September 2018 - Leaping Into Nonprofit
As I was taking the too-many-meetings, a new question arose.
What do you know about running a nonprofit?
Answer again: Nothing.
Well, nothing really beyond what our lawyer provided us and what I read on line.
I decided to leave corporate executive assisting and move into nonprofit, with the sole goal of gleaning all the knowledge I possibly could from a successful organization and applying it to Inception.
Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics (LEAP) at the time had been around for 37 years. (Rating: I can't even score this one, but it's an even number.)
I had a relationship with LEAP. Many years prior while I was working at TRW, I had written and produced a video for one of their awards banquets as TRW was a corporate sponsor. The compunction that I had only been asked to volunteer my time to do this because I was Asian aside, the LEAP honorees were doing great work (Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches [A3M], in particular), and I was happy to have participated.
What I got at LEAP was a spectacular education. My colleagues, CFO Grace Toy and VP of Development Nancy Yap, essentially taught me everything they knew through both the running of the organization and by providing useful tips when they saw Inception going astray.
When I was first feeling my way through, Grace was so generous, letting me bounce ideas off of her on finances and schooled me on the areas I was naïve in. The financial piece of music education still kills me, but at least I have slightly more knowledge of what I’m doing wrong.
Nancy and I have different leadership skills. On the DISC test, she is an S (stability) and I was 100% a straight D (dominant); although these days I have trended more toward D/I (influencer).
Nancy had successfully produced multiple large scale events for LEAP, and I would need to gain her trust working with her. Because let’s be real. Often times any experience you have doesn’t mean a whole lot to someone you haven’t worked with until you prove yourself.
However, once we gain each other’s trust, there is an incredible power in collaboration, especially in collaboration with people whose leadership styles may not be the same as yours.
In our first big event together, LEAP’s annual gala, I believe we both discovered that we did not have to lead everything as long as we understood that the other person had it covered. And while Nancy and I had individually led great events independently, together we were able to create something special.
Nancy is now the Executive Director of the Center for Asian Americans United for Self Empowerment (CAUSE). She should have been an E.D. a long time ago, and they are lucky to have her. I've told her she will run for Congress or the Senate one day, and I will quit my job to run her office.
Grace and Nancy gave me the backbone I needed, not only to build Inception, but also to move onto my next day job.
The lesson here is simply collaboration only makes it better.
The LEAP gala also gave me one of the most special musical moments I’ve ever experienced. In 2019, we were in the middle of the Trump presidency, and the lead singer of the band that was hired refused to sing the National Anthem in protest.
The gala was being held in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles.
I have never been particularly honed in on my Japanese-American roots. While my dad’s family had gone back to Japan during World War II, my mom’s family was relocated to Heart Mountain in Wyoming. While in camp, at the start of each day, detainees recited the Pledge of Allegiance in a show of loyalty to the United States, despite being incarcerated as US citizens.
You simply could not protest Trump in this space, in a Japanese-American space. So when we were unable to find a replacement singer, I was given the privilege of performing an arrangement of the "Star Spangled Banner" at the gala. It was definitively an out of body experience as I got to honor the legacy of those who came before me in Little Tokyo.
The following week I would accompany my mom, dad, and uncle (with my nephew Kai) on a pilgrimage to Heart Mountain, site of their internment camp. While museums in Los Angeles do an amazing job of honoring the Japanese Americans who were relocated, there is nothing as poignant and evocative as climbing that mountain with my uncle and reliving the memories with my mom in Wyoming. It gave the performance of the National Anthem more weight and made it the most significant of my life.
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