Location: MN, Midwest
Areas of Knowledge, Experience, Insight: Hmong and Southeast Asian community issues, policy strategies, community organizing, social enterprise
For more than two decades, KaYing has been a social justice advocate who has built and led community organizing, public policy engagement, and development efforts locally, nationally, and globally. In the mid-1990s, she began her career as a community organizer and executive manager providing social services and advocacy for the protection of refugees and immigrants in Minnesota at the Women’s Association of Hmong and Lao. She then went on to defend and promote immigrant and human rights by serving in a number of organizations including the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC), the International Organization for Migration, the International Finance Corporation, and the Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL) in Minnesota. All of her work comes from a deep experience having come to the United States as a Hmong refugee at the age of seven in 1976 where she experienced firsthand the struggles faced by communities experiencing racism, generational trauma, and poverty. She is president of RedGreen Rivers, LLC, a board member of Women Winning, a community lead on Ramsey County Transforming Systems Together initiative, and a 2019 recipient of the Bush Foundation Fellowship. In 2022, KaYing was appointed to serve on President Biden’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (PACAANHPI).