Our inaugural summit on Friday, Oct. 6 was a huge success! Thank you to our guests for attending and joining us at our sessions, from the introductory icebreaker activity to panel discussions. We opened up with more than 50 different quote cards — all by Asian or Asian Americans — and our emcee for the evening, executive coach Michael Balaoing, asked guests to choose one that resonated with them. Attendees then shared their thoughts with each other in open discussions. Then Wes Hom, a national board member and vice president at Ascend, presented data and research behind the myths of Asian leadership and why so few Asians reach executive levels in the corporate world. We followed that up with a fireside chat moderated by Google’s Regina Manzana-Sawhney with our leaders: Lisa Lee, vice president of audit at Alphabet/Google and Preeti Sriratana, Apex for Youth’s president and chair. Lisa and Preeti discussed how our respective organizations help build and develop leaders and shared their vision for our future. Our closing panel featured prominent leaders in the community, who discussed challenges they have faced, how they overcame them and what they’re doing now for the greater community: Chieh Huang, CEO and co-founder of Boxed; Tiffany Pham, founder and CEO of Mogul; and Ronny Chieng, actor and comedian. Together they shared insightful tidbits in a discussion moderated by ABC7 reporter CeFaan Kim. Guests enjoyed a reception before and after the talks, with drinks courtesy of Tanduay and Mansi.
Our official after party featured special guest DJs Krazie Charles and JSwift, as well as !llmind, a Grammy-nominated music producer who has worked with Drake and Kanye West, and on Hamilton Mixtape, Moana and more. Thank you to our special guest DJs, as well as Kola House for hosting our after party!
Thank you to our speakers, our event volunteers and our co-hosts at Google’s Asian Google Network and Filipino Googler Network. We hope many of you left inspired to take action and become leaders. As one of our former mentees in attendance said, “Thanks for always giving me hope for a better future out there.”
#APIMetoWe
Photos courtesy of Eric Hsu and Kaptured by Jackie.
