2022 Cohort, 2024-cohort-mentor, 2025-cohort-mentor
30
edits
Changes
To align with this mission, in 2020, I co-founded the Organization of Asian Leaders (out of the asian hate that my community was experiencing at an unprecedented scale across the U.S.), which aims to develop diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that support the Asian community at Central Michigan. As we developed the organization, we learned that it wasn't stopping hate that we could control or influence. What we could influence was COMMUNITY, and in doing so, we could build strategic alliances with the other underrepresented communities within our campus's ecosystem while championing their causes in tandem with ours. This rapidly transformed the landscape of how students saw themselves and their organizations' ability to create self-representation while navigating the higher education environment. We fostered change through fundraising, carving out budgets for ourselves, speaking publicly/ protesting for our causes, and so much more.
My '''vision''' has always been to work myself out of organizations to make room for new leaders to emerge. I always say, praise in public, coach in confidence. If we can do these two things, we can bring the next generation of leaders to replace us while operating autonomously through our training and principles that we leave behind. Then they these emerging change agents can become better than we ever were.
When I am not working (which I probably do too much of), I spend my time with my family and friends, eating, laughing, and having deep conversations about life. I love to watch movies, travel (just backpacked Europe with the money I made from starting my consulting company in college), read (fiction before bed and non-fiction when I wake up), write, and go for runs at a very very slow pace. This year, I completed my first ever half-marathon, and I plan to do a lot of backpacking and camping in NorCal over the next few years.