The LEAP Podcast

We end our Season 3 podcast with a special finale episode with our esteemed guest, Min Jin Lee. This episode was streamed from our 2023 Leadership Awards Celebration, “Finding Our Way” where the theme was designed to highlight the accomplishments of those who have defied odds to protect their culture and identity, as well as ensure our stories are being authentically told and preserved. Min Jin Le...

Listen to this special 3 part episode with hosts Linda Akutagawa, LEAP President CEO and Dr. Yon Na, Organizational Psychologist as they interview Karla Thomas Deputy Director of Empowering Pacific Islander Communities(EPIC). EPIC was established in 2009 by a group of young Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander (NHPI) leaders who recognized the urgency to address the growing needs of NHPI familie...

This episode is a continuation of exploring bi-racial identity. In this episode, our hosts interview Curtiss Takada Rooks, Ph. D., a critical race and ethnic studies scholar in Asian and Asian American Studies at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). Currently, Dr. Takada Rooks serves as the LMU Asian Pacific American Studies program coordinator teaching courses in multiracial identity, contemporary...

In the finale of the 3 part episode, the exploration of bi-racial identity ends with LEAP’s Assistant Director of Leadership Development, Akemi Mechtel. Akemi has a decade’s worth of experience working across non-profit and profit sectors. After graduating from Augsburg University in Minneapolis, she started her career in education working as a tireless advocate for accessibility and equity in the...

The increase presence of API stories in film is evidence of how our stories of identity are shifting. Tune in the LEAP Podcast Episode 6 with Linda Akutagawa, LEAP President CEO and Yon Na, organizational psychologist discuss with Center for Asian American Media(CAAM) Director of Media Don Young who is a longtime documentary production executive and advocate for Asian American storytelling. Don in...

Kana is a narrative strategist and nonprofit leader with 10 years of experience launching programs, organizations, mobile apps and digital campaigns. In addition to Asian American Futures, Kana has worked on the May 19th Project, the Butterfly lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy at Race Forward, Emerging Radiance, Omidyar Network and YCore. Kana holds a BA in ethnic studies and an MBA, both from...

Dr. Vishayka Desai, who spent her childhood in post-Independence India, her graduate and doctoral education in the U.S. and had a globe spanning career as an Asian art scholar, President of a major cultural institution and is now a special advisor to the President and scholar at Columbia University, shares her story of her childhood, pieces of her identity that she used today and the methodology o...

Lee Herrick is the the 10th California Poet Laureate, the first Asian American in his role, and is the 2nd guest on LEAP’s Season 3 podcast. He is the author of three books of poems, Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead and This Many Miles from Desire. Herrick was born in South Korea and was adopted to a family in California. In this episode, he shares about his pursuit for the arts part...

Linda Akutagawa & Yon Na's first guest speaker is Kim Sunee, food editor, author, and chef. Kim Sunee was born in South Korea, raised in New Orleans, and then lived in France for ten years. She has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Ladies’ Homes Journal, People, ELLE, and Glamour. Her writing has appeared in Food & Wine, The Oxford American, Cooking Light, Garden an...

Linda Akutagawa, President and CEO of LEAP, and Dr. Yon Na, organizational psychologist and consultant, are your cohosts for Season 3 of The LEAP Podcast!   In this episode, get to know a bit about Linda and Yon as they share their personal reasons for hosting and how this season will be centered on exploring identity within a leadership context, and how Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians...

There is no one better to wrap up Season Two than Linda Akutagawa , President & CEO of LEAP. In this episode, Catt Phan and Tammy Tran speak to Linda about her family of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Survivors and how generations of violence against the API community has shaped her leadership to passionately advocate for a seat at the table for all API leaders. We discuss how we cannot depend on one l...

Born to activists who went to church with Martin Luther King, Jr. and organized in the Farmworkers Movement with Cesar Chavez, Rob Bonta inherited leadership from parents and paved his own path to being the first Filipino American to be California's Attorney General. In this episode, Tammy Tran and Catt Phan speak to California's chief law officer and the “attorney for the people." The Attorney Ge...

In this episode, Tammy Tran and Catt Phan speak to Anjuli Amin, Ph. D , about the cultural mosaic of the API community, how cultural nuances affect our mental health, and how we build resilience in our communities as well as ourselves. Studies have shown that a strong sense of ethnic identity is linked  to lower suicide risks  and predicts  higher resilience  in the face o...

With the new year on the horizon, we end the last episode of 2021 with a conversation focused on creating work that is community-centered, asset-based solutions to ensure meaningful outcomes and lasting change. Bo shares her experiences about the classic immigrant child struggle of being the interpreter and translator for our elders while also figuring out her own voices as the first generation. A...

One of the foremost global leaders on social impact and innovation, Sonal Shah is the founding President of The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). She has also started and led social impact efforts in academia, government, and the private and philanthropic sectors for over twenty-five years. TAAF is a convener, incubator, and funder committed to accelerating opportunity and prosperity for Asia and...

We're starting Season 2 off with a bang with Bing Chen . Bing is an impact entrepreneur and new world builder, leveraging storytelling and systems to deliver greater socioeconomic equity. He is President and Co-founder of Gold House , the premier collective of Asian founders, creative voices, and leaders dedicated to uniting the world’s largest populace–Asians & Pacific Islanders–to enable mor...

‘Alisi Tulua, M.S. , is the Project Director for the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) and the Data/Communications Lead for the Southern California Pacific Islander COVID-19 Response Team (SoCal PICRT) . Systemically Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs) in the United States (US) are hidden because da...

Coming together at the intersection of AAPI, LBGTQ+, and intersectional leadership, partnerships, and support for one another, this amazing conversation closes the 1st season of the LEAP Podcast in the PRIDE month. Stacia Kato-Takayesu and Erik Takayesu, the dynamic wife and husband duo, recall the moment of being called out by their transgender child which experience transformed their relationshi...

Melanie Ramil is a Filipina-American who participated in LEAP’s Leadership in Action summer internship program as a student in 2005. She now runs Emerge California, an organization committed to helping women get elected to political offices. Melanie charts her journey from a LEAP internship to working for then-US Senator Kamala Harris and to advocating and empowering women to run for offices Melan...

Liji Thomas is South Asian and an inclusion and diversity executive for the Beauty Counter. She discusses what it means to truly be inclusive, how we help each other by creating space for others, and being courageous enough to take leaps of faith in our careers that can transform organizations and communities.  Liji offers advice on negotiating your worth in a professional context and explore...

Tammy Tumbling is an African American leader who has a corporate and non profit background, has been a mentor to both Tammy and Tami at different times in our career and now the COO to one of the largest philanthropic foundations in Southern California. In this episode, we talk about what it means to walk in our purpose and having the courage to persevere and leading even when we are not asked and...

Susan Jin Davis and her daughter Sophia Jin Malatesta share the joys and challenges facing Asian and biracial families in the United States. They discuss cultural identity and leadership development for Asian-Americans, and navigating challenges in raising children in biracial families. The mother and daughter reflect on their upbringings in different generations and settings, empowered with multi...

Tami Bui and Tammy Tran share how their friendship, personal journeys, and conversations with women in power have led them to starting a podcast with LEAP. They share how they met, how  their journeys share similarities and also are different and yet how they’ve stayed true to their friendship and how it's helped the many sides of their lives -- as wives, mommies, career women -- and how this...

With the rise of hate crimes and violence against the AAPI community, it is important to unpack what has been happening during the pandemic and how it started even before. In March 2020, Manju Kulkarni co-founded Stop AAPI Hate, the nation’s leading aggregator of COVID-19-related hate incidents against AAPIs.  Manju shares her personal leadership journey and how her family’s legacy of speakin...