Meet 6 Asian American changemakers shaping Houston’s future

Chris Hollins and I met through a mutual friend; he asked me to come on board to work with him as he became the new county clerk. He was like, “Let’s dream big, let’s just do crazy things and see what we can actually get done.”

I took on drive-thru voting, something we’d never done in Texas, and we just made it happen creatively and at scale. Almost 130,000 people used it, which is kind of insane that it was so successful. The other thing was I helped triple the early-voting locations. Historically, we’ve only had about 40 to 45 early-voting locations for major presidential elections. So we tripled to over 120 and had over 800 Election Day sites.

I’ve always felt tied to come back to Houston because this is my home. We didn’t have any Asian American leaders until recently. We’ve got to blaze our own trail to provide kids role models that I never had when I was growing up. I grew up gay in Fort Bend County, and I know exactly what it means to feel like you don’t belong somewhere. When I went to school at Northwestern (University), people would be like, “Oh, you’re from San Francisco or New York” because progressive, gay Asian Americans don’t come from Texas. And that just blew their mind. Well, one, yes, we do exist. But secondly, I wanted to go back because you don’t believe we exist in the first place.

There’s going to be a turning point when you see American-born Asian Americans running for office or becoming CEOs of big companies. We’re going to start taking things over. It’s our generation — 93 percent of students at Houston ISD schools are people of color.

For the future of Asian Americans — not to buy into the model-minority myth — there are going to be a lot of us in the top of the top. We’re going to help make decisions. The question is, are we going to make decisions that accommodate the progressive views a lot of us share? Or are they going to conform to what the people before us have tried to maintain? It’s hard to pin us all as one block.

Are we actually pushing forward policies that ensure we have a stronger middle class? That we have wages acceptable for people who are working class and allow them to not live in poverty? (Representation) is looking at how well the least among all of us, regardless of race and gender, are doing. If the status of that person has improved, that’s when we’ve achieved equality and representation.

My ambition is to, through music, create a culture that’s expansive and inclusive and co-create — not just me — and that’s also about abundance, accessibility and for us to live dignified and conscionable lives, and I think that’s definitely whether consciously or unconsciously informed by my identity as a queer, South Asian person who’s born and raised in the U.S. I understand the culture we live in is very rarely inclusive. My identity has formed that sensitivity and compassion, but that only can go so far. My intention is also to continue to grow and learn and understand the ways I can extend what I know of different experiences and be more inclusive myself.

I’ve only been here two years, much of which was spent in lockdown. I’ve tried to build community digitally, and I’ve joined a couple (of) organizations, including CHAA (Collective of Houston Asian Americans), which is a queer, trans, pan-Asian organization. Unfortunately, the pandemic has been very hard because we haven’t been able to meet and perform. It’s also not like we’re “Asian or AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) artists,” we’re artists who are doing our thing, and we happen to be AAPI. We inhabit our cultures and identities in ways that feel authentic to us.

It’s not just if we’re being represented, but how we’re being represented and who’s doing the representing. I don’t want to be represented in any stereotypical way or a way that doesn’t align with my values. For example, there are unfortunately many Indian Americans whose values are right-wing or — you see what’s happening in India right now with COVID-19 — who are not on the right side, in my opinion, of this issue. Technically, they have a platform and are representing Indian Americans, but they’re not representing my values.

Another example is how we sometimes pass off regressive ways of how we treat women or uphold the Hindu caste system, and we say, “No, that’s just our tradition.” But are we evolving? And that goes with queerness and gender fluidity. A lot of communities might say, “That’s not part of our tradition.” One, that’s unfair because that’s not actually true. There’s a lot of history about gender fluidity and queerness being a part of ancient South Asia. And two, even if it was part of our tradition, does that tradition need to remain intact if it’s unjust? Equality and representation are nuanced.

I feel like a changemaker in the small corner of the world that I inhabit — the conversations that I have with people, I am always true to myself — and I believe I do things differently. Even for a South Asian person, I’m different among South Asians, and I’m definitely different among the broader community of musicians, in Houston and the world. Would I say I have a heavy influence in the Houston music industry? No. I don’t think that’s true. But I am happy to be visible and authentic to who I am. Sometimes, the way I dress and look, I can’t deny the fact that just by speaking and moving through space as I am, I invite curiosity and change how people think.

Working with the community, finding out their issues and working alongside others to address these issues gives me purpose. As Asian Americans, it’s become pretty apparent we face lots of structural issues and barriers. For example, language and technology really kept our committee members from being able to access the vaccines when they were first released. My family members all had issues accessing the vaccines. So it was up to me and my sister, the younger generation, to help our elders get vaccinations.

My parents are both refugees from Vietnam. They were boat people who came over in the ’80s. Over the years, they were able to make a life for themselves here. For me, recognizing the struggles they went through to self-actualize and make a life here in Houston. I still recognize those struggles here today.

As a Vietnamese American, that’s why I want to continue serving my community members. As an Asian American, it’s a little bit different. I don’t really view that as a cultural identity. It’s more so a political one. The way it was formed in the ’60s, student activists came up with the term “Asian American” because they were inspired by the Black and brown liberation movement happening at the time. They realized that coming together as Asian Americans was the best way to unify ourselves, despite having different experiences to achieve social equality. I identify as an Asian American broadly because I understand the best way forward is if we all come together and champion true equality despite our differences.

In Buddhism, one of the things we’re taught is compassion. Learning about compassion and putting it into practice is one of my tenets. The compassion extends to all community members regardless of background.

It’s that quote — “nothing about us without us.” Having people who understand your background because they come from your background, that means when they’re in places where they make decisions, they won’t think of you as an afterthought. They’ll prioritize you from the beginning, so people won’t have to overcome obstacles to ask to be included.

I was 5 feet, 8 inches at 13 years old, so I got scouted to model. I was so embarrassed. In college, I was scouted again, and I went full time; I started getting booked. Because I was born into an entrepreneurial family and I’m very competitive, I looked around, left and right, and it was all white people. Not that it’s a bad thing, but how do I stand out from the crowd? How do I make it so I can advance in the middle of this competition? When I was doing runway, I was the only Asian, tall, lanky model. It made me really fierce, internally. You know, the glittering lights and in front of thousands of people on the runway — I had fierce focus to say that I am going to overcome and continue to forge my own success.

As an entrepreneur, we need to provide more opportunities for Asian Americans. Period. That’s why I started IU. That’s why I do what I do — focusing on women and diversity in (venture capitalism). In my life right now, it’s so pertinent. I just think growing up in Katy, being one of maybe five Koreans in the entire high school, growing up with a lot of cultural identity.

In venture, I didn’t realize it when I first started out; when I saw a challenge, I loved it. They told me, “You probably can’t get a job with venture.” It logistically doesn’t make sense — there’s not enough jobs at the time. I knew that was a challenge, and I was going to be a founding partner or general partner. I was able to do that, starting from scratch as an intern, continuing to advance, evolve and pivoting until I made it to the top. And now I’m at the top 1 percent in the U.S. as an Asian woman.

I live in New York as well, and I see firsthand the crime. I see the fear in people’s eyes. I see Asian women that I walk by — they won’t make eye contact. Because one wrong eye contact, and boom — you might get hit. The fear people live in because of the rise in this violence is horrific. I feel like this is truly a monumental, historic time, where a movement is really happening for Asian Americans across the U.S. because of these horrific crimes.

The best thing we can do is get our stories of success out there, to show people the trailblazing success in uncharted territories that we’ve created. That’s a powerful representation of who Asian Americans are. They shouldn’t be going through these hate crimes just because of this racism and discrimination. We should paint the real picture of how successful Asian Americans are. The most powerful thing we can do in the movement is representation.

The drive is realizing that mental health is so stigmatized within our community. The hope is that it creates space for people when they are struggling, when they feel as though they’re alone in their mental health struggles, that they’re able to understand that it is normal and natural to have times where we need to ask for help. The goal is to help others find culturally relevant resources. Knowledge about a culture is not quite enough. It’s understanding how the nuances of our community and how we show up in our relationships, work environments and families (are) impacted by our Asian American identity as well as our experiences with racism in this country. That’s why a lot of my work focuses on the intersections of mental health, Asian American identity and social justice issues because we can’t make light of how oppression and white supremacy impact us.

I feel really lucky people are open to the idea that mental health is the foundation to health. Being able to speak on these issues comes from a very intimate part of who I am, as somebody who has lived through an immigrant experience, as somebody who has experienced racism and hate, as a minority in this country. A lot of Asian American mental health professionals are experiencing the same type of trauma or retraumatization, experiencing the same level of fear for our elders and children going to schools and, at the same time, having to find strategies to help ourselves while also helping our clients. And I’ll be honest, it’s been very tricky.

I’ve always stayed grounded to my thought that if one person feels less alone, if one person reaches out to seek out therapy for the first time, if one person feels seen and heard, then I’ve done my job.

I am very hopeful Asian American leaders in Houston especially, since we have such a high Asian population, will feel emboldened to amplify and pursue causes that really improve the lives of not just Asian Americans but people of color in general.