As a multi-racial Japanese Irish American woman raised in Los Angeles County, I grew up with an understanding of race, class, gender, and justice that came from the experiences of my family.
My Japanese great grandparents settled in San Pedro and Terminal Island in the early 20th century, struggled to survive as Asian immigrant farmers and fishermen, and then lost everything during World War II. Both my parents are trained teachers. I have all brothers, and my mother consistently told me that I could do anything a boy could do when I was young. She instilled in me strong feminist values. My mother's health problems had a big impact on me, and my earliest vision for my life's work was to be a patient's rights advocate. The late 1990s and Welfare Reform were a turning point for me, when my eyes opened to the systemic nature of problems, and I committed to contributing to fundamental changes that would positively impact the lives of millions.
I have dedicated over fifteen years of my life to community organizing and campaigns for progressive change and racial justice, interning and working with such organizations as Cooperative Economics for Women in Boston, la Asociación Andar in Costa Rica, AGENDA/SCOPE in Los Angeles, and Mobilize the Immigrant Vote (MIV) in California. From this work, I have cultivated my experience and expertise in community and immigrant organizing, policy and electoral campaigns, civic engagement, alliance and movement building, organizational development, and transformative change. Since 2005, I have maintained a consulting practice for which I have provided a range of services.
The particular emphasis of my practice is on organizational development. I support organizations in:
• Having authentic conversations and transformative experiences • Developing powerful plans, systems, and practices for impact • Creating work places where our values are at the center • Documenting and telling our stories in powerful ways
In practice, this work often takes the form of facilitation, strategic thinking and planning, coaching, evaluation, and story-telling, though I am not set on any one type of activity.
Past and present clients who have received a range of services from me include:
• Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP) • Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance-Los Angeles (APALA-LA) • Asian Pacific American Legal Center/Asian Americans Advancing Justice • Building Movement Project • Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities at California State University Los Angeles • Community Coalition • Community Development Technologies (CDTech)
• Groundswell Fund
• Human Impact Partners • Joint Affinity Groups • Korean Resource Center • Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust (LANLT) • Liberty Hill Foundation • Multi-ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Work (MIWON) • National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) • Orange County Civic Participation Initiative • Pomona Economic Opportunity Center (PEOC)
My approach to organizing, coaching, and consulting is rooted in U.S. and international traditions of community organizing, participatory democracy, women’s liberation, and popular education.
My coaching and consulting are guided by the following principles: respect, active listening and facilitation, honest assessments of internal and external conditions and leadership, concrete work projects and work plans, sustainability, positive feedback, a peer coaching orientation recognizing that we all have things to share and learn, and transformative change.
I work in both English and Spanish.
I graduated magna cum laude Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies at Harvard. My husband and I are walking the journey of raising our two sons in social justice community and to be the human beings and leaders they were born to be.