“To Dara and all, I just wanted you to know…I see you,” said one of our 2023 CAUSE Leadership Institute (CLI) Fellows, Bernadine Tavita, during our first Pod Meeting together. Bernadine said this important comment during an introductory exercise where everyone was asked to share a moment that we had felt seen by our community and how it impacted us. As we were asked to respond one-by-one, many of us came across a major hurdle where we could not recount a moment we had felt seen. Bernadine, after recounting her own experiences within her local Pacific Islander community, wanted to make sure that all of our cohort knew that we were both on this journey together and that everyone knew they felt included. Her comment would become a defining moment that would repeat itself as an important theme of this workshop and how our cohort would bond closer together with one another.
This was our third overall meeting together and became a powerful session that would both test and push our cohort to share our stories in relation to one another and our identities. Third Settlements’ Principal Chirag Menon led and moderated this session that was themed around ‘The Hero's Journey”: a 12-step concept in storytelling which would have the hero disrupted by a call for action (departure), overcome their ordeals (initiation), and come back transformed (return). The thematic purpose of this Pod would be to better frame our own stories. In addition, there was a secondary purpose in teaching us all lessons in empowering our own unique journeys as well as learning similarities between one another.
Although I was familiar with The Hero’s Journey from a storytelling perspective, I learned how we could apply this concept to ourselves and our own branding. For instance, in one exercise, Chirag broke us out into breakout groups and we quickly answered several questions about our childhood. This exercise had us thinking on our feet and opened us up to tell both fun and touching stories about our childhoods and communities. We were able to find shared common values within our diverse communities and open up to one another about our learnings and commonalities from cute and silly childhood names to similarities in our journeys trying to assimilate into unfamiliar communities.
We wrapped up our session with a unique and mystical story that Chirag used in many of his workshops about two siblings who journey away from their tribe and end up dramatically changed by the end. We were asked as a cohort to think about how we relate with this tale – whether through the plot, characters, or themes. I personally was deeply moved listening to many of my cohort’s interpretations of this story and how that revealed many of our personal and deep thoughts. Our cohort brought up topics about familial trauma, our cultural journeys especially in the context of the American dream, and the work we have done within our communities.
By the end of the Pod, we had transformed as a group unsure about being seen by our communities to trusting one another in our shared experiences in identifying ourselves differently. We bonded by opening up and sharing our intimate and vulnerable selves and not shying away from difficult topics and following our values. As Bernadine mentioned at the outset of the Pod, we were amongst a shared community who now know that they are seen.
The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of CAUSE or the CAUSE network.
Written by John Wie, Leadership Institute 2023 Fellow
The CAUSE Leadership Institute (CLI) for professionals is a 6-month-long certificate program that prepares and equips mid-career professionals with the tools, skills, and network to lead and advocate for the Asian Pacific Islander community.