In summer of 2012, I participated in SEARAC’s LAT leadership development program as part of my work at VAYLA-NO, advocating for specific policies with House representatives.
As a child of the South, I believe in the importance of public sociology. Before returning to graduate school, I worked as a community organizer at VAYLA-NO and the Restaurant Opportunities Center, a college advisor at College Track New Orleans, an interpreter for a death row inmate at the Capital Appeals Project, and a research analyst at Tulane University studying how disasters and lifetime adversity affect women’s reproductive health. More recently, in 2019, I completed the Don’t Kvetch, Organize! training by JOIN for Justice, hoping to build community with other Jews of color while deepening my existing knowledge about community organizing. These experiences emphasized my commitment to using my research and other skillsets as a way to support work led by politically marginalized communities—many of which I feel a sense of belonging.
In fall of 2013, I worked to enroll families into an insurance plan through the Affordable Care Act, including about 500 Vietnamese families. (Photo taken by nola.com)
Throughout the years, I benefited from the lessons I learned as I partnered with restaurant owners to address the lack of adequate breaks and fresh meal options facing their employees, advocated for participatory budgeting at the city level, contributed to the building of an inter-generational and multi-racial community space, etc. One such lesson is the importance of amplifying the voices of those affected by the issues and stepping back, rather than leading at the frontline and speaking for them. During the fall of 2018, I worked the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center as a Policy & Research Fellow, supporting their fight against housing displacement.
During my internship at the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center, I had the pleasure of meeting Diane Nash, the civil rights icon who inspired me to pursue social justice as a career path.
Between 2017 and 2019, as a Graduate Mentor for the Community College to Ph.D. Program at University of California at Los Angeles, I work with community college students from underrepresented backgrounds on a research project and their transfer to a four-year school. Through biweekly meetings, I provide guidance from project conception, to literature review, to data collection and analysis, to research presentation, to writing for publications. I also assist in my mentees’ applications to summer research programs and applications for transferring to four-year universities.
Most recently, I joined—at a volunteering capacity—a public-facing project exploring misinformation in Vietnamese communities, led by Ph.D. student Sarah Nguyễn and Dr. Rachel Moran at the University of Washington. If you’re interested in joining, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.