Community Dinner 2020 🍽

APASA Community Dinner, as told from the perspective of APASA intern Leon Zha.

Unlike many of our other signature events, APASA’s Community Dinner is a fairly new event to USC. Meant to connect students with Asian Pacific American community leaders in a small, personal setting, I had the pleasure of participating in the third, and very successful, iteration of Community Dinner this year: 

The hubbub of conversation rose like bubbles, fizzing merrily against the golden light that filled the TCC Forum. Justin Kawaguchi stood at the front of the room, beaming proudly at what he, and the APASA Community Dinner team, had pulled together: sixteen guest speakers from all walks of life conversing with students. Ranging from a doctor to a Commissioner on the LA Board of Public Works to a Cup O’ Joy representative, each guest held court at their respective tables, offering advice and explaining their life journey to the small group of 4 or 5 students around them. After thirty minutes, the students rotated seats, beginning the cycle anew. 

I really loved Community Dinner because it was a chance for me to talk to people outside my field of study, which lies solidly in the STEM field. Hearing the contrast in perspectives between someone that works with humans that struggle with addiction or somone that manages Japanese cultural summer camps and my own gave me new insights into the way I perceived the world. My friends who attended also had a blast getting to know interesting people like James Choi, the founder of Dulce, Claire Imada, a Communications Associate at the non-profit Kiero, and Lisa Thong, the Chief Operations Officer of the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging.