Building Community and Tangibly Measuring Impact — Sheldon Spring of Box API

Why AAPI ERGs are underfunded and underbuilt at most companies

Asian American and Pacific Islander employees are one of the fastest-growing demographics in the U.S. workforce. Yet Great Place To Work research shows that AAPI employees are among the least likely to report having organizational support for leadership opportunities at work. The representation story for AAPI professionals is often framed as a success, but the data on advancement, belonging, and leadership access tells a more complicated picture.

ERGs built around AAPI identity have a specific role in closing that gap. But building one, especially in a virtual or distributed environment, requires more intentionality than most ERG guides acknowledge.

Sheldon Spring stepped into that challenge. As Global Co-lead of Box API, Box's AAPI employee resource group, Spring led the program through the pandemic-era shift to virtual work, developed new programming driven by member feedback, and helped secure the group's first executive sponsor. Spring was an Associate Implementation Consultant at Box at the time of this interview; he has since moved on and works in a technical account management role in the technology industry.

His conversation with AllVoices covers what it actually takes to build community when you cannot be in the same room, how to measure ERG impact honestly, and what executives can do to support ERGs they do not officially sponsor.

Sheldon Spring on building Box API and measuring what matters

Spring spoke with AllVoices about the realities of remote ERG leadership, the design of Candid Conversations, and why executive sponsorship for AAPI ERGs requires a different kind of selection process.

What prepared you for your role at Box and as an ERG co-lead?

Spring's daily work as an implementation consultant centers on project management and relationship building, the same two skills that underpin effective ERG leadership.

As an Associate Implementation Consultant, many of my daily responsibilities revolve around project and relationship management. The former is definitely also employed when organizing planning meetings for events that our organization coordinates. The latter is especially helpful when reaching out to and interacting with our company's various internal or external contacts for said events.

This overlap between professional skills and ERG leadership is often invisible in performance reviews. One thing organizations can do better is explicitly recognize ERG leadership as applied project and relationship management, skills that transfer directly across roles. This recognition is part of what makes the connection between DEI and employee experience concrete rather than aspirational.

How did you become Global Co-lead of Box API?

Spring's path into the role was opportunistic and collaborative, a model worth studying for organizations trying to build ERG succession planning.

I would say that my journey to becoming one of the Global Co-leads for Box API was a bit unorthodox in the sense that I was notified of the opening shortly after getting involved with my local branch of the organization in Box's Austin office. A couple of months after becoming a member, a coworker who was the lead for another Box ERG disclosed that the Global Lead at the time was going to be leaving the company and was looking for a replacement. After doing a bit of research into what the role entailed, a colleague who was also fairly new to the organization and I decided that splitting up the position's responsibilities into two would make stepping in more manageable. Shortly thereafter, we expressed our interest in filling the open role and were quickly inaugurated into the Box API Leadership team structure and weekly meeting cadence.

The co-lead model Spring describes, splitting a single position between two people, is an underused structural choice. It distributes the workload, reduces burnout risk, and creates built-in continuity when one co-lead transitions out. For HR teams designing ERG governance, it is worth building into the program structure from the start.

What did Box API accomplish during the pandemic period, and how did you measure impact?

Leading an ERG entirely virtually introduced real challenges, but it also surfaced a more disciplined approach to understanding what members actually wanted.

The majority of my time serving as a Global Co-lead for Box API has been during the virtual work period associated with the pandemic. While in many ways this model of working poses challenges when it comes to community-building and more tangible methods of measuring impact, I am proud to note the various ways that our team has been able to implement/execute new programming. Much of the success of our programming has come from a definitive effort to source more input from our members as to the types of events and topics that they would like to see discussed. An example of this is when Box API was able to host the founders/content creators behind the popular podcast: Asian Boss Girl (ABG). In partnering with other ERGs, we were able to lead a discussion centered around professional development, pursuing passions, and personal advocacy — all areas of interest expressed by our members in a survey that had gone out prior to the event.

The pre-event survey is simple but effective. Most ERGs program based on leader instinct rather than member input. Starting with a survey forces programming to be responsive to what members actually need, which produces better attendance and more useful post-event feedback.

Measuring the impact of our events is still something that as an organization we are trying to further formalize, but it typically involves a survey that is sent out after the event takes place and general comments that we receive from attendees. Popular areas of focus for impact that our leadership team tries to benchmark on include aspects like intersectionality of event content + potential speakers, engagement during the event from organization members, the relevance of discussion topics etc. If we receive positive feedback across these categories, then we usually deem the event as impactful.

Intersectionality as a benchmark criterion is significant. Box API explicitly tracked whether their programming resonated across the full spectrum of AAPI identities. That attention to intersectionality at work is what makes an AAPI ERG genuinely inclusive rather than just demographically labeled.

What are Candid Conversations at Box?

Candid Conversations grew directly out of the social and political moment of summer 2020. Spring describes how Box API used that moment to create a standing forum for honest community dialogue.

Candid Conversations or "Candid Convos," is an event that was first formed during the BLM movement that took precedence in the summer of 2020. Social media platforms during this time period were heavily populated with numerous infographics containing content that spanned a wide spectrum of information pertaining to systemic inequality, societal injustices, and race relations in the US. Our first set of meetings for Candid Convos sought to explore and discuss the ways in which the Asian American and Pacific Islander American communities are oftentimes portrayed in the media, and how these representations have resulted in longstanding stereotypes associated with our communities. After taking a closer look at the systems that perpetuate these images within popular culture, we also held a session dedicated to exploring how these very same stereotypes and overgeneralizations can be leveraged to drive division amongst APIA and other communities of color. Since its inception, Candid Convos has remained as a monthly event where members can join a call to talk about social issues or popular events that are related to Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

A recurring space for honest conversation about race, stereotype, and intergroup dynamics is something most organizations do not build. Candid Conversations is a model for what a standing ERG element can look like when it is designed to go deep rather than stay surface-level.

How did you run the executive sponsor selection process for Box API?

Box API was the only ERG at Box without an active executive sponsor when Spring took over as co-lead. What followed was a deliberately structured search, with each candidate asked about personal connection to the community, not just title and availability.

When I assumed the role of one of Box API's Global Co-leads, we were the only employee resource group without an active executive sponsor. As a result, my fellow co-lead and I worked with the D&I team to source potential candidates from our C-Suite, and conducted interviews based on this initial selection. The interviews themselves were fairly informal, as the primary questions that we had for each candidate were essentially why they were interested in being Box API's executive sponsor, how much time they would be able/willing to contribute to the role, and their personal connection to the API community. Throughout the entire process our D&I team worked closely with us to level-set and brainstorm our expectations for this advisory role, and by the end of the process we ended up opting for a co-executive sponsor model with two individuals instead of one.

Asking executives about personal connection, not just availability, is a better filter for who will show up with genuine investment. The co-executive sponsor model creates redundancy, distributes the relationship burden, and signals that the ERG matters enough to warrant two senior leaders' time.

How does Box recognize and compensate ERG leaders?

All ERG leaders are part of a broader team that meets on a bi-weekly basis to discuss organizational initiatives and upcoming events that respective ERGs are conducting. At the opening of each of these meetings, there is time to express accolades or congratulations to members of the team that have performed especially impactful programming that month. Additionally, Box as a company has recently formalized a Community segment to our corporate career framework, and involvement in ERG organizations will serve as a definitive example of participation within this new space. With this change, membership/leadership in ERGs will not only fulfill a personal interest but dually a professional one as well. While conversations around being compensated for the time and effort that being a lead of an employee resource group entails, this is something that does not currently exist at Box. Discussion continues to take place though, and with other notable tech companies providing a precedent for this kind of system, efforts to promote this as a consideration topic to our corporate leaders remains consistent.

Box's move to formalize ERG participation within their career framework is a meaningful step. It signals that this work is professionally recognized rather than treated as extracurricular. That framing shifts ERG leadership from a side project to a counted competency, which changes how managers think about supporting their direct reports' involvement.

What is your call to action for leaders and executives?

Reaching out and working with various ERG leaders to help with promoting their events can be deeply beneficial given the heightened influence and reach that your voice provides as an executive. Engaging in this kind of action even if you are not serving as the direct executive sponsor for a given employee resource group or as a result of a recent social event also communicates a level of care and interest that can embody the D&I messaging that a majority of companies outwardly market in the current corporate environment.

Spring's ask is specific: promote ERG events even if you are not the official sponsor. Use your reach. Show up. Consistent, unannounced executive engagement signals to the whole organization that ERG work is real work, and that the people doing it are seen. The questions you use to create an inclusive culture should include asking executives what they are actively doing to support ERGs they are not formally sponsoring.

Where AAPI ERG leadership stands in 2025 and 2026

Spring's interview captured a specific moment: virtual work was new, AAPI visibility was rising in response to pandemic-era anti-Asian violence, and Box API was figuring out how to measure impact without a playbook. Four years later, some things have changed and some have stayed frustratingly similar.

The advancement gap for AAPI employees persists

Research from Great Place To Work and API Data (2023) shows that Asian and Asian American employees remain among the least likely to report having organizational support for leadership opportunities at work. Despite strong representation in individual contributor and technical roles at many employers, AAPI professionals face a persistent barrier at the director level and above. ERGs like Box API are one of the few structural interventions that address this from within. According to MentorCliq's 2024 ERG research, ERG members show an innovation participation ratio of 10:2 compared to 6:2 for non-members at the same companies, which suggests ERG involvement is building the risk-taking and visibility behaviors that advancement requires.

Intersectional programming has become the benchmark for effective AAPI ERGs

Box API's emphasis on intersectionality as a programming benchmark has since become more widely recognized as best practice. The most effective AAPI ERGs today are not just building community within the group. They are creating cross-ERG partnerships, co-programming initiatives, and allyship programs that benefit the whole organization. AllVoices helps HR teams track employee experience across demographic groups so they can see where belonging is working and where the gaps remain. Request a walkthrough to see how it works in practice.