Today my guest is Estella Owoimaha-Church, Executive Director of Empowering Pacific Islander Communities–also known as EPIC.  Estella, a former educator of nearly two decades, is a strong voice and advocate for marginalized communities having spoken all over the world about pressing education matters.  This was a heavy conversation for me because I could feel the depth of critical urgency Estella leads with every day.  In our conversation, we talk about the lack of representation ineducation, data disaggregation, the lack of care for our Pacific Islander communities and so much more.   We encourage you to continue to conversation with us by sharing this episode and tagging us on twitter or Linked in.  

Today’s episode is sponsored by SoundMind, an immersive wellness platform students can use as a mind management tool for emotional and phsyical wellness using music therpay.  Used by over 250,000+ students across the nation SoundMind is the leading mental health app for youth, including recently named Top 6 Mental Health Apps for Kids by Parents Magazine.  You can learn more and access theur Mental Health Toolkit by visiting www.soundmind.app.  

Welcome back to another episode of More Than a Monolith.  I am really thrilled to introduce you to our guest today, Maria Medrano.  I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Maria for about 15 years when her daughter enrolled in the school I had the honor of leading.  Maria, her husband Mauricio and I quickly connected through our passionate belief in the access and opportunity for underrepresented youth.  Since meeting her, I’ve continued to be inspired by Maria’s leadership in top positions at Cisco, Visa and Google.  Recently, Maria shared with me the decision to leave it all behind so she can accomplish her mission: To help end generational poverty through educational attainment for everyone.  While the goal sounds big, she’s the one to make it happen.  In this episode, we talk about college completion and transfer  rates for AAPI youth, barriers to accessing higher ed and the financial challenges for our families.  

Today’s episode is sponsored by SoundMind, an immersive wellness platform students can use as a mind management tool for emotional and phsyical wellness using music therpay.  Used by over 250,000+ students across the nation SoundMind is the leading mental health app for youth, including recently named Top 6 Mental Health Apps for Kids by Parents Magazine.  You can learn more and access theur Mental Health Toolkit by visiting www.soundmind.app.  

Welcome back to a new episode of More Than a Monolith.  Today, I have the honor of being joined by Lee Herrick.  Lee Herrick is the California Poet Laureate and the first Asian American to hold the title. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This Many Miles from Desire. In addition, his writings appear in a number of anthologies. He served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017.  Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted to the United States at ten months, he teaches at Fresno City College and the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.  In our conversation, we talk about his personal experiences growing up as a Korean adoptee, his journey to poetry and his love of California.  We are even treated to Lee reading some of his poetry for us.  Our chat turned out to be a personal one for me and I’m really fortunate for this time together. 

Today I am thrilled to welcome our guest, Misty Her.  Misty is the Deputy Superintendent of Fresno Unified School District and the highest ranking Hmong K-12 professional in the nation.  Yes, in the nation.  Her story is exceptional beginning with her years when she immigrated to Fresno as a young girl.  After college, she returned to Fresno unified as a bilingual aide and worked her way up to now Deputy Superintendent.  Please take a moment now or after you listen to share this episode.  What Misty has to share is too good to not get to others.

Thank you to our sponsors, Parsec Education! 

For today’s episode, I am joined by Dr, Karen Umemoto who is a a professor in the departments of Urban Planning and Asian American Studies at UCLA and is the inaugural Helen and Morgan Chu Endowed Director’s Chair of the Asian American Studies Center.  You can read more about her extensive background in our show notes.  One of her many accomplishments is co-authoring the book, Jacked Up and Unjust: Pacific Islander Teens Confront Violent Legacies where she explores the harsh realities our PI youth face every day.  Today, we talk about the findings from the book and if there has been progress made.  

We are back with another episode and I am so excited about today’s guests.  Yes, guests, plural.  On this episode, I am joined by five exceptional youth voices behind AAPI Youth Rising.  I’ve been a follower of their work for a while now and was thrilled when they accepted the invitation to be on the show.  Today we’re chatting about the genesis of their organization, youth mental health, their one day of AAPI history campaign and so much more.  Please make sure to share this episode so we can help spread the word about the important work they are doing. 

Our guest today is Dr. Diann Kitamura.  Diann is the former superintendent of Santa Rosa City Schools and has worked in public education for the past 40 years.  She continues this work in her retirement as a lecturer in the Leaders for Equity and Democracy program at U.C. Berkeley, the 21CLSA AAPI Affinity Group Lead for the Bay Area, and a mentor/coach for Next Level Client Services with F3 Law.  Diann is also a board member for CAAPLE, the California Association of Asian and Pacific Leaders in Education.   In our conversation, we discuss advocacy, affinity spaces and advancement for AAPI educators. 

This episode is sponsored by the amazing team at Parsec Education.  Parsec combines cloud based data warehouses with outstanding visualization to make data meaningful and interactive.  Check them out at parseceducation.com.  

Today’s guest is Tracie Noriega and we’re talking about the history of ethnic studies and what are the critical considerations we need to pay attention to as it is delivered in our schools.  Tracie Noriega serves the students of San Lorenzo Unified as the Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services. Tracie also serves in various roles with FAEAC (Filipino-American Educators Association of CA), ACSA (Association of CA School Administrators), and the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and is a doctoral student at CSU Sacramento. As an Educator of almost 30 years, it is the tenets of Ethnic Studies that continue to center her as an Educator. Our Youth inspires her as she works to create lasting change in our educational system.    

This season of More Than A Monolith is sponsored by Parsec Education,  an educational technology company that creates cloud-based data warehouses and combines them with outstanding visualization to put the data you need right at your fingertips. Their goal is to transform education by empowering educators to spend less time gathering and interpreting the data and more time implementing it.