My Experiences & Roles
Analyst / Problem Solver
I started my professional career in business operations management and accumulated experiences in the healthcare technology, chemical manufacturing, and federal consulting industries before pivoting my vocation towards social change. I have always been a problem solver at heart and wanted to put these efforts into examining social problems at the micro, mezzo, and macro scale within the nonprofit institution, as well as informal, grassroots and community-based settings.
Youth Worker / Coach / Mentor
Youth work has played an incredible role in my personal and professional development and is where I first found myself taking on the role of a healer without realizing it. My youth work practice draws from Freirean critical pedagogy and my training in Positive Youth Development approaches. Outside of my paid work as a youth worker, I have also volunteered as a youth mentor and youth mental health coach.
Facilitator / Healer / Organizer
For me facilitating, healing, and community organizing go hand in hand. Most of my experience in these areas have been with Asian American youth and young adults around the topics of racial identity, political education, cross-racial solidarity, and psychoeducation. My facilitation approach is participatory and includes a variety of creative modes of reflection and expression. Through my facilitation, I encourage participants to practice vulnerability, connect the personal to the political, and commit to action. While I may not be your typical "organizer," my goal is to move folks towards building systems where we can heal, care, and sustain each other.
Student-Educator / Educator-Student
I’ve always had an interesting relationship with formal education. I have typically cruised through school quite well without really feeling like I was trying. As a college student, all I wanted to do was graduate and get out in the “real world” and for a period of time I considered dropping out to become “an activist.” As a current graduate student in social work, I still feel this way. Reading Paulo Freire’s work around critical pedagogy has been highly influential in understanding the ways in which my needs were not met as a young student and in my current educational pursuits I understand my roles as both student-educator and educator-student. For me, education is not about learning the rules; it’s about learning how to change them.
Creator / Cultivator / Storyteller
I grew up around music, art, and expression and have been involved in the arts and performing since I was young. I’ve dabbled in music, singing, dance, writing, poetry, fiber arts, fashion, and visual arts as hobbies. While I may not be particularly gifted in any one of these areas, I still appreciate the beauty of creativity and healing qualities of the creative process. These days my main storytelling medium is my YouTube channel, Critical Healing Moment where I produce, film, and edit video content around my experiences in social work and social movements through a healing-centered perspective. Through this new website, I hope to branch out into new ways of being a creator and storyteller.
