This is a long overdue blog post, thanks to Ebeh for commenting a question! It gave me the courage to stick my hand up and ask knowing that I would be reporting back to you all about the experience.

Kalpen Modi was the emcee for the hour and a half agenda at the Eisenhower Executive Building. I was taken aback by how young and friendly the white house staff members were. When I was walking to the building (more like rushing as I was supposed to be there at 4:15 and had gotten to the entrance at 4:20), I greeted the person going through security check in front of me asking if they were attending the AAPI Intern briefing. He answered with a very friendly smile and said yes. I later realized in an hour that who I had just mistaken for an intern was Ray Rivera, the Director of External & Intergovernmental Affairs, Dept of the Interior.

I twittered throughout the briefing as a reminder to myself of what I had considered to be the noteables and also to be able to share with friends on twitter and fb while the event was going on to get their feedback on what to say to such impressive people! All in all they were very lively and approachable, each presenter who only had 5-10 minutes to speak shared excellent stories and really made an effort to connect with us in the audience. It was refreshing to see public officials humbling themselves and speaking to us so genuinely. Speakers at the briefing included: Kalpen Modi, Tina Tchen, Rachel Haltom-Irwin, Kavita Patel, Candace Chin, Ben Chang, Arun Chaudhary, Gautam Raghavan, Charmaine Manansala, Vicki Tung, Ray Rivera, and Buffy Wicks.

To sum it all up they all talked about AAPI representation in the White House and how honored we are to have a true AAPI representative that understands the essential need of diversity in our President. They stressed an importance of youth organizing, having a strong jobs pipeline for AAPI talent in the administration from junior to senior staff, the challenges AAPIs have overcome and still face in politics (read: perpetual foreigner stereotype and “funny names”), and especially to remember who we are and the communities that we represent.

The briefing really revved us up to get back out into our communities and organize. When it came to question and answer of course there was the one intern who decided to ask Kalpen about his choice and experience as an actor which Kalpen respectfully sidelined and refocused back onto questions about the administration and its agenda. When I asked about the status of WHIAAPI I was told that President Obama is keeping true to his campaign promise to revitalize the WHIAAPI that had disappeared during the last administration (he who must not be named). I didn’t get an answer as to who may head the new initiative but I think I heard that there was a final draft of the initiative in front of the president. The last takeaway of the event was the United we Serve program à http://www.serve.gov/ and to apply to be a White House intern.