The editor in chief of HuffPost Canada has some suggestions for how to bring more diversity to journalism.

Andree Lau has an accomplished career as a journalist — she helped launch Huffington Post B.C. in 2012 and also worked for the CBC in various regions of Canada.

Lau weighed in on the conversation surrounding the lack of diversity in the industry after Vancouver journalist Sunny Dhillon made headlines in late October.

Dhillon recently parted ways with The Globe and Mail, citing concerns about lacking diversity in the media. He wrote a piece about his departure, titled Journalism While Brown and When to Walk Away.

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In the piece, Dhillon suggested that his perspective as a journalist of colour didn't matter to his editors. The CBC has requested comment from The Globe and Mail, but hasn't yet received a response.

Following these events, Lau​ spoke with host Renee Filippone during CBC's The Early Edition to share her experience as a newsroom leader who is of Chinese-Canadian descent.

What was your reaction to Dhillon's article?

My heart sank. I was disheartened and saddened and frustrated that this is still a conversation that we still need to have.... And that someone like Sunny felt that he needed to put that out there, to remind everyone that we still have a lot of work to do in our industry.

I'm a manager and I know lots of things play into people feeling unsatisfied at their jobs. I don't want to speculate about The Globe and Mail's work flow. But it does put the whole conversation back into the spotlight.

We have leaders who talk about it [the need for diversity] and we work really hard to get back at it, but then you kind of slip back into the day-to-day demands of putting news out with dwindling resources.

It always takes something like this to put it back on the front burner.

Why do you think there are so few diverse people leading newsrooms across this country?

A few reasons.

I think they [people of colour] get to a certain level and they get frustrated. Because they're not seeing enough change, or change not happening fast enough, and they get discouraged. Those very talented people are the ones we need to move up into the next level, and they end up leaving.

Also there a lot of people entrenched in Canadian media who aren't leaving and they're only hiring within their circles, within their comfort level.

Why do you think it's important to have diverse people telling diverse stories in the media?

We're supposed to reflect our communities. We're supposed to be sharing stories that matter to people. Canadians should see themselves and hear themselves reflected in that.

I think there has been progress ... But you can have a very diverse newsroom and still have decisions made for you from more senior levels, about how to cover a story.

As a Chinese reporter starting out, I would always be assigned stories about family tax, even though I would pitch something else I knew the Chinese community was talking about.

And it has to go beyond just seeing people of colour. We're talking about diversity in terms of socioeconomic status and gender representation.

All of these things need to be considered.

This interview aired on The Early Edition on Nov. 1st and has been edited for clarity and structure. To hear the complete interview, click on the audio below.