) BRG, by celebrating and promoting diversity.

  • In celebration of Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, the API BRG hosted a series of events focused on career development and growth.

  • Hershey leaders shared their career growth learnings and advice.

The API BRG mission is to educate and evolve Hershey's culture by driving commercial growth, enhancing the well-being of the individual, and continuing to create meaningful professional paths by utilizing Asian heritage. We partnered with several organizations to support the larger API community and are looking to broaden the impact we have in the future. In 2021, our focus is on building strong mentoring relationships within Hershey’s API community and creating more virtual opportunities to connect and celebrate our heritage.

We could not achieve these goals without the support of the company and the people who work here. To work for a company that makes diversity, equity and inclusion a priority makes a huge difference in the lives of employees. As we detailed in the 2020 Sustainability Report, we have committed to increase representation of our employee base so that 47 to 50 percent of our employees are women and 30 to 40 percent are People of Color (POC). Similarly, we aspire to have 15 to 22 percent of People Leader roles occupied by POC and 40 to 42 percent by women. I am proud to work at a company that is taking actionable steps to make our workplace more inclusive.

The ways that the company shows up for its employees is seen through the actions of our leadership in supporting events like the career development series we hosted. Personally, I found the Investing in Your Growth Series very valuable and was able to connect with leaders across the business—something that feels like a unique piece of our Hershey culture. From Rohit Grover, president of our international business, I learned more about the importance of adjusting your leadership style to fit the local culture where you live and work. Susanna Zhu, vice president of U.S. supply chain and manufacturing, shared the importance of building cross-functional partnerships and understand the business of other groups connected to your function.

I learned the importance of embracing change in my career because it’s when we experience new challenges that we grow the most. What Hershey is doing to create change is not always easy, but we as a company are embracing the needs of our employees. It’s this collective creation that will make us all better. I’m proud to be part of the API BRG and of Hershey as we create change to make a more inclusive workplace.