LEAP Impact 2023: 6 Lessons That I Learned
“I spent a lot of my life muting myself and explaining my existence in spaces as if I was ‘lucky’ to be here. But actually, we deserve to be there.”
Shirley Cai, LEAP Impact graduate of 2023, recently shared the lessons learned amongst her peers during Part 3 of the program - an in person session held in New York City. LEAP Impact is a three part series of workshops designed to help empower and develop non-profit Asian and Pacific leaders. Over the course of eight months, participants engage in community building to help process similar challenges and also experience activities that inspire change to re-energize and sustain their nonprofit work.
As a group, they nominated Shirley as a speaker to share her reflections as they closed out their session in New York City. In front of her peers, she shared out the following lessons:
1. As much as we have to learn, we as Asian American leaders have so much to give.2. Abundance is out there. It just needs to be made more accessible.
3. Rest, play, and joy is just as important as the work that we do. In fact, they’re in conversation with and in service of the work that we do.
4. The skills and work experience that we possess make us good at our jobs, but our jobs do not define us. Every single person here has such a unique story, drive, motivation, and love for their community that’s brought them here, that allows them to do the work that they do with the most impact. And so, our jobs do not define us. We define our jobs.
5. None of us are here or in any of the spaces we are in by mistake, by luck, or accident. We’re here because we chose to be, because we worked hard to be, because we deserve to be.
6. I now constantly in my day-to-day life return to the question of: What kind of world do I want to live in? And the answer is one of compassion, kindness, grace, and constant revision. To show up better, more unapologetically, we need to give ourselves the grace to constantly revise.
-Shirley Cai, Communications Manager for Kundiman
Congratulations to our recent 2022-2023 LEAP Impact graduates, we are excited to see you continue your work in the community. We look forward to seeing your impact that you will make because of your experience.
Thank you to our sponsor American Express for your continued support with LEAP Impact.
About the author
Danielle Lynk is the Communications Manager for LEAP(Leadership Education for Asian Pacific). She is responsible for driving and creating LEAP’s communications and marketing strategies to bring awareness and support development efforts.
