Our internship is highly selective and each intern is selected based on their demonstrated academic and personal excellence, demonstrated leadership capabilities, and a commitment to serving their community.

Arali Weeranarayana Seneviratne

Recent Graduate, University of California, Los Angeles

Arali (she/her) graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2021, majoring in philosophy. Studying philosophy allowed her to gain a deeper appreciation for the many varied approaches that can be taken when aiming to get at a more objective truth. In turn, this understanding of the need to recognize individual bias informs how she thinks about the ways political opinions and policy ideas can be more effectively and persuasively communicated to the public. She is originally from Northridge, California. As a daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants and a first-generation college student, Arali is interested in looking to build stronger policy solutions to the issues that uniquely impact Asian Americans and immigrants that come to the United States looking to build a better life. Furthermore, Arali’s prior experiences as an after-school coach working and bringing resources to underprivileged students in the San Fernando Valley have informed her strong commitment to bringing wide-ranging policy solutions to issue areas impacting the education system. After graduating, Arali also served as a congressional intern in Congressman Adam Schiff’s district office in Burbank, California where she cemented her desire to pursue civic work. She deeply appreciated and enjoyed the opportunity to work with the public to point them in the direction of much-needed resources and hopes to do similar work on a larger scale throughout her career. In the future, Arali hopes to attend law school and do the legal work needed to make progress in education policy, immigration policy, and voting rights, among other areas. Arali looks forward to advancing her understanding of how to better enact impactful change and serve her community by participating in the 2022 CAUSE Leadership Academy.

CARISSA CHENG

Rising 2nd Year, Stanford University

Carissa Cheng is a rising sophomore at Stanford University. She looks forward to combining her interests in behavioral economics, racial inequality, and philosophy to reimagine more equitable, human-centered markets. At Stanford, she is a member of the Taiwanese Culture Society, Christian fellowship MakeNew, and English tutoring group Habla. Carissa began to critically think about her Asian American identity when she encountered a vibrant Asian American Affinity Group at the NAIS Student Diversity Leadership Conference. There, she heard her life experiences put into words: the model minority myth, the perpetual foreigner, the rampant homophobia in Asian communities. She realized she was not alone in experiencing them, that in fact, these issues were part of a bigger system of oppression and division. Inspired, she created her high school’s Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Affinity Group, providing a place for identity-based self-discovery and cross-cultural discussions about sociopolitical topics. Some of her fondest memories include organizing schoolwide festivities showcasing the rich diversity of the APIDA diaspora, as well as speaking at faculty trainings about the need for greater APIDA visibility in school curricula. As a student filmmaker and avid reader, Carissa also reflects on how art empowers her community. Works she found deeply impactful include On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, “Unspoken” by Patrick G. Lee, and “Family Portrait” by Jingqiu Guan. During Carissa’s senior year in high school, she co-curated a virtual gallery of Asian American student art from across the country, and compiled interviews with those artists into a documentary showcasing their stories. The gallery and documentary can be found here: youthnity.art Carissa is thrilled to be part of CLA because she looks forward to building a network of fellow youth activists and growing under the guidance of mentors who have dedicated their lives to the Asian American community.

Charlize domingo ott

Rising Masters of Science student at the University of Southern California

Charlize Ott graduated from the University of California, Berkeley this spring with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a minor in Journalism. She grew up in Half Moon Bay, California and attended high school at Saint Ignatius in San Francisco, where she danced competitively and participated in her school's plays and musicals. Her passion for performance led her to join CalTV, UC Berkeley's student-run media organization, in the beginning of her first semester of college. Charlize's experiences as a journalist for both the news and entertainment sectors of CalTV inspired her to take an interest in journalism and multimedia. She is captivated by newer technology and sees platforms like Tik Tok and Snapchat as mediums in which future generations consume the news. This fall, Charlize will attend the University of Southern California as a graduate student to pursue a Master of Science degree in Digital Social Media. Through her courses at Berkeley, Charlize has developed an interest in learning about how media representations of minorities impact our society. She understands how harmful depictions in the media can be, with specific regards to members of the AAPI community. Her mother’s experiences in the states as an immigrant from the Philippines has inspired her to use media as a powerful tool to foster empathy through sharing stories in an increasingly polarized world. With social media and technology becoming more accessible and popular each day, Charlize hopes to contribute to making platforms a safe and healthy space for users of all ages, sexes, races and genders. She desires to master an effective way to deliver current events and important news to the youth, while keeping the content equally as entertaining as it is educational. Charlize is so grateful to be a CLA intern in order to discern how media can be a useful tool for political advocacy and to learn more about the individual experiences within the 2022 cohort!

Isalys Mendoza De La Rosa

Rising 3rd Year, University of California, Irvine

Isalys Mendoza De La Rosa is a rising junior at the University of California, Irvine double majoring in Political Science and Sociology. She was born in the Philippines and immigrated to America at the age of 5. She grew up in Moreno Valley and is the first person in her family to go to college. During her time at UCI, she has been involved with CALPIRG and the Southeast Asian Student Association (SASA). CALPIRG is a student-led, non-profit organization, on college campuses that work to tackle a variety of social issues through grassroots efforts. As co-tactical coordinator, she helped gather over 2,000 signatures for a renewable energy campaign. She has also been involved with SASA for two years, in her first year, she was a mentor for a high school outreach program, Southeast Asian Leaders (SEAL) and in her second year, she became the program coordinator. SEAL is a high school mentorship program that encourages high school students to pursue higher education through an emphasis on cultural awareness, mental health, and personal development. Through this program, she has been able to give back to her community by uplifting and encouraging high school students to make positive changes within their communities. As a first-generation college student, she did not have much assistance in applying to college. So having the opportunity to help high schoolers who are in the same position as her is something she holds close to her heart. In her free time, she enjoys thrifting, cooking, baking, and working out. She also enjoys being outdoors and going on long walks. Mental health and self-care are something she always tries to prioritize and she often emphasizes the importance of it in her work. During the CLA this summer she hopes to further expand her leadership skills and learn more about the issues the AAPI community faces. She hopes she can utilize the skills she learns in the academy to bring more positive changes to her community.

JEREME LUA

Rising 5th Year, California State University, Channel Islands

Jereme Lua is rising Senior at California State University: Channel Islands majoring in Sociology and minoring in English. Jereme is also an aspiring community organizer and arts educator living in Historic Filipinotown eager to apply his creative and research practice into community-centered efforts to preserve the histories of ethnic enclaves in Los Angeles and fight for their futures in the midst of rising gentrification and housing crisis. Jereme has worked in multi-disciplinary institutions where arts and education intersect, including museums such as the Kidspace Museum in Pasadena and the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, where he engaged visitors and researched the value of museums as an alternative political space that brings different communities together. Most recently, he conducted original research on an almost-forgotten neon sign for a butcher shop in the Grand Central Market in Downtown LA, which had significant ties to the Filipino community before it was replaced by other storefronts. As an emerging artist, Jereme acts and writes poetry as a way to raise awareness to vital issues like colorblind racial ideologies and mental health stigma. At Cal-state Channel Islands, he is leading initiatives that champion the success and well-being of men of color on campus, partnering with administrators and other students to increase retention rates in academic and professional spaces. He is also developing educational programming for Filipino youth on how to unpack inter generational trauma and adopt mental health practices. Jereme is excited to intern with CAUSE as a way to elevate his experience in the art and academic fields, bridging them with advocacy and policy-making strategies. By doing so, he hopes to gain a holistic approach in his research, activism, and art-making, such that they can make an impact in personal-, community-, and governmental-levels.

LUCY PAN

Rising 3rd Year, Pomona College

Lucy Pan is a rising junior at Pomona College double majoring in Cognitive Science and Asian American Studies. She is originally from the Bronx, New York, and lived there her entire life before starting college. Lucy's interests include mental health awareness for APIDA youth, educational access, and social + environmental justice in low-income communities of color. Born and raised in a low-income immigrant family in New York, one issue that had always been important to Lucy was educational access for students from underserved communities. Before starting college, she began volunteering with A Better Chance, an educational equity organization, and later worked there as an intern for two consecutive summers (2020 & 2021). Lucy led workshops with students in A Better Chance's summer academies, which connected youth of color with independent schools around the country. Currently, at Pomona, Lucy served as a mentor for AAMP (Asian American Mentor Program), where she hosted weekly dinners with a group of first-year mentees and helped support them in their transition to college. She was also part of AAMP's Mental Wealth Committee, which planned wellness-related events throughout the year and compiled resources for APIDA students at the Claremont Colleges. Additionally, Lucy currently does research in a cognitive neuroscience lab on campus that focuses on bilingual cognition. As someone who grew up speaking three languages, she is interested in learning more about the cognitive processes behind language learning and its ties to cultural identity. Lucy is incredibly grateful to be part of the CAUSE Leadership Academy this summer and is excited to meet the cohort! As an ethnic studies major, she hopes to learn more about issues within the APIDA community and ways to support community members through organizing and political advocacy.

NICOLE IWAMASA

Rising 3rd Year, University of Southern California

Nicole Iwamasa is a rising junior studying Political Science with a minor in Law and Social Justice at the University of Southern California. Nicole hopes to center an intersectional approach to justice and equity within AAPI communities. During her previous role as a paraprofessional educator with the Hawaii Department of Education, she realized how much race and disability could intersect, and the extent to which language barriers and a lack of culturally competent outreach could prevent families from interacting with the Medicaid Reimbursement Program. Language access thus became a large part of her current work at California’s Department of Fair Housing and Employment, where she works on the expansion of language access programs as well as the inclusion of culturally competent resources through community-based organizations for communities that have suffered civil rights violations. Last year, through the Thematic Honors Writing Program, took a look at the villainization of Asian mothers, presenting her findings at a conference on their role as seen through gender and race through a reading of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. At USC, Nicole is the Assistant Director of External Affairs for Model United Nations, a member of the Mock Trial Program, and an advocate in Agents of Change, the nation’s first undergraduate civil rights clinic. From the Rules of Procedure in a General Assembly Committee to the Federal Rules of Evidence to grassroots methods of organizing, she has had the opportunity to develop knowledge of many legal frameworks that she hopes will help her advocate for marginalized communities in the future. In the future, Nicole plans on attending law school and working as an attorney for an AAPI advocacy network. This summer Nicole hopes to become a more engaged and effective advocate for long-term AAPI justice.

NICOLE LU

Rising 2nd Year, New York University

Nicole Lu is a rising sophomore at New York University majoring in Public Policy and Global Liberal Studies, concentrating in Politics, Rights, and Development, with a minor in Public Health. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California and is passionate about immigration and education policies and analyzing human rights through an intersectional lens, as well as promoting AAPI representation and civic awareness. At NYU, she has been involved with Washington Square News, the university’s independent newspaper. She has served as a News Desk writer reporting on issues ranging from graduate labor union strikes to newfound scientific research on the Sun. Her philosophy that centers her interest in journalism is her passion to pay attention to and be active in the range of issues impacting the community she is in. Building on her value for activism, she has served as an English Language Teaching Assistant at Brooklyn International High School where she has worked with immigrant youths to understand assignments and reading and writing fluency, using Spanish when necessary to explain academic concepts. Outside of college, she has served as a volunteer teacher for the past six years under Teaching and Sharing Skills to Enrich Lives (TASSEL) where she currently works one-on-one with a TASSEL teacher to help build pronunciation, reading, writing, and conversational English fluency. In the past, she has also led phonics lessons and corrected essays for underprivileged Cambodian youth. She became involved with the organization during high school where she previously served as the President of the South Pasadena chapter. In her free time, Nicole enjoys exploring new sites in New York as a flaneur or biking around the city. She spends much of her time with her cats when back home and collecting all-things cats when away.

OLIVIA FRENKEL

Rising 4th Year, Willamette University

Olivia Frenkel is a rising senior with one last semester at Willamette University majoring in Civic Communication and Media. As a multiracial Asian American in a predominantly white institution, she became particularly interested in communication theory relating to liminality and identity formation. After working with Asian American professors in this space, she realized the importance of representation in education and hopes to pursue a career in academics. Though Olivia’s time on Willamette’s campus was limited, she held a variety of positions over those few semesters. In her first two years, she swam on the Varsity Women’s team while holding a position as both a writer for the on-campus newspaper and a freelance journalist for a local magazine in the Bay Area. Olivia also worked for Global Partners for Student Success where she tutored and mentored refugee students from Afghanistan. Additionally, she was commissioned by two professors for two zines; one regarding The Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and the other containing an autoethnographic collection of poems and essays regarding multiraciality and Asian American stereotyping. In the spring of 2022, Olivia enjoyed studying abroad in Rome at John Cabot University where she interned as a research assistant. She co-wrote an article focused on bridging sustainability with media literacy and specifically on algorithms and their effect on climate misinformation and disinformation. As a result, Olivia’s new perspective on mis/disinformation has catalyzed interest in the subject. In her last semester at Willamette, she is co-teaching an introductory class on media, technology, and society centered on project-based learning techniques. Olivia Frenkel is a Chinese, Filipino, Jewish, German, and Spanish first-generation student from the Bay Area. She is excited to call Los Angeles her home and to bring her identity and knowledge to the 2022 CAUSE Leadership Academy while growing as an individual and as a civically engaged Asian American.

PANHIA VANG

Rising 4th Year, Lawrence University

PaNhia Vang is a first-generation rising senior at Lawrence University. She is majoring in political science and minoring in gender studies. PaNhia was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota and is the oldest daughter out of seven siblings. She is a proud Hmong-American and has a strong commitment to advocacy work. During her senior year of high school, PaNhia worked as an intern under the League of Women Voters (LWV) and the Asian American Organizing Project (AAOP). Through these internships, she learned how to become a better advocate for her community, as well as other communities in Minnesota. She also learned how to effectively research, door knock, phone bank, and build trust among community members. Later, she interned for the OCA Asian Pacific American Advocates (OCA) and the Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote). She also gained similar skills in her internships in LWV and AAOP. On the other hand, PaNhia was the president of the Pan-Asian Organization (PAO which aims to promote awareness and empowerment in the AAPI community on-campus. Furthermore, she was also the co-chair of the Committee On Diversity Affairs (CODA) which aims to assist diversity organizations and the BIPOC community on-campus. After college, she hopes to work in a non-profit organization before going to either graduate or law school. Eventually, her dream goal is to run for office one day and be sworn into Congress. PaNhia is very excited to meet the rest of the CLA internship cohort and staff members, as well as explore LA with new friends!

PISITH KEO

Recent 4th Year, University of California, Berkeley

Pisith Keo is a rising senior at the University of California-Berkeley, studying Business Administration with an interest in developing integrating skills in marketing and finance. Being an international student from Cambodia, he was initially challenged by the cultural differences in both living conditions and learning environment in the US, but these later became the empowering tools that inspire him to grow and take pride in his identity.

Before transferring to UC Berkeley, Pisith started his journey at Cañada College in San Mateo County. There, he established the Cambodian Student Association which aims to promote a diverse learning environment and represent the voices of Cambodian students on campus. Pisith’s involvement with many college activities led him to be elected as a Senator in the Student Government where he got a chance to push the Multicultural Initiative to the administrators, which was then endorsed and approved by the college’s Vice President, in a mission to support students with culturally diverse backgrounds, one of which is the AAPI community.

Coming to UC Berkeley, Pisith continues his engagement in mentorship and student leadership by volunteering for the Envision Haas program which builds a supportive system for prospective transferring students who need assistance and guidance to enhance their UC application, especially for the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

This summer, Pisith is looking forward to broadening his knowledge of social engagement and empowerment through CAUSE within the CLA program as he hopes to work alongside great individuals with shared values of advocating for the voice of the AAPI community while learning more about the surrounding issues as well as exploring tactically effective solutions.