 Hello everyone and welcome to LEAD, Leading Equity and Diversity. I'm Debbie Willis, pronouns she, her, hers and I lead the DEI certificate program at Rackham Graduate School. We want to thank all of our guests joining us today and all of us as panelists and hosts want to really thank you for being here at a time that is so much things going on in the world and it's a particularly hard time for marginalized communities this week in particular so we really appreciate you being here. We want you all to know that your videos and audio has been muted for quality of the recording as you were prompted it was recording but we encourage you to engage in the conversation through the question and answer portal because we love to bring your voices in and hear your voices. If you see a question that you'd like to hear the response to please like that question because we allow the upvote and we'll ask the questions with the broadest interest first. We started this series because the community that we heard from wanted to hear from real people their experiences leading equity diversity and social justice efforts. Our featured guest today that I'm really excited about is representatives from the U of M Task Force Against AAPI Hates Amanda Lowe and Steve Lynn. Amanda we agreed to start with you why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to leadership in this role. Great well first of all thank you so much for having us and Steve and I are both really excited to be here and as you mentioned you know we really appreciate that folks are tuning in especially in a really difficult time for marginalized communities so we know that engaging in this work can be really challenging so thank you for showing up during a hard week. So as ever mentioned my name is Amanda Lowe my pronouns are she and hers. I am the associate director for the Michigan research and discovery scholars and I'll let my colleague Steve also introduce himself too. Good afternoon everyone my name is Steve Lynn I use he him pronouns and I am the assistant director for the first year experience office. Great so our hope today is to talk a little bit about the staff association and the API task force that exists as well as to tell you a little bit about our journeys. So I first thought we would start by explaining where we're from right so I am a member of the core planning team for the APITA staff association. APITA stands for the Asian Pacific Islander Dacey slash American staff group. This group was founded in the fall of 2017 by a few of us who realized that there were a number of other staff and faculty groups of for people of color but there was no space for Asian and Asian-American staff and so we started by just convening a couple of us trying to figure out you know what we wanted to be and we had a couple of community meetings we gaged of interest with about 10-15 people and now we've really scaled up and so we have more than a hundred members in our association. We currently work on just staff concerns because we know that another group indigo exists for Asian and Asian-American faculty and there are many of student groups that already exist but there was no space for staff and staff have very specific needs and so that's why we exist. Our group has four different pillars of work so interestingly when we came up with these pillars we realized that it spelled the acronym of race so that's what we use. So our first pillar is resources or providing our community with pertinent information for professional development and personal growth. The next one is advocacy which is mostly at U of M but lately with the coronavirus has focused a little bit more broadly on national issues. Community so building our internal staff community as well as strengthening bonds with the faculty and student groups on campus and then education so educating both ourselves and others on the various differences between our ethnic groups. Some of our deliverables over the past couple of years include monthly newsletters to share information, professional development opportunities, events, building a coalition with other groups of color such as pluma, the women of color task force and ABFAS, working with the vice president of human resources to voice staff concerns from our APDA lens and professional development workshops such as talking about the bamboo ceiling, providing a mentoring program for folks to network across campus and then social and programmatic community building opportunities and I'll let Steve talk about the task force. Thanks Amanda so Amanda talk a little bit about the APDA staff association the AAPI anti-Asian hate task force is a different organization grouping of folks but also include members of the APDA staff association so I just want to make that clear. So amongst the APDA staff association the core team had been noticing and talking with each other about the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in the national news and in different pockets around the university post-COVID. From our conversation we were like well if we're concerned about this maybe there's other people in the community that are also concerned about this and we'll make this the topic and focus of a conversation for one of our monthly staff meetings so we had a really great turnout at the staff meeting we saw some new attendees that weren't able to attend in person when we were all on campus and after the meeting one of the members actually messaged us independently about how we can take the conversation that we were having about our individual concerns to the university level and so through this member's interest in doing some more activism on campus around this one of the core members had built up a coalition of folks that included not only staff but also students as well as faculty and convened that group to talk about hey what are other folks thinking about and experiencing related to this rise in anti-Asian hate that we're seeing and how can we as collectively as faculty staff and students work together to address this so we began in second week of April we've been meeting weekly since then to coordinate and plan what we could do so to this date we organized to partner with university administration on releasing a statement condemning anti-Asian hate and supporting the university of michigan apita community both faculty staff and students these students spearheaded a project to develop a social media campaign to raise awareness about this issue for the u of m community it's been our experience that oftentimes anti-Asian hate isn't reported as often and so folks don't hear about it and if they're not aware of it they don't think it's an issue and so students really took some great efforts and steps in creating a social media campaign that could help highlight and create an outlet for folks to tell their stories if they're not making it to the national media and the faculty side they have spearheaded a number of different research projects connected to this issue so we do have a faculty member here who is supporting a hate crimes reporting website and in partnership with a couple different national organizations in california we're also they are also leading out exploring media and social media conversation around anti-Asian hate and so those are some of the projects that we have done as part of the api task force and so we're continuing to meet and explore other needs for the university of michigan apita community and how we might collectively support this work and so some of the more recent conversations around projects that we could be doing is engaging university leadership continuing to engage university leadership around apita concerns during this time growing the reach of the social media campaign that i mentioned earlier as well as developing new ideas and projects and so some of the ideas were partnerships with an arbor organization so taking the work that we're doing for university of michigan to the larger and arbor community seeking out possible connections with area high schools to begin the education and conversation around asian-american history anti-asian hate and expanding beyond there so that's a little bit about the api task force this is phenomenal it's great to hear that you have faculty students administration and even you're involved in the community it was also good to hear the president yesterday when he was addressing the questions of all the questions i'm sure he received he did reject address that question about about hate and how we as a community will not accept it so that's that's phenomenal what are some of the challenges that you're facing now or the challenges that you face in the work that you do with the api task force amanda you want to start sure so i'll let steve answer the part about the task force but at least oh okay our um planning team um you know when the coronavirus hit we had all collectively decided that we were going to scale back some of our efforts as a staff association to focus on the new transition to working from home you know people have children and personal lives and just trying to balance things but unfortunately we couldn't do that because of the rise in xenophobic and racist behavior so if anything we have launched into a more intensive more intensive efforts with our staff association in order to provide support and advocacy for our community members so it was not did not go as planned um yeah so let's do you answer the piece about the coalition and the um sure so related to the task force one of the challenges uh is with such a diverse group i mean we had both fact we had faculty staff and students is um one creating space for all different voices and perspectives to to be represented um and also allowing folks to pursue what makes sense in their spheres of influence um and then figuring out well do all these things fit together do we need to coordinate or can they exist and we just support each other's pieces so it was an ad hoc group that came together because it had interest in this uh and a passion for it but figuring out the mechanisms and the structure of the organization and and that has been a continuing conversation and so we've gone from being laser focused on hey we're going to focus on our own particular things to uh transitioning the to see how we can now um function as an organization we have shifted to um rotating uh facilitation amongst the faculty staff and students so each meeting uh it rotates through and so yeah moving from the project growing the organization from focusing on projects through how do we sustain uh this organization in a way that feels equitable and makes sense for uh future plans so that's been a few of the challenges uh and working with the task force yeah that's great we um collaboration is phenomenal right but it's also very complicated and complex so it's good that you all are like really working together to figure that out with every other population so that's great to hear what are some of the things that you're hearing from the either students faculty staff what are some of the things the specific needs that you're hearing that you're trying to address from your communities sure any mind if I jump in first yeah so actually yesterday we had another meeting that was focused again on this uh topic of anti-Asian um hate uh for the apita staff association and so we had a community of our staff association come together and we had our conversation around this and there's a lot of concern um we had a few different polls in terms of uh trying to gauge what people have experienced in this time and we had everything from people in the community experiencing microaggressions to outright um you know assaults and violence uh aggressive behavior from folks um so we're you know the community is experienced a broad range of things within it as well as folks who are just concerned about this we know that this is in the environment this is in the air this is in the national conversation right now uh so folks are nervous going out grocery shopping we had a like a five ten minute conversation about all the new steps that we need to take in order to feel safe enough to go out to go grocery shop strategizing with our partners to say oh who should go out maybe we should go out together maybe it should only be me um the the mental calculus it takes to well you know I need a break from being inside and take a break from my kids and I want to go for a walk but I also want to be out and feel safe when I'm walking do I wear a mask should I not wear a mask does that make me a target what do I do um people in the moment not knowing how to respond uh one of our staff members shared they were walking in their neighborhood not too far from their own home and someone was aggressively yelling at them what are you doing here why are you here and you know being struck in the moment not knowing how to respond um and what that means for your family how that impacts your sense of self and in the world and what kind of uh what kind of role modeling does that do for your children so there's a lot of different concerns that staff had um brought up in our conversation yesterday I don't know if Amanda if you want to share as well yeah so one of the ways that we're trying to address that need is by providing resources for folks to feel a little bit safer right so whether it is our community gatherings so that people can at least share these things because sometimes it might be hard to feel like you can post this on social media or talk to friends who don't understand um so having that safe space for people to be able to talk about this openly has been really helpful um another thing that we're pushing is this bystander intervention training that's offered by Halleback and I am going to butcher the name but there's another group involved yeah um sorry I'm just blanking on the name right now but they are providing a bystander intervention training specifically for the Apeta community and that's been a really great resource as well yeah um you provided some phenomenal resources and we will definitely send that out to all the registrants and everybody that's on the webinar today but what does that have you seen that training specifically or where might they be able to is it easily accessible for everybody to get yes it's for it's a free hour-long training um that is easy accessible and they're offering multiple sessions in June oh okay and then that is there a website yeah I think it is on the resource sheet but if not okay okay perfect so that's really helpful to have something like that when you're also talking about the other things do you provide like um how do you provide a space in COVID-19 basically when you can't get together and you really can't meet together to go to the grocery store together are you providing spaces for people you said to just talk about it or what's been helpful you think in a community yeah so uh from yesterday's conversation one of our poll questions was uh would you be interested in continuing to have space to continue talking about your experiences in the post-COVID world and overwhelmingly everybody was interested in continuing to have these spaces and so the core team will you know we'll take some planning but we'll planning to do some continuing opportunities for just staff to get together to talk specifically about hey how am I navigating the COVID spaces you know in addition to the resources mentioned there I'm connecting faculty and staff well staff particularly through our newsletter to campus resources counseling to health centers things of that sort and beyond like laser focused on the challenges people are experiencing also thinking about we also need social space like just to kind of get together and hang out and not be consumed by the worries of the day right and so we've started offering a Netflix party I don't know folks are familiar people are probably familiar with Netflix but there is a chrome extension that allows folks to sync up and watch shows together on their own separate screens for where they're at and they can chat each other uh so Apeeta's been offering that on a weekly basis opportunities for folks to just kind of get together and let's just watch a sitcom together because you know there's there's enough to be worried about throughout the day that's a that's another way that we're trying to create space for folks in our community great did you want to add Amanda nope I think she hit it great so one of the other things that this organization has been incredibly good about is the social media and the coverage and the news and just getting people involved what advice would you give to people about how to go about doing that what are some of the methods you use to bring so many communities together I think in terms of collecting the news one of the nice things is that a lot of our core team members subscribe to a lot of different news sites and so that's how we're able to kind of curate a pretty large sample of what's going on and then figure out what to disseminate to the staff group so it helps to have people in different places right so while we are all staff we all come from different spheres so Steve and I are more student life and student and academic affairs but we also have folks on our team who are in the IT space or the DEI space or more of the research lens and so having people from all these different places means that we're able to get info from different pockets so I did want to say to everyone that Mary Rose thank you put the bystander intervention training link right into the chat so for those of you who want to access it immediately it's right there and we appreciate that and speaking of Mary I read the article in the Michigan Daily and just reading that and sharing that story that Mary shared and that other people shared really helped bring to light what's what's happening and how people are feeling in addition to what you just shared earlier Steve can you tell us a little bit more about the Michigan Daily article how that came about so from what I know are the writer like Francesca Dong reached out to the task force after seeing the letter and mass email that was disseminated by the task force asking for more information and so from there she was able to talk to students faculty and staff about their experiences because she wanted to be able to capture that for all different audience who might not have seen the email and then is there any other methods or any other things you use that to share those type of stories that people can really connect to or do you have any advice or recommendations or suggestions around that as I mentioned one of the projects that came out of the task force was the social media campaign I'll dig for the link to that as well but it's on Twitter Facebook and Instagram and it is capturing the broad range of experiences that people from our community have experienced in this post-COVID world related to anti-Asian hate and so one you could read a whole broad range of people's experiences and stories from elementary and grade school students to college students to professionals so there's a broad range of stories that you can have access to as well as share your own story so they're actually asking for submissions just so that we can capture all the different the range of stories validate people's experiences whether they are the ones sharing it or reading and finding echoes of similar experiences in their own lives we just want to make space and hold these community stories because they're really important I agree Mary also put the link to the Michigan Daily article in the chat which is great I recommend you read it if you haven't been able to do that and then there was a question about whether the trainings are offered in different languages for those who are non-English speaking and are also very vulnerable what resources are available to help them feel more safe and protected that's a good question I did just do a quick skim of the training that we were advertising and as far as I know it's only being offered in English and ASL but I think that this organization has been pretty receptive to feedback and has been adjusting and making tweaks to their training as they've continued to offer it so I think that's definitely an ask that we could present to them great because it was a similar question about that about whether the ones in June are being offered in different language and if there can be any advocacy around that yeah we can definitely look into it I don't know that we're specifically connected with the organization offering the training but like I said we've seen them already build a second part of the training based on the feedback that they have received so it seems to make they're pretty open to things great so one of the questions we asked people to submit questions as they registered even and one of the questions that we have is how do you build coalitions with other marginalized and minoritized populations how can we start that conversation so I think you hit the nail on the head but just saying it's starting the conversation right so when we helped to found the coalition that currently exists on campus it was just because our group was new and we wanted to be able to learn from people who have already paid the way and so we reached out to leadership from the woman of color task force from Abbas from Pluma and just said you know we're really curious to learn how you got started what your goals are like do we have any common themes and so it was just a sit-down meeting and through all of those meetings we understood that there was a theme of interest in connecting and so that's what helped bring us together so I think it's just a matter of reaching out and starting the conversation of saying like I'm interested in hearing what you have to say like do we have any common goals let's get together did you want to add anything Steve I think Amanda captured it okay is there anything that the task force of the Asian-American community knowing that yes your goals are specific to Asian-Americans but with everything going on in the world with African-Americans and other minorities is there anything any conversation you're having about that yeah so this is something that our core team talked about a lot in our planning meeting this week that we recognize that there's a lot of other things happening to marginalized communities and it is really important for us to be able to like show up in support in ways that we can so currently our newsletter comes out the first Tuesday of every month next Tuesday and we're currently like curating articles about anti-blackness in the Asian community and why that's a problem as well as Asian and black ally strategies to be able to disseminate to our community wow that's phenomenal you said that you would put it in the newsletter yeah so we send out a newsletter to our staff every month and so with different articles and resources and professional development opportunities and so we have a number of things in that space for people to engage with great and so how could everybody get on the listserv for the newsletter so the newsletter is currently for folks who identify as a PETA and staff but if they are interested we can put um our contact information in the chat as well and they can just email us and be added to the listserv and the listserv is open for everyone um so sorry the listserv and the newsletter are open to folks who identify as Asian Pacific Islander, D.C. American so it is mostly internal so then how would people get the information if the newsletter is only for the organization um I think I'm a little confused by your question I thought yeah I'm sorry so maybe I'm not being clear the newsletter is open to everyone at the University of Michigan like anyone that's listening okay oh so one of you is saying yes and I think one of you is saying no um so we oh okay actually yes let me backtrack we do send out the newsletter to people who have indicated an interest in being an ally so if you do have an interest so that you can still email us but the listserv is an internal list got it perfect sorry about that no no no that's great to know that's great to know so we have a question you mentioned that AAPI staff community has unique needs what are those needs unique to staff that we should know about as a staff community everyone else so yeah Steve do you want to take it first sure I'll take a stab at it so I would start with that the AAPI community is an incredibly diverse community well within the United States there are over 60 ethnicities ethnicities that are represented generationally we have immigrants to fourth fifth plus generations we have a broad range of immigration stories from folks who were quite recruited for you know doctors and engineers who were recruited to refugees to undocumented people we have a broad range of socioeconomic diversity educational attainment faith and religion faith and religious diversity as well it is incredibly difficult to make any generalized statement about the AAPI community so being able to speak to the broad range of diversity within the PETA is definitely a challenge I would say that the one thing that I could say that's true for the community as a whole is that we are a racialized and minoritized community right and so we can definitely see examples of that in our in our current environment East Asians the quote-unquote model minority who are typically breaking the curve in your math and science classes to play on a stereotype have quickly become the yellow peril we're now bringing disease and death to the country right so as PETA folks our acceptance in this country has always is and has always been conditional right it's we're a convenient wedge when we want to say that hey look at the Asian community they're doing all right why can't you other minoritized communities get it together but when something hits the fan then we become a target an easy and quick easy target so all this is to say is we have a lot of different diversities within our community and being able to address those the concerns of new immigrants to the country to folks who have been here for a generation or two or plus being able to speak to all of those concerns is definitely a challenge thinking about the you know historical conflicts that have happened between the different countries that are represented in our community and being able to navigate and address those is is also particularly a challenge and something that needs to be considered as well so that's a really big picture answer that doesn't necessarily answer the specifics relative to staff but hopefully that can set a framework in thinking about how our community is might be different than how we typically think about minoritized communities I don't know if you have anything to add to that Amanda yeah I can jump in here so I briefly mentioned that one of the professional development workshops we offered was about the bamboo stealing and so it's the understanding that for a PETA staff advancement into leadership and higher positions has been really difficult at the University of Michigan and in general and so that's something that we are really looking at talking to staff and hearing their stories about feeling like they're being passed up for promotional opportunities professional development things like that whether it's because they've been sort of boxed in as Steve said it's like this model minority figure who you know is going to be pretty quiet and not make a lot of waves or just not being seen as a leader because there's some cultural differences right like a lot of Asian cultures are much more collectivist and so talking about accomplishments of things is always with a we framework rather than in Western culture we're talking about people's accomplishments are more eye forward and so maybe it's a matter of helping our staff understand how they can better advocate for themselves for these positions and advancement opportunities there's also general staff issues that would separate us from faculty and students so being able to have support from supervisors and from workplaces in order to be able to participate in these events not all staff have equal opportunity to participate in volunteer activities for like us so getting information to staff can be more challenging at times that is great you both speak to such important things and Steve I appreciate you talking about the diversity and all of our marginalized communities instead of thinking of them as one thing right so it's so much diversity in each one and um Amanda I appreciate you talking about specific needs to staff who sometimes feel like their voice is not heard as much as faculty or students so that's great I like the professional development opportunities a lot and I think that's that should be very helpful for the community we have one question about international students Asian international students and how does the task force speak to the needs of those who are Asian students that are international as well if you do yeah sure so I believe we did have a representative from grin which I believe represents international graduate students join the task force to see what's going on and to lend a voice to to that I would say that anti-Asian the current environment for anti-Asian violence doesn't check your generation nobody asks where are you born here before you know dropping the hate hammer to to put it inappropriately lightly so yes I would say that the work that we're doing to address anti-Asian hate on at University of Michigan cuts across generation cuts across whether or not you identify as an American I think the in these times this kind of violent anti-Asian racism doesn't distinguish whether or not you've been here a generation or two or a recent immigrant thank you and yeah Mary actually also posted grin the Graduate Rackham International we our conversation last week was with grin and we'll send out the resources that they provided as well of things that were specific to international graduate students we have a question how can non AAPI people create space for AAPI to speak out about these issues without taking away the voice of AAPI people or centering the narrative on the person trying to help who is not a member of the community we get this question a lot from scholars that are just asking okay if we are in a privileged community how can we help without like taking space away from you what is the most appropriate ways or some of the appropriate ways that you feel that they could do that so an example that I would give is most recently we have a community member is involved with a community organization that is focused on building broad coalitions of folks interested in social justice issues a visitor to the organization was like well there are PETA identified and they are like I don't see myself represented here but I like your mission but I'm hoping also to see more of folks like me speaking to issues that are important to me and so the leadership which we're not a PETA we're like well yeah we need to respond to this this is a voice that we haven't included and haven't thought about and so they reached out to one of the core team members to say hey we know y'all are engaged with these issues is there any way that you all we could bring you all into one of our meetings to talk to these issues and help build connections within our community and organization so that we can have more representative representation not only with a membership but hopefully you know in terms of folks bringing up issues maybe stepping up into leadership roles so I think bringing building connections with folks who are engaged with the issues inviting them into spaces making space for those voices is a piece of that and that's an example that has happened recently I would agree I think this webinar is a good example of that oftentimes our staff group feels like we have to create this space to be able to share these things because nobody has invited us into other places that already exist so I think if you're in a position of power where you have this kind of platform to be able to share someone else's experience or learn from them that's a great opportunity so I think just reaching out to people and asking how they're doing and asking if they want to be able to share their story I love that I love that you're right and we all can do that and that was what my next question is basically like a on your personal your personal leadership journey what was it that was a burning kind of passion in you that actually said I'm going to be a leader in this space we get that question a lot like there's a lot that I want to do what should I do how should I do what was it that made you say I'm taking a step forward man did you want to go first so Steve and I have very different journeys which I think is helpful so just a quick background for me so like I'm from originally from New Jersey and was born in a predominantly white area so thinking about my Chinese-American identity really didn't become a prevalent like force or things that I identified with until I got to graduate school because I was raised in mostly predominantly white spaces and so my main goal was just to assimilate and blend in and like not rock the boat because I was experiencing racism both at a micro and macro level and just wanted to fit in as a kid but when I came to the University of Michigan it was the most diverse cohort I had ever experienced I got my graduate degree in higher education through the Center for the Study of Higher and Post-secondary Ed here and I was really excited about the fact that there were so many people who looked different than me had different experiences and I realized that being able to talk about those things was okay and so my like pivotal moment was when I went to a professional development conference through one of the higher education associations and there was a panel of speakers who were all up to identifying staff talking about their experiences and it was like such a life-changing moment for me to see so many people who looked like me talking about their work in this field and it was the first time I realized that I could bring my whole self to the role and so that's what helped me you know start putting myself out there into these spaces I always joke with the core team that I kind of just like fell into this position I was really just hoping to like plan social events and do a lot of the administrative tasks behind the scene but I think as I got more comfortable with the core team and learned from some of our members got more comfortable speaking out about these things man there's been pivotal in the core team yeah and so my story is that I was born in a small it was born in Chicago but grew up in a small town in Ohio and as you might imagine a small town in Ohio wasn't particularly diverse I was one of two Asian Americans in my school growing up and so I experienced my own fair share of racism and similar to Amanda like my goal at that point was just to blend in and kind of make myself as small as possible because the only time I seemed to get noticed for my physical appearance was negative it wasn't until I got to college and I actually took my first Asian American studies class I found the connections between my personal experiences growing up to what had been you know US policy and history that had shaped my experiences in the present so this idea of them of the Asian Americans being a perpetual foreigner is completely related to the immigration laws that banned immigration from Asia for good 50 60 years and so when people ask me where are you really from or oh your English is really good like that's where that's coming from and that's not just my own personal experience but has a string connected to the past and this idea of the model minority oh you must be doing fine you must be great at math I'm horrible at math was related to you know the preferential immigration status that were given to white collar professionals the doctors the the engineers that helped shape this kind of stereotype that exists in the larger popular imagination so classwork really helped me make sense of my place in the world and give me a connection to a history that I didn't have an opportunity to learn about in high school or junior high growing up and in addition to that I you know sought out and found a larger apita community who had similar experiences that I had had growing up and so starting to understand my experiences both as individual and institutional historical products I began to think about what are the dynamics that I have experienced and how are these dynamics playing out for other minoritized communities as well as well and so it was in college that I really started to embrace my ethnic and racial identity and build communities with folks who are also engaged in similar social justice conversations and so from there I really wanted to provide similar transformative experiences for students and so I've dedicated my career to doing that type of work primarily in the not for profit and higher education spaces and so I've worked in a number of different not for profits as well as more recently transitioned the student affairs maybe eight to ten years ago so higher ed is actually something relatively new in my career path but that's kind of what has led me on this career path and I was in California working at UCLA before coming to Michigan and I knew when I got to Michigan that the diversity here is a little bit different and so immediately I sought out a PETA and actually Amanda was the first person I met at the a mixer that they held for PETA staff and so the as they say the rest is history I got connected to the organization and the opportunity came up to step into a leadership role and I was looking for deeper connections and more community and connections to some PETA staff and here we are yeah it's great to hear that your stories are so different and it's good to hear that and that a lot of students and a lot of scholars think their role or the job that they're actually trying to get doesn't have the word diversity in it or it's not a diversity role and then they wonder if there's no other way to go about it and you both demonstrated because neither of your titles are technically those that say that you are doing diversity work per se correct or no that's correct yes Steve does um assessment for the first year experience and I work with the living learning community yeah so just seeking those opportunities in any environment whatever you do right um our goal is to inspire inform and but motivate people to action as well and so this aligns a lot with our question this next what is the call of action would you like to give to the u of m community so I have two thoughts on this um my first is to like check in on your friends and colleagues who are PETA identifying um as Steve mentioned like the mental calculation that takes place every day because of our fear of safety like for fear of safety and health right now is it's pretty large and so I think just even asking like how are you doing what can I do to support you is a huge step in not feeling as isolated especially as many of us work from home right now um I think the other thing is that there's so many resources available especially because we're at the end of Asian Pacific Heritage Month and so there are lots of articles lots of curated lists of readings podcasts films etc created by by Asian and Asian Americans and so just do some googling do some research and see you know how you can get involved and learn about more things cultivated by the community and I would add we've already mentioned the bystander training a couple times and I'll plug it again that this is not while um PETA folks wouldn't definitely gain from that it is a training that is for everybody and these bystander intervention skills not only are relevant to this current moment but also in life generally speaking as well so I would encourage folks to if you're not familiar with bystander intervention skills to check out that training and to intervene in events that particular to this moment if you're experiencing or seeing anti-Asian rhetoric hate acts happening that you intervene having grown up you know one of few Asian Americans in a town where I felt like I had to deal with racism all by myself it was a lonely feeling and for me now having the staff community is definitely a big piece and knowing that I'm not alone and seeing other folks engaged in and you know as Amanda said reaching out checking in intervening on the behalf of folks of strangers is we'll do a we'll go a long way in terms of helping us all get through this challenging time yeah yeah thank you um one of the other questions is this work can be incredibly rewarding we know this and this is why we do this work however it can be challenging at times so the question is what are some of the challenges you personally as a leader in this space space and what are the things you do for self-care and to approach those challenges I think for me it can sometimes it can be the influx of information especially in the work from home environment right you get lots of more emails lots more g chats or texts or things and sometimes it can be hard to sift through all of that and process especially when the information is emotionally challenging there's also so many news articles right now right about like hate crimes that are occurring in some ways you want to know what's happening but you also don't want to know because it's scary and so for me it's allowing myself a couple of hours each day to turn off the phone turn off the news right only looking at the news once a day rather than you know constantly refreshing my feeds just allowing myself space to step away from some of it because it can be really hard I would second that as well as the balance between wanting to do the work related to Apeeta but Apeeta doesn't cut my paycheck unfortunately so trying to balance my passion with Apeeta with my day-to-day work and as well as you know the work from home environment the family responsibilities and obligations I have on the day-to-day trying to balance all those things has definitely been one of the challenges in terms of self-care I deleted my twitter account for a couple weeks when I needed to break I'm back on it can't can't get enough unfortunately but yeah taking a break from social media has definitely been a piece for me now that the weather's warming up just getting out doing yard work funny enough as a person who you know had been living in California didn't have a yard at all and initially really was resenting my yard I found it to be his space you know a couple hours where I can just kind of zone out and cultivate something that I can you know immediately see results in pulled out a weed it's gone now right so yeah finding things that have some sort of media gratification yardwork for me has been that great so we just have a couple more questions one is what advice would you give to people that aspire to do the type of work that you do or to be leaders and do you want to go first um yeah sure I mean I would say I have had a long and windy path uh and I would say that is nothing that I have pre-planned out my life what I wanted my life to be at 18 is completely different than what it is at the moment so all that to say is um what has been held true in my life and has brought me to where I am today has been just taking on opportunity showing up in in random places for random events connecting with people from different communities taking opportunities to build a broad range of skill sets building coalition with folks and and not being afraid to kind of jump in the fray leadership I've done a lot of work around supporting leadership development for students and I found it personally rewarding for myself and have come to realize that leadership is not a destination you don't cross a line and then you can be a leader it's something that we all have the capacity for and it's a matter of finding what our gifts and skills are and highlighting those and building on those and finding a trusted and loved community that can give you feedback that can say hey maybe this could be something you can work on and here's an opportunity where you could do that so just jumping in the fray taking risks and learning along the way I think is something that has held true for me I would echo similar sentiments I think it's just showing up I have definitely never viewed myself as a leader in any sort of in any of these capacities you know when I first started gathering people for these meetings I felt like the way that I could contribute is to send out Google Calendar invites and running agenda and take attendance right but like those are things that still helped us keep moving and so it's whatever your strengths and skills are at the time like just see how they can fit in and contribute so before we ask the last question is there anything we didn't ask anything that you want to share that hasn't been asked or anything that you want to say that hasn't been said I think so so then our final question is what's your message to the world right now it's a big question it is this may feel like a cop out but I think it's going to be what I just said like it's just showing up right there's so much happening right now with marginalized folks of color right there's a there's a lot in the news there's a lot on social media about what's happening and there's there's just a lot and it may be a lot to process and it may be hard to lean into but like just figure out what way you can show up to be like show your support for those folks who are hurting right whether it's a small action such as signing a petition or something more more like showing up for a protest or donating money to a small business right like just doing something to show your support right yeah I don't have much outside of try kind of phrases but you know we're all in this together so echoing the the hope and call for action and supporting your apita community friends family people in your neighborhood that being a piece of it but also recognizing that they're contrary to popular imagination around the apita community that there are folks in the community that are aware of and invested and care about other things that are going on in the community what's going on in Minneapolis what's going on in Louisville those are all things that are deeply saddening and concerning to me and folks on the core team as well so know that it's my aspiration to stand in solidarity as well and that hopefully we can help build those bridges so that we can make a better world that we can all live in yeah yeah yeah frankly Frederick Douglass said a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and um and so I agree with you I just want right now to thank you both for stepping up and standing up and leaning in and taking on this leadership role and I learned an incredible amount from just the resources you shared I appreciate it hearing your stories and reading your stories and I think it's so important that we continue to do that thank you both for being here today and thank you all who joined us and we will send out the resources to everyone who joined with that I want to say everyone take care of yourselves and others um like our panelists our special guest said today and um have a great weekend bye everyone thank you thanks for the opportunity y'all yes