NAAAP Boston News
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Spotlight: Board of Directors Member, Lesley Chuang
Lesley Chuang is a civil litigation defense attorney in private practice in Boston. She joined NAAAP Boston in 2012 after graduating from law school. Lesley began as a volunteer and later served as the Administrative Officer from 2012 to 2013 and the Vice President of Programming from 2013 to 2014. During her tenure as the VP of Programming, Lesley was a founding member of the NAAAP Boston Toastmasters Club and subsequently received both the Competent Communicator and the Competent Leader awards. In 2015, Lesley was elected to the Board of Directors and she is currently serving her second term on the Board. She additionally serves as a board mentor for both Women in NAAAP and Successful Parents in NAAAP. Passionate about leadership development for Asian American women, Lesley helped launch the Lean In Circle program for Women in NAAAP (“WIN”) in 2014. The mission of WIN is to build competent and confident women leaders within NAAAP Boston and within the AAPI community. As the VP of Programming, Lesley sought to invigorate WIN by adding the Lean In Circle as a regular peer-to-peer mentoring program. In May 2014, Lesley and Mandy Xu, a former NAAAP Boston leader, invited a group of twelve women with diverse backgrounds to participate in the pilot Lean In Circle. In the first few months, the pilot Circle covered topics such as a book club discussion on Lean In, lessons learned from failure, body language, and personal branding. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Based on the success of the pilot Circle, Lesley applied and received a grant from NAAAP National to formally launch the Lean In Circle program for WIN in November 2014. Recognizing that many of NAAAP Boston’s members are working parents, Lesley helped launch Successful Parents in NAAAP (“SPIN”) in November 2016. SPIN aims to engage and support AAPI parents by providing culturally relevant resources and cultivating a community to help them succeed in their professional and personal lives. Since SPIN’s inception, Lesley has hosted SPIN playgroups and secured speakers and venues for workshops. Born and raised in Taiwan, Lesley spent five years in New Zealand as a teen. She received her B.S. from Union College, M.A. from Princeton University, and J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law. Lesley is also a graduate of the Commonwealth Seminar. Lesley’s passion project, the Common List, showcases the diverse organizations serving the AAPI community in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Through volunteering at NAAAP Boston, Lesley has expanded her professional network, developed leadership skills, and had countless opportunities to give back to the Boston AAPI community. She is proud of NAAAP Boston’s commitment to leadership, education, accountability, and diversity and looks forward to helping NAAAP Boston become the premier leadership organization for AAPI professionals in Greater Boston and beyond. -
Shop on Amazon and donate to NAAAP Boston's Scholarship Fund!
Support today’s Asian American youth and NAAAP Boston by shopping at Amazon! With every purchase you make, a portion of the proceeds goes to our NAAAP Boston Scholarship Fund, used every year to reward high school seniors with exceptional leadership and high academic achievement. Make sure to shop at smile.amazon.com/ch/04-3168838 and share this post for everyone to see - your co-workers, friends, family - and tell them how to get amazing deals and generate donations! -
Spotlight: Vice President of Sponsorship, Swan Lee
NAAAP Boston is pleased to announce our new Vice President of Sponsorship, Swan Lee. Swan first joined NAAAP with the desire to connect with the Asian community in Boston and to make an impact in her community. With a strong interested in volunteering, she learned about the organization’s Community Service Committee and WIN’s (Women in NAAAP) Lean-In Circle program through her co-worker Lee Ann, former National Liaison. She started out as a volunteer and eventually became the Director of Community Service. Through her time with NAAAP, Swan took on many projects that aligned with her passion. For example, as a first-generation Asian American immigrant, Swan is eager about offering support for underprivileged Asian youth with their transition from high school to college. Her work with the NAAAP mentorship program cultivated her passion, as she matched Asian American professionals with incoming college students to provide them guidance in their first year. She recalls receiving an email from a student who expressed how the mentorship changed his mind-set about social life and internship program as a highlight to her experience. Furthermore, Swan took on leadership opportunities that she would not have had otherwise outside of NAAAP. With the Community Service Committee, she successfully led a team, a skill she could not grow extensively through her professional job. She grew by overcoming challenges: whether it was balancing responsibilities and sharing tasks or learning how to communicate better with the team. Taking on a such a leadership role gave her a chance to connect with her volunteers and make a powerful impact. Outside of NAAAP, Swan is a data scientist at Sun Life Financial, having worked with the company for the last three years since her graduation from Brandeis University. Originally from South Korea, she can be found watching Korean dramas as well as teaching kids how to code, cooking (and more importantly eating), running around Boston, and solving puzzles. Swan encourages others to join NAAAP as she mentions that it was “one of the best decisions I’ve made. I needed motivation to continuously develop myself and this was one of the best ways to do it. Through NAAAP, I coordinated mock interview workshops, interviewed students for Scholarship awards, and attended workshops on how to break the bamboo ceiling. Additionally, I made some amazing friends through those events and we make sure to have fun! With my Community Service group, we held a retreat at Cape Cod, organized a Friendsgiving board game night, and successfully completed in Escape the Room. I have countless memories from NAAAP and you will too when you join us!” Post written by Michelle Chung.
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