When Raju Indukuri came to the United States from India in the early 1990s, he decided to pursue computer sciences because, he says, it was “easier to get a green card.”

After earning a master’s in information systems from the University of Illinois, he went to work for a Silicon Valley firm. Six years later, he has served on the board of directors and is now cashing in his stock options to begin his own startup.

The 34-year-old acknowledges that the management leap can be “very difficult,” but is worth it nonetheless. He advises: “Have a solid idea, good contacts, and when you go to the CEO, you can show the value that you are bringing.”

Such advice might especially resonate with Asian Americans, who are now more likely to be bosses and professionals than any other kind of worker, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1990, 31.2 percent of APA workers were in that category, compared with 26.4 percent of workers of all races. By 1997, managers and professionals made up more than 41 percent of APA workers. Almost 16 percent of Asian American employees were managers or administrators; more than 25 percent were in professional specialties like medicine or law.

Notably, the percentage of Asian Americans working as salespeople, technicians and administrative assistants fell more than 5 percent in those seven years, from 33.3 percent in 1990 to 27.8 percent in 1997. Sales workers represented 12.4 percent of all Asian American employees; just under 7 percent were in secretarial jobs. Those in manufacturing jobs also made up a smaller piece of the Asian American employment pie in 1997 (21 percent) than in 1990 (27.5 percent).

According to the Census Bureau, Asian American families had a median family income of $41,583 in 1989, the highest of any racial group. (The average among all populations was $35,225.) Still, some 10.7 percent of APA households fell below the poverty line, defined as an annual combined income of $16,000 or less for a family of four, and a UCLA study suggested that higher income figures reflect the fact that APA households often have more wage-earners under the same roof. The average Asian American household has 3.8 people in it, versus 3.2 people for families in general.

Studies that look specifically at Asian American work trends are rare, but one survey by the Center for Women Policy Studies in New York found that 32 percent of APA women believed that senior managers’ actions did not live up to their lip service on diversity. The survey, which this February polled 375 Asian American women at Fortune 500 companies, found that nearly half—49 percent—reported hearing racial or ethnic jokes at work and 53 percent had heard sexual ones.

Still, most of the Asian Americans we interviewed said they had not perceived a “glass ceiling” to advancement. Most seemed happy about their occupations, as detailed below:

ARTS / ENT.
Choreographer Kimi Okada never stops moving: Having just completed the choreography for an off-Broadway production of MacBeth, she is back home in San Francisco, where her modern-dance troupe will perform next.

You have to take jobs that may not be the kind of work you ultimately want to do,” Okada said. “Whatever the venue, you have to hone your craft and keep producing.”

Like most dancers, Okada began training early. While growing up in Minnesota, she began ballet instruction at age 6 and took up modern dance in high school. Unlike many dancers who forego higher education, Okada went on to Oberlin College. To “truly be an artist with a voice, the better informed you are—the more exposure you have to literature and art and learning—the better you will become,” she explained.

It was at Oberlin that Okada met fellow dance students Brenda Way and K.T. Nelson, with whom she founded ODC two years before she graduated in 1973.

Her mother was “horrified” by her career choice, Okada remembered. “Dance was an unknown area. It was scary. She didn’t know how I could succeed. It was very hard for her to accept and to understand how I could survive financially.”

Okada has had ample work in the 28 years since. She has created more than 20 works for ODC and has choreographed productions for Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Santa Fe Opera and the Pickle Family Circus as well as dances for comedian Robin Williams. She also has held movement workshops for computer animators at Dreamworks and Pixar.

“Being able to support myself by making art is more satisfying than anything I can imagine,” said Okada, who considers herself “incredibly lucky.” Still, breaking into dance and other fine-arts professions is not easy, and the pay is not great. As Okada put it: “There’s no job security, there’s no money, and it’s a short career.”

Given that aspirants outnumber job openings, every audition necessarily results in a slew of rejections, and federal cuts to agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts may further curtail employment opportunities. Those who make it must subject themselves to grueling, often daily rehearsals and long tours away from home—ODC, for example, travels to 13 cities in its 1999-2000 season.

The pay for dancers who are unionized runs from $543 to $693 per week, and work is erratic in that field and other fine arts occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Actors earned a median of under $5,000 in their vocation in 1996, and visual artists earned a median of $27,100.

Most dancers retire by their late 30s, said Okada. And to get that far, she said, “You have to be driven, motivated, and fearless—otherwise, you won’t be able to survive.”

BUSINESS/HIGH TECH
After graduating with a master’s degree in computer science, Raju Indukuri went to work as a systems software engineer with a startup known first as Delta Microsystems and later as Intelliguard. Within months, he had gone to the CEO with a proposal to start an off-shore development center in New Delhi.

The company’s chief told him to give it a shot, and Indukuri put his connections from home to good use in setting up the team. Three years later, having proved his success, he went to the top again with plans to expand sales in Asia and to develop products with Indian firms.

In less than a year, he had a seat on the board of directors. Soon after that, the firm was bought out, prompting Indukuri to cash in his stock options and plan his own startup—a company to help American firms do business with Indian software concerns.

As Indukuri found, climbing the corporate ladder can reap big financial benefits—even in fields where entry-level skills will always be in demand. While full-time computer systems analysts made a median of $46,300 and beginning engineers a median of $34,000, top engineering managers made a median of $117,000.

Earnings for top managers were high outside of high-tech as well, especially for those running big corporations. Executive Compensation Reports, a division of Harcourt Brace & Company, reports a median salary of $714,000 for CEOs of public companies from 1995’s Fortune 500 list. (Of the 500 people on that list, less than a half-dozen are Asian American.)

POLICE / FIRE FIGHTERS
Police officer Kendall Won was patrolling his Hayward, Calif., beat on one recent day when he was flagged down frantically. An elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease had wandered off—could Won and his partner help? After an hour, they found the man some five miles away and returned him to his family.

Said Won: “The best part about being a police officer is being able to help the community and do things that impact society in a good way.”

Yet the 10-year veteran of the Hayward Police Department is quick to note that the job is not for everyone. It can be dangerous: Working as an undercover narcotics officer, Won helped capture major drug dealers. “Many people cannot take the pressure,” Won said. “You see the bad side of people more often than the good side.”

And the job can be time-consuming—Won often logs more than 40 hours per week, not only in monitoring his beat but in completing extensive paperwork and attending continuing-education workshops that keep cops updated on topics like narcotics, traffic and juvenile crime.

“You work long hours in this field if you are dedicated,” Won said. “The downside is that you don’t have as much time to spend with your family.”

Police officers in Hayward and comparable-sized California cities earn between $50,000 to $80,000 per year, depending on overtime and seniority. Nationwide, the median salary of nonsupervisory police officers and detectives was about $34,700 in 1996, $41,200 for those in supervisory positions. Firefighters earned a median of $34,416 in 1996.

Given that officers’ salaries can be three times that of security guards, applicants routinely outnumber job openings in most departments, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Getting on the force requires passing written, oral, and physical exams as well as a psychological screening. In addition, pre-job training is often required: Won attended Alameda County Sheriff’s Academy for more than four months to learn about federal, state and local laws, as well as techniques of self-defense, defensive driving and firearms use.

Won, a Chinese American, hopes more minorities join police forces, including his own. “We are trying to get our department to represent the community, which is about 10 to 15 percent Asian,” he said. The department, he said, “has come a long way, but we’re not up there yet.”

SKILLED TRADES
San Francisco contractor Leo Choy recalls the first step in teaching his son about the family business: He put the boy to work cleaning toilets.

“My kid understands that in order to succeed you have to start from the foundation and build up,” said Choy, 54. “I believe you should start from the bottom and learn everything. You should experience hardship. You don’t just come in and take over.”

He speaks from experience: In his 20s, he immigrated from Canton, China, and worked as a part-time electrician in the 1960s, a time in which there were few Asian American contractors in the city. Today, Choy heads a contracting company that grosses $7 million a year and employs some 50 people. Recently, his firm rewired Balboa, Mission and McAteer high schools in San Francisco for the Internet.

The average annual salary for experienced construction managers like Choy ranged from around $40,000 to $100,000 in 1996, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those figures are far higher than typical entry-level earnings in either “blue-collar” or “pink-collar” jobs. Carpenters (excluding the self-employed) made a median $24,752 in 1996, for example; for barbers and cosmetologists, the figure was $15,080.

Choy calls upon a wide range of business, managerial and technical skills as head boss. Charged with developing cost-effective building plans, he then must make sure that the job gets done to code under tight deadlines. The fast-paced demands often stretch workweeks past 40 hours and subject managers to sometimes brutal pressure, especially when unexpected delays come up.

Choy says he was attracted to the contracting business because “you don’t stay in one place. There are always different problems and different challenges every day.”

Though Choy still sees discrimination in contracting, he says San Francisco’s minority-business ordinance has helped level the field. “The opportunities are much better, and the doors have opened to newcomers,” Choy said.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the opportunity for contractors is expected to increase through 2006, and Choy sees great opportunity in San Francisco.

“Construction is booming,” he said, pointing to projects on the drawing board or under way, including China Basin stadium, the Bay Bridge retrofit and the proposed BART extension to San Francisco International Airport.

A good economy, he said, goes “hand in hand with increased demands for housing. It also means more builders will be needed to build them.”

EDUCATION
There’s more to being a high-school teacher than just teaching, says Kristin Glenchur, an English teacher at Encinal High School in Alameda, Calif.

Like many teachers, Glenchur works 40 hours a week. She spends many of her lunch breaks tutoring or talking with students. And during the three months of softball season, she can put in 11-hour days, including time spent coaching students after school.

“We’re asked to do more and more, but we don’t get paid for those things,” said Glenchur, 33 and of Chinese and Caucasian descent. “Schools are hurting. They need more teachers and more money to pay the teachers.”

Glenchur, who earned her teaching credential at San Francisco State after graduating from UC Berkeley, has eight years’ experience. She earns $39,000 a year.

According to the National Education Association, the estimated average salary of all public-school teachers was $37,900 in 1995-’96, and private school instructors earned even less. School counselors, by comparison, earned $44,100 in 1995-’96, according to the Educational Research Service.

Though teaching “doesn’t offer financial benefits,” as Glenchur puts it, the profession does offer job security through tenure, and requires only nine to 10 months of work in a year. Plus, as Glenchur noted: “Teaching is rewarding. People are affected by the things you do... every day you show up to work makes a difference to the students.

“What is most frustrating is the lack of respect” from society, Glenchur added. Though getting a credential requires a bachelor’s degree and up to two years of post graduate work, “American teachers are perceived as being losers. That is not true in other cultures.”

Given class-size restrictions and a baby boomlet in sight, job prospects for teachers should be good through 2006, says the government.

“Demand is so high and the supply is low; it’s not hard to become a teacher,” Glenchur said. “It is hard to become a good teacher. It takes extreme patience.”

ENTREPRENEURS
Government data suggests that more Asian Americans are going into business for themselves. The Census Bureau reports that the number of Asian American-owned businesses increased from 386,291 to 603,439 between 1987 and 1992, and receipts from those businesses more than doubled from $3.7 million to $8.1 billion. Three states—California, New York and Texas—accounted for 55 percent of businesses owned by Asian Americans and Native Americans.

The Small Business Administration predicts it will make a total of $4.7 million in loans to Asian American entrepreneurs between 1998 and 2000. From 1993 to 1998, it backed some 16,760 loans worth $5.2 billion to APA businesses.

LAW
At 31, Thao Cung has already been on and off the law-firm fast track, and he’s already been halfway around the world and back. A 1993 graduate of Harvard Law School, Cung first took a job handling bankruptcy cases at Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro, a large law firm in San Francisco. Within a year, he realized, bankruptcy “was not to be my calling in life.”

For a while, it seemed that international law might be. Cung moved to Hong Kong to join Baker and McKenzie, where he worked on commercial and joint-venture projects.

“It fit with my background and language skills and offered the opportunity to work in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia” including China and Vietnam, Cung said. “It’s a great place to be an expat; there are lots of Asian Americans, and it’s easy to meet friends.”

Still, a little over two years later, Cung decided it was time to go home rather than risk closing off options. “It’s good for your career over there, but it is a career track,” he said. “You have to start all over if you want to do something different.”

Cung ended up not at a law firm, but as an in-house counsel for Menlo Park personnel firm Robert Half International. Though many counsels make less than their law-firm counterparts, they often find their workweek less arduous. Plus, notes Cung, don’t have to bill hours.

Looking back, Cung said firms are “a good starting place, but not the end-all and be-all.”

Seven of 10 lawyers work in law firms or elsewhere in private industry. Most of them handle civil matters, such as lawsuits, wills, trusts, mortgages and so forth, rather than criminal defense. In-house counsels, like Cung, are employed full time by companies as legal advisers. Often, their work involves patents, contracts and employment agreements.

Though law has a reputation as a lucrative profession, lawyers made a median of $60,000 a year, according to the government. Admission to the specialty requires three years of post-graduate education, plus passing a state bar exam.

Paralegals, who assist lawyers, require far less formal training. In 1995, they made an average of $32,900, according to the National Federation of Paralegal Associations.

MEDIA
Fred Katayama still remembers when he first saw an Asian American newsman on television.

“In fifth grade, I was clicking through the channels and I saw Ken Kashiwahara on KABC,” said Katayama, now an anchorman for CNNfn and an anchor/correspondent for CNN International.

“I started watching every day to watch Ken. That was an event—I went to the kitchen to tell my mom, “There’s an Asian American on TV.”

“Those years were different from today,” said 39-year-old Katayama, a third-generation Japanese American and a Los Angeles native. “There were no Asian Americans on television, especially male ... the only Asian American male I saw on TV was Bruce Lee.”

Before long, Katayama started checking out other news broadcasts, and heard of then-consumer reporter Tricia Toyota. When he was a high school sophomore, he recalls, he was so eager to meet Toyota that he chased after her car to talk to her.

In this case, an aggressive approach paid off. Toyota not only gave him a tour of her TV station but also left him with invaluable advice: Learn Japanese and take business classes. He went on to use both skills in journalism jobs that included stints at Fortune magazine and CNBC’s Japan Business Today, as well as his current job.

On how print and broadcast newsrooms differ, Katayama said television “attracts more extroverts and print has a lot of thoughtful bookworms. ... In TV, you hear people shouting, yelling, running around. At Fortune, it was a civil society. We would debate, talk about issues in the hallways, take our sources to lunch. That doesn’t exist in TV. I take a homemade sandwich and work at my desk through lunch.”

Both mediums can entail some grueling days, said the journalist. While at the Associated Press, he said, floods throughout Asia meant that he had to write 20 stories and copy-edit 60 more—all in a day. Once at CNNfn, he anchored five spots, produced his own feature, then went to the Moneyline set to anchor another breaking story—all in 14 hours.

Though Katayama said bias has lessened throughout the industry, he cautioned that subtle stereotyping still exists. He recalled that one director critiqued an auction tape by saying “you sound too passive...but you can’t help it, it’s your culture.”

“He didn’t even know me,” said Katayama. “How can he say that I’m passive? ... It’s probably because I’m from California. I talk slow even now.”

Anchorpeople in the world’s largest markets, like Katayama’s, can command more than $80,000 per year. According to a survey conducted by the National Association of Broadcasters and the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association, the average salary of news anchors was $65,520, ranging from $24,935 in the smallest to $199,741 in the largest markets. Among radio reporters, the median was $32,356 with a range of $20,217 to $38,541.

On the print side, beginning newspaper writers and editorial assistants made on average $21,000 annually, according to the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund. However, senior writers and editors, particularly at large dailies, can make three times that or more. Entry-level graphic designers earned on average between $23,000 and $27,000 in 1997, according to the Society of Publication Designers.

Katayama urges those contemplating a media career to contact professionals directly.. “Sometimes it takes connections in this world. I figure that I can help out the next generation. If all of us did that a little bit more, we’d have more Asian Americans in the profession.”

HEALTH PROVIDERS
These days, Dr. Bruce Watanabe, 51, spends much of his weekend at benefit dinners and on the tennis court. But it wasn’t always that way.

As a resident some 20 years ago, he was “the low man on the totem pole,” and put in 80-100 hour weeks at UCLA Medical Center. “We always took orders from everybody—chiefs, doctors, nurses—that’s how it was back then,” he said. “But we felt it was worth it because the field was respected and the incomes we would earn justified the sacrifices we had to make.”

Indeed, physicians have among the highest median earnings of any profession. According to the American Medical Association, median income in 1995 was $160,000, and orthopedic surgeons like Watanabe can easily earn between $250,000 and $500,000. Yet to become a doctor requires at least four years of post-graduate education as well as additional time in internships and residency. And the long hours don’t necessarily stop after that.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one-third of all full-time physicians worked 60 hours or more a week in 1996. For the first 10 years of his practice, Watanabe put in 80 hours a week and spent many nights on-call.

“You have to be a little selfish to be a doctor,” Watanabe said. “It is hard on the family. If you are committed to your patients, you are available to them and less available to your family.”

Though the money is good, managed care is taking a bigger bite of it, Watanabe said. “If you’re going into it for financial reasons, you’re not going to be happy. Because for the amount of work, the amount you’re paid is not worth it.”

New physicians are much more likely than their predecessors to enter the field as partners or salaried employees. Many doctors are “frustrated,” Watanabe said. “People besides doctors are making medical decisions. Non-qualified reviewers are denying treatment. That hurts the public.”
Watanabe said he has never sensed any anti-Asian bias among patients or colleagues. “If you are English speaking, being Asian American is probably not a hindrance in getting patients,” he said. “White, non-Asian patients accept you.” Indeed, Asian Americans have been well-represented in medicine for decades. In 1996, APAs made up 10 percent of U.S. physicians, although they accounted for less than 4 percent of the population.

Among other medical specialties, salaries are lower. Dentists’ median net income was about $120,000 in 1995, according to the American Dental Association. Pharmacists made an average of $59,276 in 1996, according to a survey by Drug Topics magazine, published by Medical Economics Inc.

Full-time salaried licensed practical nurses earned a median salary of $24,336, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and physical therapists earned a median of $39,364.

POLITICIANS
Milpitas mayor Henry Manayan recalls that his father, a onetime campaign manager, would take him to fundraisers as a child.

“Politics was always part of our lives growing up,” said Manayan, 43 and the mayor of the California city since 1996. “My family always encouraged us to get involved...to be proactive rather than leaving things to chance.”

Trained as a lawyer, Manayan branched out into politics by volunteering for four city commissions and by running for City Council in 1994. That year, Manayan, founder of real estate investment company Transpacific Capital, was named a director of the California Association of Realtors.

“I look at government like running a business with the taxpayers as customers,” said the Filipino American mayor, who says his business background has proved advantageous. “I like to run a government as efficiently as a business and make sure everyone is accountable to their job.”

For Manayan, the least attractive aspect of politics is the negativism and gossip in government. But it’s all worth it, because of the upside: “ The best part [of the job] is the ability to meet new people, interact with them to make things happen and improve things.”

Bigger ponds aren’t part of Manayan’s plans in the immediate future, but they do exist for Asian Americans. At least five are voting members of Congress: Rep. Harry Wu, D-Ore.; Rep. Bob Matsui, D-Calif.; Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii; Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawaii; and Sen. Dan Akaka, D-Hawaii. Federal appointees include Bill Lann Lee, acting assistant attorney general for civil rights; Robert Gee, assistant secretary for fossil energy; Shirley Sagawa, deputy assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for the first lady; and Harold Hongju Koh, assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor at the State Department. (President Bill Clinton last week announced that he would appoint Koh to sit on the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe.)

State legislators’ salaries for the 40 states that pay them ranged from about $10,000 to $47,000 per year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Governors’ annual salaries ranged from $60,000 in Arkansas to $130,000 in New York. On the federal level, U.S. senators and representatives earned $133,600 in 1997, the Senate and House majority and minority leaders earned $148,400, and the vice president, $171,500.

Earnings of local lawmakers vary widely, depending on the size of the governmental body and on whether the job is part time, full time and year round, or full time for only a few months a year. Salaries range from little or nothing for a small town council member to $200,000 a year for the president. Manayan, who is a part-time mayor, earns about $1,500 per month.