My Mission
1. To lead and influence
Going to an all-women college like St. Kate’s changed me. Being in a world where women hold all or most of the leadership positions moved me. I met many young women who were passionate about a cause and determined to make their mark on the world. This positive environment nurtured me and has allowed me to believe in the potential I have as a female leader. At St. Kate's we were often asked by our professors to reflect on this one question: How will you lead and influence? I spent four years exploring my answers to this question and I still don’t have all the answers yet but I know that where I am going I want the values I’ve gained at St. Kate’s around inclusive leadership and collective impact to guide me. 2. To see and understand that complexity exists My leadership journey first started when I interned for Hnub Tshiab also known as Hmong Women Achieving Together (HWAT) a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of Hmong women. Through Hnub Tshiab I got to be a part of community projects that helped me to challenge the gender inequity in Hmong families but also to understand the complexity of it. The best part is that through this opportunity I met Hmong-American women who showed me that achieving gender equity in the Hmong community didn't mean we had to put down the Hmong culture. It was about understanding and contextualizing how gender roles shift and change in different economic and social contexts. I didn't have to choose to be American to be a progressive 21st century Hmong-American woman. I could be both Hmong and American and in fact, that was the only way to make the lives of Hmong women better was being both. This experience has profoundly shaped how I see the world. Now when I see something that I don’t agree with, I’m not quick to judge it as wrong. Instead I challenge myself to ask why and how first, because I now understand that things are more complex than they seem. 3. To belong to the community I serve and work in partnership if I’m not an insider While my experience with Hnub Tshiab allowed me to serve my community it left me wondering about what I could do for women in the world. A class I took at St. Kate's called “Women in a Transnational World” inspired me to study abroad in Pune, India. While in Pune I spent time with a women's organization called Aalochana. Aalochana was a document resource center for women. I had the opportunity to compile an oral history project of women in Pune who were active during the social movement. Being a part of Aalochana and the oral history project taught me about the importance of belonging to the community you wanted to improve. I was very moved by the passion of the women from Aalochana to serve the girls and women from their local communities but I saw that I couldn’t be a part of it because I didn’t know what the community wanted. The work Aalochana was doing was effective because they had a relationship with the people they served and as an outsider I was never going to fully understand the local community’s values or beliefs. In fact, I saw how some approaches from outsiders didn't work. So I came back to the U.S. with a goal to see what I could do to serve local women and girls in St. Paul, MN. "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
~Gandhi |
4. To be a bridge for aspiring young women leaders
Right after I returned from India, I began interning for a local non-profit, the Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment (WISE). My work at WISE involved running the Girls Getting Ahead in Leadership program (GGAL). GGAL is a college prep and leadership development program for high school girls who were recent immigrant and refugees to St. Paul. It was truly a blessing in disguise. I met young women who had survived wars, poverty in refugee camps, never held a pencil, and still fighting for an opportunity to be educated in America. My two years at WISE first as an intern and then as a Promise Fellow has shown me that I can create positive change in this world for women and girls by acting as a bridge. For my G-GAL leaders I am a bridge between cultures, helping them to navigate American culture and language barriers. Most importantly, I am a bridge between worlds, helping them to access the higher education system a foreign world to them now but a world they want to be in. As I leave WISE and embark on this journey, I want to continue being a bridge for aspiring young women leaders because they are the key to solving our world’s problems. Issues of poverty and inequity exist because too many girls and women are missing at the table and from the conversation. I want to be that bridge so that a young girl who is told she is poor or invaluable has a chance to become someone she wants to be and not what others define her as. |