Ever since I was young, I had a growing sense of awareness of the world around me and the systemic injustices we face in our society. For example, at 8 I had declared to my father that I would become the first woman and Asian-American to become president of the United States. And while my goals today are a bit different than the high-reaching goals I had back then as a child, my commitment and passion for change has not waned since.
In high school, along with being an elected student government member, I became the co-leader of the Racial Justice Alliance, a club dedicated to advocating and educating our predominantly white population on issues of race and racial injustice. With this club, I co-created Racial Equity Day, a day consisting of a keynote speaker and workshops that students attended focused on a variety of racial justice topics such as cultural appropriation, environmental racism, and diversity in media. Through my work at my high school, I brought to the forefront issues that the white student and faculty population had struggled to talk about and had managed to avoid, with the intention that race and racism must be confronted — not only because it created an environment where students of color did not feel welcomed, but also because it is necessary if we are to combat systemic oppression that affects every part of our lives.
This work continued outside of my high school when I joined the Washington chapter of the NAACP Youth Council. Through this experience, I was able to witness the power of youth voices as we led workshops, spoke on panels, and testified in front of the Seattle Public Schools district’s school board. I also received the opportunity to become a co-author on Washington Ethnic Studies Now!’s Ethnic Studies framework for English Language Arts, which is currently being used in classrooms today.
Now as an Inclusive Excellence Fellow, I am working on the project titled Radical Practices of Care. Through this project, I will be researching and identifying care practices that can help sustain those in their activist work, focusing on the 3 core aspects of the individual, within communities, and across differences. I hope to bring to fruition a program utilizing this research to educate and support the Swarthmore community.
With my multitude of experiences, I have become someone who is dedicated to combating the social injustices we face today, tackling issues while focusing on those most impacted while using my skills of leadership, communication, and research. As an Asian American woman who is both first-generation and low-income, I hope to make the changes that I wished I had for myself, for the better of generations that will come ahead of me.
