Introducing Our Speakers and Facilitators
For the 2020 AAWIL Conference!
Our team has been working tirelessly to confirm speakers and facilitators for this year's AAWIL conference. We hope you are as excited as we are.
Keynote Address
Dr. Lindsay Kwock Hu is a mom of three young children and is joyously raising them to be race-conscious feminists. As an education consultant, her work focuses on designing learning experiences that enable elementary children to analyze social issues through the lens of race, tap into their inner changemaker, and compel them to act in the name of racial justice. She is also working on a book that explores her own story of oppressive experiences as a means to define the process of developing young changemakers to challenge the racial status quo.
In her previous role as a professor of education, Lindsay researched the instructional and curricular strategies that best support racial and linguistic minorities. She also designed, raised money for, and published a social impact curriculum that compared two environmental disasters in Los Angeles – one in a wealthy community, the other in a low-income immigrant community. Her work has been presented at education conferences and most recently published in Case Studies for Inclusive Educators. She currently sits on the board of the City Scholars Foundation.
Lindsay lives in Los Angeles with her husband Mike and three children, Sloane (7), Owen (6), and Axel (19m).
MEET OUR SPEAKERS & FACILITATORS
Alexandra Chandra (she/they)
Courtney Pong (she/her/hers)
Opening Warmups (Facilitator)
The 5 Rules of Improv That Will Transform How You Build Your Community (Speaker)
Ellie Yang Camp (she/her/hers)
Melissa Shang (she/her/hers)
Emily Thoman (she/her/hers)
Jessica Huang (she/her/hers)
Akriti Bhambi (she/her/hers)
Mary Cheyne (she/her/hers)
Networking Into Your Authentic Self (Speaker)
Deep Dive: Networking Out Imposter Syndrome (Speaker)
Michelle G. Garcia (she/her/hers)
Crystal Kim (she/her/hers)
Portia Chan (she/her/hers)
Peer Recovery Specialist
Lois Rho (she/her/hers)
Iyleen Summer (she/her/hers)
Trish Fontanilla (she/her/hers)
Lindsay Kwock Hu (she/her/hers)
Alexandra Chandra
Lexi (she/they) is a nonbinary trans femme writer, model, and digital content creator of @iamlexchandra on Instagram. They work as a Community Outreach Specialist for New York City's Health and Hospital System and thoroughly enjoy using their online platform to radicalize trans and nonbinary allies.
Courtney Pong
As a professional improviser for over 19 years, Courtney has designed and led team building workshops and provided entertainment for Fortune 500 companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, eBay, and Nike. Since 2001, she has been a performer and educator with CSz Worldwide, which is home to the award-winning improv comedy show, ComedySportz, performed in 30 cities across the US and Europe. Courtney hails from San Francisco and holds over 15 years of experience in communication & public relations. She is currently the Owner and General Manager of CSz Boston, as well as the Owner of The Rozzie Square Theater, located in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston. She regularly spends her time volunteering with local and national organizations and initiatives that focus on empowering BIPOC/WOC/Women leadership and is currently serving her first of a 3-year term on the Board of Directors for Roslindale Village Mainstreet. She’s the world’s okayest rock climber, nearsighted, and dust intolerant.
Ellie Yang Camp
Ellie Yang Camp (she/her) is an artist, teacher, and activist. She has been Asian American her whole life and spends an enormous amount of time thinking about what that identity means at the intersection of race, history, and faith. She is the proud daughter of Taiwanese immigrants and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. She enjoys good food, roller skating, reading novels, and watching too much TV.
Melissa Shang
Melissa is a 17-year-old from Newton, Massachusetts. Born with a form of muscular dystrophy called Charcot-Marie-Tooth, Melissa is passionate about disability rights and inclusion. Melissa is the co-author of the middle-grade novel, Mia Lee is Wheeling Through Middle School, and she has spoken at TEDx events and the United Nations. In 2014, Melissa started a viral petition for the doll company American Girl to create a doll with a disability. Melissa is currently partnering with the Boston Center of Independent Living to run a Disabled Youth Advocacy Group that recruits teens to start accessibility campaigns across Massachusetts.
Emily Thoman
Emily is a Chinese American adoptee originally from the San Francisco Bay Area but currently based in the Greater Boston area. Right now, she is in the first year of her Social Policy PhD program at Brandeis University. Her research interests include the impact of the Model Minority Myth on the people and policy in the education and criminal (in)justice system. Previously, she has worked with several educational non-profits and in politics. She loves to eat and will always try new food!
Jessica Huang
Jessica Huang works at the intersection of health and education to address societal inequities. She is a Pandemic Response and Recovery Fellow with the Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative at Harvard, and a health literacy researcher working to reduce COVID-19 misinformation and barriers to information access with Meedan’s Digital Health Lab. She has a doctorate in public health from Harvard, a Master’s in education from Stanford, and was previously an instructor at MIT - but she is still working on overcoming imposter syndrome. In her spare time, she’s experimenting with one-armed yoga while recovering from a recent surgery that corrected an injury-induced disability.
Akriti Bhambi
Akriti currently serves as Chief of Staff for State Representative Marjorie Decker. She has a Master's in Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor's degree from the University of California, Davis. When not diving deep into politics and public policy, she writes fiction, poetry, and cultural think pieces, runs by the Charles, and schemes about the ways we can elevate the AAPI community.
Mary Cheyne
Mary Cheyne, MBA, is a TEDx speaker, and Transformational Public Speaking Trainer & Coach who has trained over 15,000 people in 30 cities internationally. Mary is the 2009 World Champion of Public Speaking first runner-up, out of 25,000 contestants from 14 countries. She is the best-selling author of the book “Present” Yourself in Public Speaking – Tell Your Inner Critic to SHUT UP! and the Real You to SPEAK UP! Mary is proof that transformation is possible, as she began her career as a socially-awkard computer programmer! Two fun facts about Mary: She holds a Karate Black Belt rank and plays the ukulele.
Michelle G. Garcia
Michelle G. Garcia is a second-generation Filipina-American. In college, she studied Social Welfare & Global Development, and pursued professional & leadership growth in many ways. She taught abroad in Cambodia; interned at a refugee resettlement agency; served as president of a student organization; and served as a campus diversity & inclusion educator. Post-grad, she began her career in global health & human rights – designing health programming in developing countries. She then brought her passion for serving diverse communities into the mental health field – delivering mental health & wellness workshops to immigrant families. Michelle now works as an independent mental health consultant, creating mental health workshops and resources tailored to the needs and values of Asian American youth & families. She teaches and facilitates peer-style – drawing on her own struggles with perfectionism, achievement anxiety and intercultural/generational family conflict; and journey in learning self-love, self-care, and how to truly thrive with the support of family and friends. Outside of work, Michelle’s favorite hobbies include cooking, photography, travelling, and date-nighting with her husband, Winsthon.
Crystal Kim
Crystal Kim (she/her) is a youth mentoring professional passionate about empowering under resourced youth, particularly girls, Asian Americans, and immigrants, by providing them access to caring, confident, and consistent mentors. She began her career at Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, where she coordinated school-based and workplace mentoring programs. Currently, she oversees the high school mentoring program at Apex for Youth in New York City. Her programs emphasize social-emotional learning, identity exploration, and confidence development. Experienced in designing and facilitating one-on-one and group mentoring programs, Crystal takes an intersectional and inclusive approach to building relationships with youth and coaching volunteers.
Portia Chan
Portia Chan is the development manager/grants writer at NAMI Virginia. Guided by her own experiences on her mental health journey, Portia is a trained peer recovery specialist who focuses on mothering and mentoring philosophies and practices among ethnic/racial minority women from the frameworks of womanism/feminism and attachment across developmental stages.
Portia is a research assistant in Dr. Fantasy Lozada's SHIELD Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University, and she is also part of the research team at Psychology Works, co-founded by Dr. Edna Esnil and Dr. Mike Buckle. She holds a certificate in psychology and counseling from UC Berkeley, a M.A. in secondary education/social sciences from Emmanuel College, and a B.A. in art history from Wellesley College.
Lois Rho
Lois is a consultant focusing on K-12 education finance and is based in Cambridge MA. Lois was born in Korea and is a first-generation immigrant first to Canada and then to the US. Lois is a mother of two and is passionate about contributing to a truer and fuller representation of Asian Americans. Lois has an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BBA from Emory University.
Iyleen Summer
Iyleen Summer currently serves as Chief Programs Officer for the National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP). In this role, she oversees multiple NAAAP nationally branded programs including the Wellness and Self Care program, Leadership Academy, Leadership Convention, Women in NAAAP, NAAAP Pride, and NAAAP recognition programs (NAAAP 100, Inspire, and Pride Awards). Iyleen has firsthand program knowledge through planning the 2019 and 2020 Leadership Academy agenda and serving as a program assistant in NAAAP’s Employee Resources Group (ERG) leadership training conferences for five years. Through the ERG programming, Iyleen realized her passion about expanding diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within the workforce through strategic partnerships, effective programming and employee engagement.
Iyleen first began her career with NAAAP with the Boston chapter as Scholarship Director in 2013. She then moved up to Vice President of Operations of the organization. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and a dual Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Asian Studies. She also volunteers for the Diversity Board at the Big Sister Organization of Greater Boston. Iyleen is also an admissions counselor at the Graduate School of Psychology and Counseling at Cambridge College.
Trish Fontanilla
Trish Fontanilla is a Community & Customer Experience Consultant. Previous to venturing out on her own, she held roles at various Boston startups including Head of Community & Customer Experience at Freight Farms, Global Director of Community at Startup Institute, and Vice President of Community & Customer Experience at Vsnap. Trish is also the Chief Energy Officer (CEO) at BOSFilipinos, a community focused on elevating Filipino culture through events and programming in Boston, and Co-Founder of the Customer Love Series, which brings together professionals across the employee and customer experience. In her spare time she volunteers through Boston Cares, and mentors women entrepreneurs in the Babson College WIN Lab.
