API Summit 2023 | AAPIs In the Racial Justice Movement: Honoring Our Past, Charting Our Future

This year’s API Summit was a transformative day for the Asian Pacific Fund and our Bay Area Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Through conversations, connections, and hugs, we brought together leaders and activists to reflect on AAPIs in the racial justice movement and build forward. Thank you to our speakers for shifting our mindsets, our sponsors for creating the space for us to have these important conversations, and to all attendees who responded to the call for the community to build forward together.

Click here to watch the API Summit 2023 panels.

Thank you to all our amazing speakers for sharing their knowledge and passion for our community Courtney-Savali Andrews, Rob Bonta, Nikki Dinh, Jason Finau, LCSW, Stephen Gong, Vivian Yi Huang, Pam Tau Lee, Jenny Leung, Julia Liou, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Estella Owoimaha-Church, M.A., Robert L. Phillips, Thu Quach, Karthick Ramakrishnan, Susana Rojas, Peggy Saika, Leafa Taumoepeau, and Helen Zia.

Special thanks to our generous sponsors Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, Blue Shield of California Foundation, CSAA Insurance Group, a AAA Insurer, Levi Strauss Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and Sugar Bowl Bakery.

Thank you to the Akonadi Foundation, Bank of America, and Comcast for providing additional support.

Here are just a few of the many great quotes from the day:

“Writing and narrative is a form of activism. We need to complicate our stories, not just have more stories.”

Helen Zia, Writer and Activist

    “There are no voiceless. There’s the deliberately silenced or unheard. Let’s abolish the conditions for voicelessness.”

    Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author

      “Reject the zero-sum fallacy. There’s enough success to go around. We don’t need to take it from each other.”

      Rob Bonta, Attorney General of the State of California

        “You have to lead from a scar, not a wound. A wound is a place of hurt. A scar is a place of strength.”

        Carolyn Wang Kong, President & Executive Director, Asian Pacific Fund