Asian-American Women's Political Initiative (AAWPI), Boston, MA (2026)

05/04/2025

✨This Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month and every day, we are inspired by our National Civic Impact Innovators who, in this moment, are stepping up to protect, defend, and mobilize our AAPI communities. From fighting back against ICE raids to holding space for collective healing and building real power on the ground, they’re moving with purpose to fight back against a system and administration trying to silence and erase us.

Over the next weeks, we’ll be sharing our AAWPI fellows’ stories: their “why,” their fire, and how they’re making change, right now, for our communities.

First up is Mona Mangloña Jacobs💫, one of our incredible Pennsylvania fellows who is creating a brick-and-mortar community center that will also serve as a free thrift store and hub for community organizing in the Mariana Islands (a US territory), fueled by the Indigenous Chamorro diaspora in Pennsylvania and across the country.

“I’m an Indigenous Chamoru organizer, social worker, and artist from the island of Luta, now based between Pennsylvania and the Marianas. My work lives at the intersection of healing, systems change, and creative resistance — always rooted in community care.

My AAWPI project mobilizes Inafa’maolek — the Chamoru value of reciprocity and mutual care — as a community organizing framework to address basic needs access in Luta. Beginning with Project Prom and expanding into a community needs assessment and resource-sharing model, this work lays the foundation for a long-term Community Hub: a place grounded in cultural preservation, intergenerational connection, and collective care.

Being q***r, nonbinary, and disabled, I bring my full self into this work. Through art, storytelling, and relationship-building, I seek to reclaim and reweave our communal ways of knowing — where liberation looks like stocked closets, shared meals, and spaces that honor our elders, youth, and ancestors alike.

This is more than a project. It’s a movement back to each other.”

Follow Mona and her AAWPI project:
From Luta, For Luta

09/05/2024

Today, we joined Asian Americans United, APIA PA and the Save Chinatown Coalition in front of Philadelphia City Hall with a clear message for city leaders: NO ARENA IN THE HEART OF OUR CITY!

For two years, our Philly communities have been fighting a proposed Sixers arena that would destroy Philly’s 150-year old Chinatown, and City Council will vote soon on whether to approve construction.

“Our question for City Council and Mayor Cherelle Parker is: Who do you work for? Do you work for the people of this city or do you work for the billionaires who own the Sixers?” - Jenny Zhang/ API PA

We WON’T stop fighting for Chinatown — Join us this Saturday, September 7th from 1pm-4pm for a march and rally to Save Chinatown! RSVP at link in bio.

08/28/2024

🎉 Kamala Harris is showing us all what’s possible and inspiring women of color to believe they can run for office and change the game – And we are HERE for it!

The day after Vice President Harris accepted her historic nomination for President, Politico talked to our Founder/Executive Director Diana Hwang about running for office and the new way of building political power in our Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities that we’re trying to cultivate:

“Everything that you experience in the world - racism, sexism, discrimination - it’s all jumbled up and directed exactly at you. Your campaign is a microcosm of everything you experience in the world

…So we need to create the opposite - build a new kind of political power that is rooted in love and joy and lifting each other up.”

Check out the full article here: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/women-rule/2024/08/23/will-kamala-harris-rise-inspire-other-women-to-join-politics-00176147

06/13/2024

Our AAWPI team is everything.🌟 Meet - and help us celebrate - our incredible State Directors and the love, care and brilliance they bring every day to our AAWPI community: Anna Thomas (Pennsylvania), Aubrey Tang (Massachusetts) and Victoria Huynh (Georgia)!

Anna Thomas (she/her) is a community organizer in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. Born and raised in the Lehigh Valley, Anna grew up in a family of immigrants from Malaysia and India. She currently serves as a Bethlehem Township Planning Commissioner. In 2022, Anna ran for State Representative in Pennsylvania and came within 700 votes of winning the seat against a long-time incumbent.

Aubrey Tang (she/her) was one of AAWPI’s inaugural 2022 National Civic Impact Innovators and helped revive Asian Community Development Corporation’s (ACDC’s) Chinatown Backyard in Boston Chinatown. She is the Co-Founder and President of The Chinatown Project, a grassroots organization dedicated to documenting Boston Chinatown as it continues to evolve. They were recognized as one of Boston’s Most Influential Community Organizations by GetKonnected!.

Victoria Huynh (she/her) is a Community Organizer with more than 18 years of experience working within international, immigrant, and refugee communities in the state of Georgia. Victoria (AAWPI ‘23) is the Founder/Executive Director of the Georgia AAPI Hub, which supports the capacity building of AAPI nonprofits in Atlanta, and previously served as a Senior Vice President/Chief External Affairs Officer at one of the largest AAPI nonprofits in the Southeast. Victoria currently serves as a Commissioner with the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

06/11/2024

Meet one of our Massachusetts Fellows, EMILY GOROZA ☕️, Founder/Director of Panethnic Pourovers, a progressive community cafe library in Quincy, Massachusetts - a city of over 45% people of color. Seeing an urgent, growing need in our communities, Emily is piloting the Safe House Program to support vulnerable youth who have unstable housing.

“While the cost of living rises and rent continues to skyrocket, young adult populations are at the receiving end of a broken system. Many kids graduating high school or attending college don’t actually have the full support of their families: generational and cultural differences between children of immigrants and their parents create friction and hostility within the home, as well as conflicting religious values with LGBTQIA+ identities. As we see an increase in vulnerable youth populations being removed from their homes either by force or by choice due to unsafe living conditions, we have watched this same population suffer through homelessness due to the inability of the state and the structures around us to support these populations. Thanks to financial support from AAWPI, our At-Risk Young Adult Pilot Program is the start of Panethnic Pourovers’ efforts to alleviate this issue at its core. Through this pilot program, we aim to assist with and provide transitional housing for these community members, assist participants in achieving financial and social independence, and meet individuals where they are to alleviate their struggles.”

Follow Emily and her project:

PC:

05/30/2024

Meet CLAIRE WAN 📚, one of our Pennsylvania fellows, who is part of launching the brick-and-mortar Ginger Arts Center, a radical safe space and community center for youth organizing, oral history and multimedia education in the heart of Philadelphia’s endangered Chinatown. Claire is leading community-engaged teaching and learning efforts anchored in literacy and media at the Ginger Arts Center.

“Chinatown has always been the epicenter of my life. As the child of a single mother, who was a Vietnamese Chinese refugee herself, I was raised and grew up in the back alleys of our public row houses, the neighborhood Flushing library, and severely underfunded and overcrowded after-school programs. As a child and young person, I spent countless afternoons in the public library, cozied up in the corners or between the bookshelves, losing myself in the stacks of books. There were few places I could spend my afternoons and early evenings when school ended, and when returning home wasn’t an option.

Youth in Philadelphia have increasingly fewer spaces to gather and to be in community. With the increase of surveillance and policing of young people, such as in spaces like the Fashion District malls, and with the decrease of public funding for our schools, libraries, recreation and community centers, young people are expressing their demands to cultivate these third spaces by them and for them.

As an educator, researcher, and organizer, working alongside youth organizers in the Students for the Preservation of Chinatown and Students against Sixers Arena, I am supporting the opening of their Ginger Arts Center, which is a “a radical safe space and community center for the youth, located in the heart of Chinatown for: youth organizing, oral history, and multimedia”. My AAWPI project within the Ginger Arts Center hopes to bring community engaged teaching and learning to more youth and the public through a series of youth-led teach-ins and workshops, several community documentary screenings and conversations, and a collaborative API books and media collective.”

Follow Claire and her project:

phl

05/28/2024

Meet one of our Pennsylvania Fellows, JEANNINE KAYEMBE ORO, an award-winning Filipino and Congolese multimedia artist centered on environmentalism and racial justice. Their practice ranges from film to agroecology. Currently, Jeannine is exploring if any key experiences in the Blasian community hold foundational solutions toward Black and Asian solidarity.

During the AAWPI fellowship, they are producing and directing “Blasian,” a short film dedicated to the Blasian woman's experience by uplifting their voices, stories, and art.

Follow Jeannine and their project:

05/28/2024

We are so excited to see these four leaders who have been incredible supporters and partners to the Boston Women's Fund over the years named as some of the Boston Magazine's 150 Most Influential Bostonians of 2024! Congratulations to Diana Hwang, Founder and Executive Director of BWF grantee partner, Asian-American Women's Political Initiative (AAWPI); Jackie Jenkins-Scott, Interim President of Roxbury Community College and BWF Senior Philanthropic Advisor; Julia Mejia, Boston City Councilor, At-Large; and Makeeba McCreary, President of New Commonwealth Fund and BWF Ex-Officio Board Member.

Read more about their work and the other honorees at bostonmagazine.com/boston-power-list-2024/

05/24/2024

CONGRATULATIONS 🥳 to our Chief Operating Officer Darlene Vu for being named a 40 UNDER 40 rising star by the National Association of Asian Pacifics in Politics and Public Affairs (NAAPPPA)! The list honors Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) who are changing the face of politics and political leadership and excelling in a space where we are often invisible.

As AAWPI’s first Chief Operating Officer, Darlene Vu co-leads our work to expand nationally to critical states where AAPI voices and votes can make a difference! We wouldn’t be where we are without her.

Join us in giving her all the flowers for who she is and what she does every day for our community. Congratulations on being a 2024 NAAPPPA 40 Under 40 honoree, Darlene - we know this is only the beginning! Check out the link in bio to read about it.

05/23/2024

Meet one of our Georgia fellows, MONICA NUTH🪷, who as President of the Cambodian American Association of Georgia, is redefining pageants for young AAPI women. Instead of a traditional beauty pageant, the Miss Cambodia of Georgia Pageant focuses on building sisterhood, developing young women’s leadership, and connecting the next generation with their Cambodian heritage while also fostering a culture of youth civic engagement.

“Growing up, I yearned for access to Cambodian cultural activities and organizations. It wasn’t until the formation of the Cambodian-American Association of GA during my young adulthood that I was exposed to these opportunities and our community. Through the Miss Cambodia of Georgia Pageant, we aim to empower our women, help them connect to their roots, and foster sisterhood. These courageous Queens and contestants are not just faces but also emerging leaders, networking and representing among the broader population to raise awareness of our presence and voices. We hope this sets the stage as a callout for future generations, affirming that we are not a hidden, silent group, and we aspire to provide a support system that understands their dreams and journey.”

Follow Monica and her project:
- Personal IG:
- Cambodian American Association of GA:
- Miss Cambodia of GA:

PC:

05/23/2024

Meet one of our Georgia fellows, MONICA NUTH, who as President of the Cambodian American Association of Georgia, is redefining pageants for young AAPI women. Instead of a traditional beauty pageant, the Miss Cambodia of Georgia Pageant focuses on building sisterhood, developing young women’s leadership, and connecting the next generation with their Cambodian heritage while also fostering a culture of youth civic engagement.

“Growing up, I yearned for access to Cambodian cultural activities and organizations. It wasn’t until the formation of the Cambodian-American Association of GA during my young adulthood that I was exposed to these opportunities and our community. Through the Miss Cambodia of Georgia Pageant, we aim to empower our women, help them connect to their roots, and foster sisterhood. These courageous Queens and contestants are not just faces but also emerging leaders, networking and representing among the broader population to raise awareness of our presence and voices. We hope this sets the stage as a callout for future generations, affirming that we are not a hidden, silent group, and we aspire to provide a support system that understands their dreams and journey.”

Follow Monica and her project:
- Personal IG:
- Cambodian American Association of GA: Cambodian-American Association of Georgia
- Miss Cambodia of GA:

PC: Aubrey Tang

05/07/2024

Meet ESTHER CASTILLO, one of our Pennsylvania fellows! In the midst of a national anti-DEI movement and relentless attacks on women of color, Esther is creating a groundbreaking leadership development program for women of color that centers healing, community care and joy in this critical moment.

“As the founder of the Racial Healing Initiative for Women of Color (WOC) Leaders, I'm on a personal mission to bridge the gap between racial justice and mental health support. Drawing from my background in government, nonprofits, and academia, coupled with hands-on experience in community-based mental health initiatives, this endeavor embodies my passions and expertise.

This initiative isn't just a project; it's about creating a nurturing community where WOC leaders find refuge, solidarity, and resources to navigate their roles with resilience and compassion.

Having walked the path of a WOC leader myself, I understand the struggles we face—the emotional toll of confronting systemic injustices and the pressure to effect change. It's time to address not just the external battles but also the internal ones—the need for emotional resilience, self-care, and healing.

Through this initiative, which consists of two 6-hour retreats, we cultivate a space where WOC leaders thrive—a sanctuary for growth, connection, and collective care. Incorporating somatic healing, mindfulness, creative play, and artistic expression, we empower WOC leaders to embrace vulnerabilities and strengths. This journey enables them to become better leaders who prioritize healing for themselves and for the communities they serve.”

Follow Esther and her project:estherc

PC:

Asian-American Women's Political Initiative (AAWPI)

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