Courage Class with Dr. Lindsay Kwock Hu

About the Episode: Kuleana is a Hawaiian word for responsibility, and award -winning journalist and author Sara Kehaulani Goo describes it as generational: what we owe those who came before us, those beside us now, and those who come after. In her memoir Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai’i , Sara follows her family’s effort to hold onto land in Hana, Maui, granted to her an...

In 2022, Eldest Daughter Syndrome went viral on social media. Women from all kinds of backgrounds started sharing what it was like to grow up translating government documents, raising younger siblings, and being their parents' emotional support, often before they were old enough to say no. Dr. Sandy Lee wrote her dissertation on Chinese American eldest daughters while being one herself. Going...

Episode Overview Growing up as the eldest daughter in an undocumented Taiwanese immigrant family, Angela Wu LMFT learned to make herself small: no needs, no negative emotions, and always anticipating everyone else's needs before they spoke them. Today she's known online as The Sassy Asian Therapist, a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps AsianAmericans reclaim the voices they w...

Episode Description: Pooja Bavishi didn't wait for permission. The founder andCEO of Malai, the Brooklyn-born ice cream company infusing South Asian spices like cardamom, saffron, and rose into an all-American treat, sat down to share her journey from feeling like she wasn't "enough" for her own culture to building a profitable, multi-location business rooted entirely in it. We t...

Episode description: For most of my adult life, self-trust wasn't something I built. It was something I outsourced to a man. My dad drove the money bus. Mike drove the next one. I just managed everything inbetween, and I thought that was normal, because that's what I watched growing up. In this episode, I go back to the version of me who was skyrocketing blood pressure, a marriage on the r...

Episode Overview I open Season 4 with the story I don't usually tell all the way through: a decade of overperforming and people-pleasing that I carried straight into my marriage, three young kids and a husband whose job had him halfway around the world more than he was home, and the exhaustion I convinced myself was just "how it's supposed to feel." This episode is about what it...

Episode Description: In this season finale, Lindsay sits down with John K. Liu, lawyer, engineer, and co-founder & Chief Customer Officer of Privaini, an AI-powered privacy risk management platform, for a conversation about success, parenting, and the recipe so many of us were handed growing up. Raised in San Francisco's Chinatown by first-generation Chinese immigrant parents, John followe...

Episode Overview: What if the financial lessons that helped our familiessurvive are only part of the story? Growing up, many of us learned to work hard, save ourmoney, and live within our means. These are values rooted in love, sacrifice, and responsibility - but they may not be the only lessons we need to build the lives we want today. In this episode, I sit down with Chin Ru Foo - executivecoach...

Episode 31: From Assumption to Agreement: How We Build Something Different (Part II) Last week, Lindsay shared what she learned from more than 40 Asian American women during a burnout workshop. The women weren't simply asking how to recover from burnout - they were questioning the assumptions that had quietly shaped their lives for years. In Part II, Lindsay explores what comes next. How do we...

Episode Overview: A few weeks ago, Lindsay facilitated a burnout workshopfor more than 40 Asian American women through the Asian American Mental Health Project. She arrived prepared to discuss stress, recovery, boundaries, and the lessons she learned from her own experience with burnout. Instead, she left thinking about something entirely different. What surprised her wasn't that the women wer...

Episode Overview: The future our children will inherit looks dramatically different from the one we were prepared for. For many Asian American families, the roadmap was clear: work hard, get good grades, go to college, find a stable career, and build a secure life. But in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, rapid technological change, and evolving career pathways, that traditio...

Episode Overview: In this episode of Courage Class , Lindsay sits down with Dr. Jaki Yi, psychologist, researcher, educator, and Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington Bothell , for a wide-ranging conversation about Asian American mental health. This conversation covers a little bit of everything - in the best possible way. Together, they explore the Model Minority Myth...

About the Episode: What if the pressure to be successful, agreeable, hardworking, and "good" was never really yours to begin with? In this powerful conversation, NYU professor and researcher Dr. Dale Maglalang joins Courage Class to unpack the hidden history behind the model minority myth, how it was constructed, why it persists, and the very real consequencesit has on Asian American ide...

About the Episode: Growing up, many of us were never taught the language of trauma, healing, mental health, or self-compassion. Therapy? Nope. Healing? Nope. “I love you?” Nope. Emotions? Absolutely nope. In this conversation, licensed marriage and family therapist Soo Jin Lee, LMFT joins Courage Class to explore intergenerational trauma, identity, belonging, perfectionism, burnout, and healing -...

About the Episode: What if the symptoms women are often told to “just live with” are actually signs of a healthcare system failingthem? In this powerful episode, Lindsay sits down with Dr. Somi Javaid - board-certified OB/GYN, TEDx speaker, and founder of HerMD - to unpack the truth about perimenopause, menopause, hormones, sexual health, and why so many women feel dismissed inside traditional hea...

About This Episode: Ko Im - award-winning storyteller andcreative - grew up in Guam, where a place where diversity didn't need to be announced, it was just lived. Then she stepped off a plane onto the US mainland for college and realized, for the first time, that race was political. That early experience - of belonging without having to fight for it - quietly became the foundation of everythin...

About the Episode: This week, I am joined by Shuling Yong - award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has screened at Sundance,Tribeca, and Netflix. Her newest documentary follows two public school teachers navigating the TEAACH Act - the first legislation in the country to require Illinois schools to teach Asian American history! For generations, the AANHPI narrative has been constructed wit...

Episode Overview: In this episode, Alice Zhang (CEO) and Nisha Desai (COO), co-founders of Anise Health , share how they’re reimagining mental health care for the Asian community through culturallyattuned, personalized care. As a venture-backed, minority female-led team, they also open up about the realities of entrepreneurship - from navigating a system that wasn’t built for them to building one...

Episode Description: What if service isn’t something you do at the end of your career - but the strategy that builds it? In this episode, Lindsay sits down with Dr. Komal Kapoor, founder and CEO of SpeakerPost , a platform connecting industry professionals with classrooms around the world. We talk about what it really means to lead with purpose, trust your inner voice, and build something meaningf...

Episode Overview: What if the secret to becoming a better leader and communicator wasn’t about performing perfectly - but about bringing all of your skills to meet the moment? In this episode, Lindsay sits down with Courtney Pong , owner of Rozzie Square Theater, Boston’s only AAPI-and woman-owned improv theater, and a leadership trainer who teaches communication and collaboration to Fortune 500 c...

Episode Overview: In this episode of Courage Class, I sit down with leadership coach and Big Asian Energy author John Wang to unpack the internal pressures many Asian American professionals face in the workplace - from perfectionism and people-pleasing to staying quiet in meetings and overworking to prove worth. We explore why leadership isn’t about becoming louder or more aggressive, but about un...

Episode Overview: In Part 2 of our leadership mini-series, I’m getting personal. This solo episode is about women, leadership, and the lessons I wish I had known at the very beginning of my career - especially as an Asian American woman navigating systems that were not designed with us in mind. I share what the research says about systemic bias, burnout, unpaid labor, and the cultural forces that...

Episode Overview: In this week’s episode, Lindsay speaks with Alex, Chief ProgramOfficer at LEAP, about how dominant leadership archetypes can cause Asian and Asian American professionals to feel pressured to choose between cultural values and workplace success. Alex describes the “invisible tax” of self-erasure, burnout, and imposter syndrome, and frames LEAP’s impact as helping participants real...

Episode Overview: Lindsay talks with Amy Furuyama , a certified therapist and AASECT-certified sex therapist , about why sex feels so hard to talk about in many Asian communities - and how to change that without shame. Amy breaks down the cultural roots of silence, then shares practical tools for communicating desire, starting with self-knowledge and moving into teamwork with your partner. You’ll...

Episode Overview: This week, Lindsay sits down with Dr. Yishan Xu , founder of Mind & Body Garden Psychology, an adjunct clinical faculty member at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a board-certified Behavioral Sleep Medicine specialist (DBSM). Together, they dismantle the myth of the “perfect” sleep routine - especially in high-achieving, hustle-conditioned cultures. They explore wh...