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The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 9: The Teacher Role Isn't My Essence

In ninth and final installment of our interview, yoga teacher Charu Rachlis discusses her deep alignment with and lack of attachment to her role as a yoga teacher, and explores what might be next for her.

Sarah: What is the best part of teaching yoga?

Charu: Oh my gosh, the joy, love, and friendship I receive––this beautiful heart exchange that happens effortlessly. As I said earlier, I’m a shy person. I choose to spend a lot of my time quiet and alone. But when I step into that arena of teaching, I’m not focusing on myself. I feel natural in that role.

Sarah: It seems like you already feel deeply fulfilled. What are you curious to experience in the next phase of your life?

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Charu: That’s my question for myself right now. I’m 62. Since I turned 60, I’ve been noticing subtle changes in my body, manifestations of the aging process. I feel the changes and I see them too. I’m not in a fight with this process. It’s nature. I love nature, and I learn from it.

I’ll see what resonates. I don’t have a lot of clues yet, but I trust that my next steps will make themselves known when the time is right. One idea is to offer yoga classes for people ages 50 and over, so I can share this exploration of the aging process with others. I also imagine living closer to nature and having a dog or two.

Sarah: What do you wish most for yourself?

Charu: I am so honored to have been given the opportunity to teach for the past 25 years and I hope to continue this amazing journey. But if my path changes and at some point I stop teaching yoga, that’s OK, because I know the teacher role isn’t my essence. Ultimately what I wish is that no matter how my life transforms, I continue to open to clarity, love, and truth, more and more over time. That’s my wish for myself.

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The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 8: Machines Spilling Out Teachers

In Part 8 of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis , she discussed her concerns about the trend toward commercialization in yoga training and shared advice for entering the field.

Sarah: How does the need to earn a living interact with the spiritual approach you take to yoga?

Charu: Right now, that is a bit of a conflict for me. I’m not someone who says people don’t need money. Money is energy; money is love; I welcome money. But I don’t like the commercialization and corporatization of yoga.

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Sarah: What is your impression of yoga teacher training? If you could ask for any changes to the teacher training programs you’re familiar with, what would they be? 

Charu: I’ve been invited to be a trainer in some of those programs and my answer has been no. There are many fabulous trainers, but I’m bothered by the machine of teacher-training programs spilling people out after two or three months and giving them the message that they are prepared to go and teach. It takes a lot more than that to form a true teacher. There’s intense marketing to get people to sign up for these training programs. I don’t want to participate in that. People have encouraged me to start my own training program, but I don’t feel called to do that.

Sarah: What advice do you have for people who want to be yoga teachers or who are beginning to teach?

Charu: Being a yoga teacher is so personal. Maybe I’m old school, but I went through a lot of deep searching to be the teacher that I am. Maybe that isn’t the only way. I don’t know exactly. I encourage people who want to become teachers to understand that they are entering a space of great honor. I encourage new teachers to speak from a place of unity, peace, harmony, and truth––not just repeat someone else’s ideas. I encourage them to be true to their own journey.

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The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 6: Grab the Right Computer File

In Part 6 of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis , she discussed her approach to teaching yoga.

Sarah: What form of yoga do you teach and why?

Charu: I don’t have a specific style that I follow. I’ve studied Iyangar, Ashtanga, and Shadow yoga. I have found what really resonates with me from each of these schools. I always practice,so I feel like I have a body intelligence that naturally filters everything I’ve learned to create my own teaching style. 

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I don’t consciously program my classes ahead of time. I never repeat a class. Obviously I repeat yoga poses—that’s just the nature of yoga—but the way I put them together is always different. What I do in any given class is both in-the-moment and based on my 25 years of experience. And my teaching continues to evolve.

Sarah: How so?

Charu: I’m more and more interested in creating a healing circle, an energy field where others can come to recharge. It’s like a meditation practice for me; my intention is to hold the field without manipulating it. I’m not in charge. Maybe I can explain it by comparing it to a download. Imagine that I have a computer inside me. When I enter the class I feel in my body what pose to guide the class through next, and because I’ve been doing this for so long, I can just reach in and grab the right computer file. “OK, from this pose we’ll move to this pose.” But that computer metaphor is way too mechanistic and linear to describe this creative process, which is magic. My teaching happens at the soul level.

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Sarah: Do you still seek out yoga training?

Charu: Yes. I attend Shadow yoga classes. Shadow yoga is a beautiful and strenuous practice, an inwardly centered experience that really called my name.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 7: A Waterfall of Inspiration

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 5: Yoga Is My Second Child

The fifth part of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis picks up with her move away from Berkeley’s Nyingma Institute. She describes falling in love, giving birth to her daughter, and meeting key mentors on her path to becoming a yoga teacher.

Sarah: Tell me about moving on from the institute. Where did you go?

Charu: I felt I needed to be out in the world, but I didn’t want to go back to Brazil. I told my friend Sue, another student at the institute, that I was ready to move out and get a job. She said, Look no further; my mother needs someone to take care of her. We can pay you in cash. So I moved out, into the basement of a house on Harmon Street in Berkeley with two Polish friends who left the institute at the same time as I did. I worked Thursday nights through Monday mornings taking care of this wealthy 94-year-old woman. Her name was Mrs. Medway. She was a lovely, funny lady from Chicago, who was losing her short-term memory. She’d ask, What is it that you do for a living? I’d say, I take care of old people. She’d say, Oh, they must love you. She would tell me the same stories over and over.

At some point I started feeling very tired of that. I told my housemates I needed to be with people my age and have some fun. One of them said, Why don’t you come with us to this group that meets in Tiburon on Thursday nights? They explained to me that the group focused each week on an aspect of relationships. The attendees broke into little groups, shared with one another, and then meditated. Then a therapist who led the group would play wonderful music and everyone would dance together. I said, sure, I’ll go. My friend Sue, Mrs. Medway’s daughter, said she would stay with her mom while I went and that I could even borrow her car. Later on, I found out that it was an Osho Rajneesh group, but at the time I had no idea.

So anyway, I go with my friend to this beautiful house in Tiburon. When I walk in I see this really cute guy. I mean, there were lots of beautiful young people there, but I saw him. He invited me out. That was my future husband, Sahajo. We’ve been together from that moment to this day—almost 25 years.

With mentor Thomas Michael Fortel.

With mentor Thomas Michael Fortel.

Sarah: You’ve written about your relationships with yoga teacher Thomas Michael Fortel and meditation teacher Leslie Temple Thurston. Tell me about these relationships and how they helped you further develop your practice.

Charu: I went with my roommate from the Nyingma Institute to her friend’s birthday party. The friend turned out to be Thomas, and from that point forward we developed our own friendship based on a mutual passion for self-inquiry. I started taking taking yoga classes from him and he mentored me. Later on, when he moved to Big Sur, he invited me to take over all his classes at Mindful Body. That was the beginning of my career. From then on he continued to open doors for me, inviting me to teach with him at Esalen, as well as in Europe, Alaska, and Mexico. So I have eternal gratitude for him.

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I met Leslie later, in 1994, after I’d left the institute. I attended a darshan that she offered. A darshan is an ancient Indian practice in which a teacher transmits love and peace to their students. I felt an instant connection with Leslie. In 1996 I enrolled in her four-year teacher training program, which focused on non-duality. At that time I was just starting out as a yoga teacher. Like Thomas’s mentorship, Leslie’s training opened my heart. and deepened my studies and practices.

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Sarah: Can you briefly explain non-duality for people not familiar with that concept?

Charu: We live in a dual world in which everything is characterized by binaries: good/bad, right/wrong. To study non-duality is to investigate the aspects of life that are not at the extremes and not rigidified. It’s to see the grey shades between the black and white.

Sarah: Thanks. So you started this training in 1996.

Charu: Yes. I was pregnant at the time. I have always loved the fact that in the same period in which I gave birth to my daughter, I also gave birth to my vocation as a yoga teacher.

In fact, I wanted to have another kid but I didn’t get pregnant again. I came to see this as a divine plan. Yoga is my second child.

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Getting started as a teacher wasn’t easy, though. I was very timid in the beginning. And it was difficult financially because we had no money for nannies. But Sahajo supported my decision to teach. Little by little, it all worked out..

If you had told me when I was 20, during my dark night of the soul in Brazil, that I would become a yoga teacher later in life, I would have said, I think you’re crazy! It took a long time to find who I was. But at one point an astrologer read my chart and said, Everything will come later for you than for everyone else; don’t compare yourself. I was 39 when I started teaching.

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Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 6: Grab the Right Computer File

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 4: Wow, This Is Me

In the fourth part of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis, we discussed her years living, working, and engaging in intensive Buddhist practice at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, punctuated by a return to Brazil.

Sarah: What was life like at the Nyingma Institute?

Charu: Karma yoga, which is what they practice there, is about hard work and working through your resistence to work. You watch yourself, your mind, your emotions. You watch time. Everything you do all day long is considered an opportunity for practice. I started each day with prostrations.

Charu at Nyingma Institute.

Charu at Nyingma Institute.

Sarah: Can you briefly explain prostrations—their purpose and how they are done?

Charu: A prostration is a devotional ritual that engages the body, mind, and spirit. You chant a mantra such as om mani padme hum, and hold an intention while you physically prostrate yourself. You can go all the way down so you’re lying face down on the floor and then come all the way back up to standing, or you can go halfway, or whatever is right for your body. I stopped doing them daily after I left the institute because sun salutations became my form of prostration—although lately I’ve been doing traditional prostrations for a few minutes at the end of my yoga practice on behalf of my mom, who’s been sick, and on behalf of the world.

But while I lived at the institute I did 108 prostrations each morning, focusing on body, breath, and spirit. During the day I worked for the institute’s printing press, Dharma Enterprises in Oakland. The press had a commercial branch and a sacred-books branch. The commercial branch, which had a regular paid staff, generated the funds that allowed the press to publish sacred books, which were labor intensive but not a money maker. After I’d been there a short time they put me in charge of the sacred books and gave me a staff of several people. I worked 13– to 14–hour days, inhaled toxic fumes from the printing press, lifted heavy boxes, got so many paper cuts. I gave my soul, and literally, my blood! Then I’d come home, have dinner—I always looked forward to the delicious vegetarian meals that were served—and then go to class. The instruction was focused on helping us deal with our relationship to work and all the emotional patterns that working such long hours can trigger. We’d study a particular topic—for example, time, space, and knowledge, or skillful means—for a week or so, and we’d apply the insights from the instruction to how we were doing our jobs. We also met individually with the teachers. They wanted to check in with us, see how we were developing, how we were dealing with the inevitable challenges of working that hard. In our studies we were dealing with a lot of big words and concepts in English, which was a language I was still learning. So in my limited time off, I focused with great intention on learning English, always paying attention to new words and looking them up in the dictionary, and asking my American friends to correct my speech. I was really hungry to learn this new language. It was like I turned off my Portuguese. I wanted to embrace my new life in the States, and English was the doorway.

Sarah: It sounds like the institute was getting a damn good deal.

Charu: They were.

Sarah: Is there anything about the experience that, looking back, you wish had been different?

Charu: No. I’d do it all again. I felt the whole experience was meant to strengthen me, and it did. It was too much for some people, and they left quickly. But it was one of the most powerful, transformative times of my life. I was depressed and insecure when I arrived, and I grew so much in my time there. And I got incredible feedback from my teachers. I thought, Wow, this is me, I’ve never seen myself like they’re describing me. I learned that I have an incredibly strong capacity to focus and deliver more than what is asked of me.

Don’t get me wrong—it was a very challenging experience for me on every level. I had to go through a lot of resistance—self-doubt, self-pity. One project at the institute involved building 108,000 padmasambava statues that were going to be placed at stuppas on a farm in Odiyan—a retreat center in Sonoma County that is not open to the general public. Sometimes after a long day at the printing press we’d be invited to help out with making the statues. In addition, I found a lot of the people in the community to be very shut down, compared to Brazilians, who are so expressive. I felt isolated and cried a lot. There were moments when I was on the verge of breakdown. Yet at the same time, I made wonderful friends. The Laotian immigrants who worked for the commercial side of the press were very warm. They laughed a lot  and brought delicious food to share with one another at lunchtime, and they would invite me to join in. They were a very loving community. I felt nourished by them; they reminded me of Brazilian culture in a way. I also learned that I could be myself when I met with the teachers one-on-one; I could share with them how challenging the experience was for me.

Charu with one of her teachers at Nyingma Institute.

Charu with one of her teachers at Nyingma Institute.

Overall, my time at the institute taught me how to express myself honestly and speak up for myself. After leaving Brazilian culture, where I had felt so stifled, coming to the States was a chance to discover myself fully.

And I thought Berkeley was the most beautiful, magical place. The institute is right next to the Greek Theater and the university campus. It was a totally different world than anything I’d ever experienced. In my time off from work, I would go to a café and have a cup of coffee and a pastry and then walk miles through campus and down the streets with their beautiful old houses. I knew where every public bathroom was because I would walk all day long. Brazilians will know exactly what I mean when I say I wasn’t used to this life at all.

Sarah: How long did you stay at the institute?

Charu: The first time I was there, I stayed for a year and a half, fulfilling the commitment I’d made. They wanted me to stay but I needed to be with my family again for a while, and I needed a break from the hard work, the loneliness, and the language barrier. It felt like I had been on a sabbatical and I needed to get back to the “real world.”

Sarah: Did you return to the secretarial job?

Charu: No. My family and friends thought I was crazy because most Brazilians would kill for that job. But I was not the same person I had been and I was not about to compromise the new discoveries I was making about myself. So I had no intention of going back to that job. I really needed time for integration.

Returning to Brazil was quite difficult. After that first period at the institute, during which I had worked so hard, I had held the illusion that in Brazil I would have more fun, have boyfriends, go out dancing, all of which I craved at that point. But those three years back in Brazil did not turn out like I had pictured. I was very depressed. I felt I did not belong there any longer. I was a fish out of water. Quite a strange time.

Then, after three years or so, the institute invited me back. I saw that things weren’t working out for me in Brazil, and I knew that if I went back to the institute I could make it work for myself. So I said yes. This time I structured it differently—I made it clear that I wanted to focus on making sacred books and on my studies, and not on commercial printing, although I did still help out with that sometimes.

Sarah: How long did you stay that second time?

Charu: I stayed almost two years. Then I decided it was time for me to move on. I felt that if I didn’t leave at that point, I never would.

Sarah: Why do you say that?

Charu: Because you have all your needs met there—room, board, education, friends, community, and a tiny stipend. But that’s not the life I wanted for myself. I was appreciative and grateful but I needed to venture out. The institute staff were very upset when I announced my plans—they really appreciated my skills and my devotion. But I stuck to my decision.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 5: Yoga Is My Second Child

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 3: In Exile in My Own Country

In the third part of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis, she describes jettisoning promising careers in psychology and theater, discovering meditation, and reaching the decision to move to the U.S.

In Exile in My Own Country

S: Where did you go to college and what did you study? 

C: I attended Universidade Gama Filho in Rio de Janeiro and majored in psychology.  

S: What if anything do you feel you gained from that experience? 

C: It expanded my horizons. I took classes in psychotherapy, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. I’ve always liked to study subjects related to body-mind-spirit.

College graduation night. Charu is in bottom row, second from left.

College graduation night. Charu is in bottom row, second from left.

S: Did you ever practice as a psychotherapist? 

C: After I received my college degree, two friends and I started a career counseling service in Rio de Janeiro. We called it Orienta Servicos Psicologicos. We administered psych tests and used the results to help people choose professions. I did that for about 2-1/2 years. But given how young I was, I didn’t think I had enough life experience to be advising people. After a few years I broke down. I cried and cried and told my friends I liked providing a service but didn’t feel authentic doing it. 

I dropped that. My family was upset with me for quitting. I ended up working in the television industry, like the rest of my family. I did production, scenery, casting. But it was a hard, depressing period. Eventually I quit that work too. I was kind of floating, which concerned my family. 

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My father had friends who worked for an insurance company that was half-public, half-private. It provided good benefits. He said, why don’t you take the placement test? I did, and I passed. I ended up working there for six years as a secretary. I earned a good income, so I was able to work part-time. At first I was taking acting classes in the evening. I attended the best acting school in Rio de Janeiro—and it was not cheap. It was a very rigorous program. If you studied there, you had to give it everything you had. I didn’t have enough time to study in the way that I wanted to without falling behind at work.  

I stopped after two years. The teachers tried to convince me to stay. They said, You have real talent; you could be an actress. And I knew I was good at acting, but I also saw that I wasn’t willing to do whatever it took to keep studying. I decided I wasn’t meant to become an actress.  

Looking back, though, I see that acting helped me later as a yoga teacher. Despite what you might think from seeing me teach, I’m quite shy, and all that improv, singing, and dancing taught me how to be in front of a group of people. 

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My secretarial job allowed me to pay the bills, but it didn’t satisfy me. A psychologist friend told me about a meditation course taught by a visiting Tibetan Buddhist from Berkeley’s Nyingma Institute. I was intrigued, because I’d always been fascinated by how we can transform ourselves and become more authentic. I took the course. I thought, this is everything—meditation, Tibetan yoga, lots of introspection. 

After almost a year, I told my meditation teacher I wanted to keep studying. He said, We’re inviting people to study at the Nyingma Institute. It’s a work exchange; we offer room and board, and we’ll pay for half of your plane ticket. It’s a year-and-a-half commitment. I said, OK. A big doorway opened up for me in that moment. I didn’t quit my job at that stage but I took a leave of absence. 

S: How did your family react to the idea of your going to live in the US? 

C: Oh my gosh, it was a big drama. I had some Buddha statues in the apartment where I was living at that time, and my mom took them and threw them in the trash.  

My dad had passed away by then. We had been close. We both loved books and reading, and he had always told me I was a dreamer. But aside from the pull of that relationship, even though I loved my family, I didn’t feel like I belonged in Brazil. I felt like an exile in my own country. If my dad had remained alive, I don’t know if I would have felt the freedom to leave everything behind like that and take on the world. But being invited to Berkeley so soon after his death felt like a sign that it was time to go.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 4: Wow, This Is Me

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 2: Openness to the Unseen

In the second part of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis, she describes the mix of Catholicism, Macumba, and Candomblé she was exposed to as a child growing up in Brazil, and how she selected elements from each to form her own spiritual beliefs and practices.

Openness to the Unseen

S: Did anyone in your childhood model a spiritual approach to life?

C: Yes, my maternal grandmother. I was her first granddaughter. My mom was busy; my younger sister and I are only 11 months apart. So my grandmother took care of me. She was Catholic, but she wasn’t strict about it; she had her own form of devotion. She connected with the divine, addressed the angels. She never tried to indoctrinate me, never said, Let’s go pray—we’d just sit together and I would feel the divine in the way that she was and in the love she had for me. And she’d speak about the angels to me. She lived to be 90 years old. Till the last moment we had a powerful, loving relationship.

Charu with her parents and younger sister.

Charu with her parents and younger sister.

Charu’s maternal grandparents.

Charu’s maternal grandparents.

S: Given that Catholicism is the dominant religion in Brazil, I’m imagining that everyone there stands in some kind of relation to it.

C: That’s true. My father was an atheist and my mother has always believed in God. She goes to church on holidays and lights candles and prays. I attended Catholic school. I was baptized and did first communion and studied the catecismo. But I didn’t really understand much about the religion. I dropped Christianity after confirmation. When I got to be a teenager I really felt disconnected from Christianity. It didn’t feel right to have this god up there in the air judging everybody. It was very limiting and it felt connected to the dictatorship. It didn’t reflect what I was understanding in my own heart. I wasn’t clear about what God is until much later on, when I took up meditation.

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Even though Catholicism is strong in Brazil, many people including our family also have a strong relationship to the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé/Macumba religion. Candomblé is like an umbrella religion with many different branches, including Macumba. Candomblé is closely connected to African culture while Macumba has more Brazilian flavor to it. They’re both very alive in Brazil, more so than Catholicism.

We would go to Macumba healing circles to participate in cleansing, empowering ceremonies. In this religion, each individual has a special relationship to one of the many orixas, or deities. For example, my orixa is Oxum, the female goddess of sweet waters, which includes lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. She represents love, beauty, intimacy, fresh water. At the healing circles we would receive guidance in making offerings to our orixas. I loved the beautiful drumming and dance that are part of that tradition. Overall, I felt Macumba and Candomblé were much more alive and genuine than Catholicism. A lot of my friends felt the same way.

S: Was your grandmother into Afro-Brazilian spirituality too?

C: Not as much, although she did go to the healing centers. But her son was totally into it––he would receive different deities––and she saw the truth of his experience. She was very respectful of all the ways that people find their own truths.

S: Did Macumba and Candomblé influence your later spiritual path?

C: Absolutely. In Afro-Brazilian religion there are deities of the ocean, the rivers, the rocks, the forests. I developed a capacity to be in touch with these energies connected to nature, and I absorbed the religion’s openness to the unseen. I also really related to the rituals, which are conducted in a circle. When I open my circle in yoga class by guiding my students through a meditation, I feel like I’m channeling the energy of the healing circles I attended as a young person.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 3: In Exile in My Own Country

 

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 1: Let's Move Around; We'll Feel Better

Once it’s safe to nix the social distancing, I can’t wait to return to Charu Rachlis’s yoga class at Yoga Tree on Stanyan Street, where she’s taught for upward of 15 years. Charu’s teaching always works its magic on me, from her warm, lilting voice as she bathes us in healing words during the guided meditations with which she starts each session, to the clear, kind, and often humorous instruction she provides as we move through each pose.

My fellow practitioners are people of all ages and skill levels. Yet the varying capacities of her students seem to pose the slightest challenge to Charu, who somehow helps each of us work our own edge, always encouraging us to infuse focused effort with mindfulness and self-compassion.

One morning, leaving class, another student glowingly commented, “I feel like I’ve just been to church—a really good kind of church.” I knew exactly what he meant. As we spill onto Stanyan, we collectively exude a sense of grounded joy palpably different from the jittery, fried vibe we entered with 90 minutes earlier. What happens in Charu’s class is way more than a good workout.

So I was happy when Charu agreed to talk with me about the path she has traveled to becoming the extraordinarily gifted teacher that she is. I hope our conversation compels and sustains you while we all wait for the day when we can gather in person.

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Let’s Move Around; We’ll Feel Better

Sarah: How long have you been teaching?

Charu: I started teaching in 1996, a little bit before I gave birth. I had a very intense personal yoga practice. I was in a home birth group with some friends—we’d all gotten pregnant together—and they invited me to teach them. I started to teach formally in 1997.

S: Let’s talk about what led you onto this path. I know you grew up in Brazil—where exactly?

C: I was born in Rio de Janeiro. When I was less than a year old, we moved to Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil, to be close to my mother’s family. Then in 1964, when I was 7 years old, there was a coup d’etat. A military dictatorship was installed and it lasted for the next 21 years.

When you live in a dictatorship, all the freedoms are taken away. You can only imagine how this affects a population. The government censored art, books, music. I loved the music of the singer Caetano Veloso; his music was about integrating yourself spiritually, emotionally, and every way possible. He was exiled in London and could not come back to Brazil for many years. That was a huge blow for me. The dictatorship created so much fear. People were tortured and murdered.

I was still living there as a young woman when democracy returned, and it was beautiful—everyone was in the streets. This moment of great joy and people returning from exile and things opening up again. But my feelings about Brazil were deeply affected by all those years of dictatorship. It was like the dictatorship imprinted itself on me psychologically. Everything that I did there was in some way difficult. When I came to the States, every door opened up in a magical way.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When the coup d’etat happened in 1964, my father (who worked as a piloto de navio, a cargo ship pilot, for the oil and gas company Petrobras) decided we should move back to Rio de Janeiro. That was where his family lived.

S: Why did he decide that?

C:. My guess is that, seeing how the dictatorship was limiting access to opportunities, he felt that returning to Rio and working hard there to advance his career would allow him to make our life as good as possible given the tough circumstances. So we moved back to Rio de Janeiro and he studied in his spare time and eventually became a captain.

S: What was it like for you to move back to Rio de Janeiro?

C: I was extremely close to my mother’s mother, Mercedes. Leaving her was terrible. And life in Rio de Janeiro was completely different. Rio Grande was a tiny, peaceful town and Rio de Janeiro was a big, bustling city, but it was still a nice place to be—not as hectic as it is now.

S: Were you able to maintain your connection with your maternal grandmother after your family moved away from her?

C: Yes, very much so. Our family would visit her every school holiday. Later on, when my brother and sister and I were teenagers, we began to go see her by ourselves.

S: I know from reading your website bio that even as a child, you felt a lot of joy in movement and you developed an understanding of the healing properties of somatic awareness.

C: From the beginning, I felt the need to do some kind of movement. I seem to have come into this world knowing that the body in motion releases mental and emotional tension and balances us, and that we feel better as a result. My mom told me that when I was five or six years old, I’d be on the floor with my legs forward, or out, or all the way over my head. I had a few ways of stretching. She’d ask, What are you doing? I would tell her, I’m calming myself, I’m being with myself. From the time I was 13, even younger, I would walk on the beaches in Rio de Janeiro. I would feel the strength in my legs, and the energy I was receiving from the sand and the sun. I’d breathe in the prajna from the ocean very consciously, even though I didn’t call it prajna. Then I’d jump into the water to cool off and I’d feel a sense of oneness. I would describe what I was feeling to my brother, sister, and friends. I’d encourage them to join me—especially my brother and a good friend, who were a little bit overweight. I’d say, That’s OK, let’s move around, we’ll feel better. When I became a yoga teacher much later, my siblings and my friends from that time said, We’re not surprised one bit.

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S: Who most supported your way of being when you were a kid?

C: My parents encouraged me to be a good student, but the physical training I had to find on my own. My parents didn’t exercise. My brother is a runner now, and my sister likes going to the gym, but no one in my family shared my interest in yoga and meditation. When I was 14–15 years old, I went looking for a stretching class. At that time, I did not find any yoga classes. They were all about stretching. I wanted to find a teacher I’d resonate with, someone who loved what they were doing. I’d visit a class and say, No, not this one. Eventually I found a teacher, a young mother with kids. I saw that she struggled to earn enough money through her teaching, but her class was so filled with love and truth. She didn’t speak about spirit but it was there in her presentation and in her way of caring for her students. I told my mom about it, but it went in one ear and out the other. She said, As long as you like it, I’m glad you found it. She was busy raising my younger siblings.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 2: Openness to the Unseen

Managing to Build Bridges - Part 7: You Just Need to Find a Good Husband

Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. In Part 7 Nani describes her post-grad-school gigs, including a tutoring job that led her to a position at LinkedIn.

Sarah: What did you do after you received your master’s degree?

Nani: I felt a little lost. My family didn’t understand why I studied anthropology, so they didn’t have hope that I’d find a job that would pay well. During a visit to Indonesia, I got dengue fever, and when a well-meaning aunt visited me in the hospital, she said, “You don’t need a PhD—you just need to find a good husband.”

For a period after I graduated I was moving around constantly, mostly in the Mission and Chinatown in San Francisco. I house-sat and subletted rooms. While the uncertainty created by my lack of a job and my nomadic lifestyle was challenging, there were things I liked about that period. I got to explore San Francisco in ways I hadn’t done before. 

I also busied myself by volunteering at film festivals. I went from festival to festival—the Asian American International Film Festival in March; the International Film Festival in May; and then in June the Frameline LGBTQ Film Festival. I earned lots of free tickets. At one point I saw about ten films in one week and I remember  feeling so happy. I was really getting into that whole world—cinematography, directors, international and independent films.

I also reached out to someone I’d taken a writing class with at the American Language Institute; she was the director of a nonprofit called Refugee Transitions, where I ended up working part-time as an executive assistant. While working there I dabbled with teaching English to refugee children and with fundraising. Around the same time, I also got another part-time job through Craigslist as a financial researcher at an obscure hedge fund. I had zero experience in finance, but I was curious about the field. In the interview, the owner asked unusual questions like, What do you like to read? I said, Oh, I like to read the New Yorker. It turned out he loved the New Yorker! I ended up working with these guys in the home office of one of them. They spent all day looking at graphs, and I tried to learn from them about the patterns of international stock markets. I’m still a little bit confused about it. But I needed the money and they paid $17 an hour, which was more than I was making at my other job. The CEO was very patient with me, but I got bored there because ultimately, I wasn’t passionate about numbers and graphs. 

In addition to my jobs at Refugee Transitions and the hedge fund, I also tutored high school kids and professionals in Indonesian, and for a short while, I worked at a retail store in the Mission called Currents, selling soap and candles. Currents was a special place. I was making minimum wage and I didn’t feel confident about my retail skills, but the atmosphere was laid-back. Time was slow. They offered gift wrapping. You can go crazy with that stuff. I would silently judge my coworkers: “How could you do those color combinations? They don’t go together!” The owner was Japanese American. He was very moody but we shared some memorable moments. One evening as we were closing up the shop, he and his wife invited me to stay and served me unfiltered, smoky sake and a Japanese tofu dish they whipped up in the tiny kitchenette. It was one of those spontaneous moments of connection and beauty. 

But my main passion at that time was film. One day, while I was volunteering at the Asian American International Film Festival, I was in the bathroom of the Kabuki Theater in Japantown and I started talking with someone who worked at the Center for Asian American Media, the organization that presented the festival. She was Malaysian and we started chatting about our Southeast Asian cultures and similar, Malay-root language. One thing led to another and I ended up working at CAAM as their office manager, quitting all my other jobs, except tutoring Indonesian.

Hosting a high school friend.

Hosting a high school friend.

With friends in San Francisco.

With friends in San Francisco.

CAAM staff photo.

CAAM staff photo.

At CAAM Film Festival with another staffer and filmmaker Leo Chiang.

At CAAM Film Festival with another staffer and filmmaker Leo Chiang.

The tutoring job is actually how I ended up at LinkedIn. After two years at CAAM, I didn’t feel I was being challenged enough, and I was getting frustrated by the slowness of the organization, just like I’d felt at the Learning Assistance Center and Refugee Transitions. I had idea for how to streamline operations and I sensed that there wasn't an interest or the resources to implement such changes.

I made a list of things I needed to do in order to get a new job, which included updating my LinkedIn profile. I went onto the site to fill in more information on my profile, and I listed all my current positions, including “Indonesian Tutor and Teacher.” The next day I received an email from LinkedIn, with a list of jobs I might be interested in, and a linguist position at LinkedIn was one of them. I realized later that the LinkedIn algorithm recognized that my newly updated profile partially matched the qualifications of one of their own open positions. I applied and got an interview.

Next: Do We Want to Be Right in the Dictionary Sense?

Managing to Build Bridges - Part 6: Human Remains and Cultural Artifacts

Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. In Part 6 Nani explains how poetry led her to anthropology.

Nani: Through Kyger’s influence I started reading Snyder, who’s a big advocate for anthropology. His work taught me the importance of knowing where people came from, how they live, and why different groups of people live in such different ways. It felt like foundational knowledge to me. That summer at Naropa I also took a class with Joanne’s friend Peter Warshall. His class also had an anthropological perspective. He took us to a sewage treatment plant to understand how we use water and deal with our waste. He wanted us to think about how our society has evolved to the point it’s at now.

Sarah: Were those experiences what gave you the idea of formally studying anthropology?

Nani: Yes. After a year and a half working full-time at the Learning Assistance Center, I spent a semester at San Diego State, taking prerequisites with the intention of applying to their master’s program in anthropology. But I quickly realized San Diego was not San Francisco. In retrospect I realized I went to San Diego to get away from a relationship that I was trying to end. After six months I returned to San Francisco and started my master’s at SF State.

Grad school was intense. For my thesis work I was drawn to one of the most controversial subjects in anthropology (at least at the time): the repatriation of Native American human remains and cultural artifacts. That exposed me to the ugly side of academic life. I was so surprised that individuals with PhDs could be so wedded to their own view that they would get downright hostile toward each other. The fight was primarily between archaeologists and physical anthropologists on the one side, and cultural anthropologists on the other. Archaeologists and physical anthropologists study the past by examining human remains and cultural artifacts, while cultural anthropologists study the present by working closely with present-living peoples, such as Native Americans. Because of their beliefs, many (though not all) Native Americans oppose the study of their ancestors’ human remains and cultural artifacts. One of the primary issues in the battle was that the two groups adopted polarized stances even though actually, even within each group, there was a range of perspectives and opinions.

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Sarah: How did you cope with the situation?

Nani: I tried to be diplomatic. Even now I still see both perspectives—although I lean toward cultural anthropology, because if you look at the history of physical anthropology, it’s pretty ugly. The physical anthropologists at U.C. Berkeley, including the renowned Alfred Kroeber, took some deeply problematic stances, from saying that the brains of Anglo Saxons were more powerful than those of other ethnicities, to removing Native American artifacts without permission. They excavated something like 2,000 remains of individuals—that’s still in contention to this day.

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I learned so much about the history of various Native American cultures. I hadn’t even known that Native Americans were the original inhabitants of North America. I’m embarrassed to say that, but it’s the truth. That narrative was never presented in Indonesia, given the suppression of critical thinking I described earlier. The Indonesian government didn’t want indigenous Indonesians to be aware of struggles by indigenous populations in other parts of the world.

Ultimately three factors led me to decide to not pursue a doctorate degree. First of all, I didn’t like the politics of the academic world—though I later learned that every field has politics—I just needed to learn the skills to cope with it. Also, as someone who is not Native American, I felt a little out of place speaking about Native American rights and traditions. And finally, I saw the pressure to be a good academic, strive for tenure—for example by writing papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals.

Next: You Just Need to Find a Good Husband

Managing to Build Bridges - Part 5: Poetry Has No Rules

Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. In Part 5 she describes her discovery of poetry.

Sarah: I think you started studying poetry writing with me right after you began working full-time at the Language Acquisition Center.

Nani: That’s right, we met in the fall of 2002.

Sarah: What drew you to poetry?

Nani: I’d read Charles Bukowski in one of my undergrad classes. Back home in Indonesia, poetry had all kinds of rules. When I read Bukowski, I was surprised and impressed that poetry could look and sound like that. “Wow, you can include cuss words and write in free verse about daily stuff!” I saw a flyer in the campus library about your poetry workshops and consultations. I was curious. When I first started working with you, if you remember, I didn’t join a workshop—I was too shy. You had put on your flyer that you also worked with people one-on-one, and that appealed to me. Then after you told me more about your workshops, I realized it would feel safe—I didn’t have to be somebody already in order to join.

Looking back, I can see that being in the workshop was such good practice in terms of learning how to express myself in a more public forum. I also paid attention to how you taught the class. All the students were working in different styles, writing different kinds of work. The course readers you put together introduced me to a lot of different kinds of poetry as well. I remember you had us read a poem about Frida Kahlo and you pulled a biography of her off your shelf; it had lots of reproductions of her work. You introduced me to Joanne Kyger’s work too. I was attracted to it for the same reasons I was drawn to Bukowski—the frankness, the dailiness, no rules. I wanted to write like that.

My undergraduate studies in English literature and Language Studies were more externally oriented. That’s where I first realized that people can express their individual visions and others might read that work. Coming from my culture, that was such new, exciting idea. Then in your workshops I was looking internally at what I had to say. The two approaches went hand in hand.

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Sarah: Tell me about becoming friends with Joanne Kyger.

Nani: After you introduced me to her work, I decided to attend Naropa’s summer writing program, which she taught in. A lot of students wanted to hang out with her but it seemed like they were mostly curious about her personal life and her marriage early on to Gary Snyder. I didn’t feel the need to ask about those things. She told me that she really appreciated that I just wanted to talk about her work. For a while after Naropa we wrote postcards to each other. Then she gave me her email address, and then she invited me to her home in Bolinas. From then on, I visited her about once a year.

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I felt our deepest connection came mostly in relation to poetry—I appreciated her work, and she appreciated mine. In person, we were very fond of each other, but I now wish we had a deeper in-person connection.  At one point she invited me to stay overnight at her place and I didn’t do it. I feel a little regretful knowing that I could have formed a deeper friendship and mentorship. She was very encouraging about my work. She published one of my poems in a local Bolinas newsletter.

Next: Human Remains and Cultural Artifacts

Managing to Build Bridges - Part 2: Such a Bad Kid

Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. In Part 2 of our conversation, Nani describes how a car crash almost kept her from emigrating to the U.S.

Sarah: What led you to come to the States?

Nani: That choice was influenced by the fact that I had two siblings who were already living here. In 1985, when I was five, my brother, who’s 14 years older than I, left to attend college in Connecticut. My sister moved to the US in 1992, also to go to school.

Anyway, fast forward to my teenage years. I wasn’t happy, wasn’t finding my niche. I was such a bad kid, very rebellious.

Junior high.

Junior high.

Junior high. Nani is in the second row up, far right.

Junior high. Nani is in the second row up, far right.

Sarah: What did “bad” and “rebellious” look like?

Nani: I tried smoking several times—I didn’t even like it but I wanted to be cool. I was skipping school—not a lot, not even every month, but it was a lot by the standards of my milieu. My biggest form of acting out was coming home at night later than the agreed-upon time. I remember coming home at 10:30 or 11 and my dad would be waiting outside, very angry, ready to hit me.

At that time in Indonesia, and maybe even to this day, domestic violence was considered a normal part of family life. Husbands hit wives; mothers and fathers hit their children. Not all families were like this, but my family was, and I knew many peers whose families were the same. I forgave my parents for their part in all that a long time ago. Life is complicated and I believe they did their best in the only ways that they knew.

High school.

High school.

High school production of “Indiana Jono” (spinoff of “Indiana Jones”).

High school production of “Indiana Jono” (spinoff of “Indiana Jones”).

Sarah: How old were you when you came to the States?

Nani: Seventeen, after I graduated from high school. My brother who was already living in San Francisco advocated for me to attend university here. My dad later told me more recently that his response to my brother’s suggestion was, Well, this kid is not doing well here; if we send her abroad, she’ll either continue on that path or thrive. They both took a chance on me.

Sarah: What was your mother’s opinion?

Nani: In the back of her mind she was probably thinking, How could Nani ever thrive in a whole new country? Just before I was supposed to come to the US I crashed my parents’ shiny new car, which I’d driven without a license. My mom said, I don’t think we should let her go. I was desperate to leave and I really thought I’d sabotaged the whole thing at that point.

Besides the car crash were other factors that could have kept me in Indonesia. At that time, in 1998, the Indonesian economy was in terrible shape and there were lots of protests. The president stepped down; the US embassy closed. The dollar was three to four times higher than it had been, so studying in the US became way more expensive. I had friends who decided not to go because of that. But my brother had a good job and was prepared to pay for my tuition, have me live with him, give me pocket money.

Sarah: You ended up attending San Francisco State University. Were you already accepted there before you left home?

Nani: No. All I had was an acceptance letter to an intensive eight-week summer language school at the university called the American Language Institute. My visa was only valid for that period, so I could have been asked to go back to Indonesia. But I took the TOEFL at the end of the eight weeks and applied to the university. I met the criteria and was accepted.

Next: I Felt Pretty Stupid

Leadership Without Ego - Part 6: Mayberry with an Edge

Steve Emrick never sought to be a leader—but leadership found him. This is the last in a six-part series of posts based on an interview I conducted with Steve about his three decades running arts programs in California’s prison system. In Section 5, Steve described how arts in the prisons was finally reinstated, addressed critiques of arts in the prisons, and explained how he segued into his current position running all the volunteer programs at San Quentin.

Sarah: You and your family live on the grounds of San Quentin. How did that come about?

Steve: When I applied to transfer from Duel Vocational Institute in Tracy to San Quentin, I told the administrators of San Quentin I needed a house for my family. There are only 85 houses on the grounds, so only a select few get to live here. So when the administrators granted my request, I took it as an acknowledgement of the value of my work.

Sarah: What’s it like to live at San Quentin?

Steve: I think of it as Mayberry with an edge. We live on a quiet, tree-lined street, in a quaint little house that was built in 1920. The gym down the block used to be a schoolhouse. It’s strange because I don’t really engage with most of my neighbors. They think differently about political issues than our family does. But they’re friendly and treat us with respect. We’ve very close to our East Indian neighbors across the street.

I do get to see staff who I work with in a different light because they’re out mowing their lawns. And I’ve been embraced a little more by the correctional staff than I would be if I were just a commuter.

Sarah: Tell me about the “edge” part.

Steve: There’s a gun range not far from our house. You hear the officers practicing. You hear alarms. It’s pretty weird to live prison life 24 hours a day.

Mayberry with an edge.

Mayberry with an edge.

Sarah: Do you ever feel imprisoned?

Steve: Not at the house. But I get called in a lot on weekends, like if there’s problem at the gate with a volunteer’s paperwork.

On the other hand, we live so close to beauty. I can see Mount Tam from my neighbor’s house. And living here has provided great opportunities for my family. Dana has taught at San Francisco State for years and is teaching middle school in Marin now. And my daughter has been able to attend good schools in the area.

Sarah: Do you have any regrets about paths not taken?

Steve: No. Social justice work has changed my understanding of art’s purpose. I learned that art can be a lifeline for someone. When I went through my MFA program, I got caught up in academics and art criticism. Now, I don’t care if someone in an art class can only make a terrible scribble. If they’re making it, I’m excited about it. And if they’re excited about it, I love it.

It hasn’t just changed how I feel about teaching art; it’s also changed my approach to my own art. Before, I’d gotten all stuffy. I thought I needed to have gallery exhibits and be recognized in that way. Now I just want to make things, explore, without the need for it to go anywhere in particular.

I read something about how some Native American tribes pick leaders. The person they choose as a leader isn’t the person who wants to be the leader. I can relate to that. It wasn’t my vision to be running prison art programs or do what I’m doing now. It happened through a series of missteps. But I’ve learned that I do have an ability to work with people. I’ve left a bigger footprint than if I’d had a solo art career and pieces in galleries. I can point to a guy who came from a background of doing harm, and who learned in prison to make classical guitars and still makes them. And they sell for five to 10 thousand bucks each.

Sarah: Describe your art.

Steve: I make fine-art furniture. The pieces are functional and sculptural at the same time. I primarily work in wood but I sometimes inlay stone or other materials. These are one-of-a-kind or limited-edition pieces. It’s different from traditional woodworking, which requires a certain kind of exacting work. This work is exacting too but at the same time it’s more freeform; it evolves as I work on it.

Early in my art career I worked making guitars, and a lot of my pieces are influenced by that—the bending and shaping of the wood; the finishes I use.

Hall Table (black granite and bent laminate plywood)

Hall Table (black granite and bent laminate plywood)

Writing Desk (bent and formed plywood; figured maple veneer)

Writing Desk (bent and formed plywood; figured maple veneer)

Jewelry Box (dyed walnut and maple)

Jewelry Box (dyed walnut and maple)

Sarah: What do you want to do next?

Steve: I haven’t been actively doing my art so I’m not sure how it will evolve. I do want to do pieces about my prison experience. I want to do something related to the huge, rusted iron doors and entranceways at San Quentin. They’re over 160 years old. When I leave the prison, I go through what’s called a sally port, then into a cage, through another door, and finally reach the outside. It’s always a relief to get out of the main perimeter of the prison. Inside, something could happen. Outside, I’m free to walk. I’m always thinking about the parallel between that and art. Art frees your mind. I want to make a doorway. And what would be inside would be an open cabinet, or multiple doors that would open.

Sally port.

Sally port.

Original metal gate.

Original metal gate.

Exit door.

Exit door.

I’d also like to take a printmaking class and work in two dimensions. And I contemplate writing about my experience. But that will have to wait until I’ve gotten some distance from this environment.

Sarah: Where will you live when you no longer live at San Quentin?

Steve: I’ve worked in the prisons for almost 30 years now. At some point I’d like to live closer to nature and have an art studio. I picture having a cup of coffee on the porch and not needing to be anywhere. I’m also looking forward to more family time and more travel.

Sarah: What else would you like to say?

Steve: Once I’m done with this work I’d like to have more interaction with the men I’ve worked with in the past. I’m connected with guys who are doing well, and once I’m not working for the Department of Corrections I’ll be more free to interact with them, do projects with them, and advocate for them. Beyond working with guys I know personally, I want to help support the reentry of inmates into society. I’ve spent all these years focused on helping people inside but there’s a big need for support on the outside. So I’m looking forward to that.

Leadership Without Ego - Part 5: Everyone Everywhere Deserves to Make Art

Steve Emrick never sought to be a leader—but leadership found him. This is the fifth in a six-part series of posts based on an interview I conducted with Steve about his three decades running arts programs in California’s prison system. In Section 5, Steve described how he kept working to reinstate art programs for prisoners even while he was working as assistant canteen manager at San Quentin.

Sarah: So how did it come about that arts funding was finally reinstated?

Steve: Laurie and I started getting access to politicians—Senator Leno and others. But Leno told us, Look, there’s no one with the political will to support arts in prisons right now—how can I ask for money for prison art programs when we’re cutting Medicare and Medicaid to people who desperately need it? But Laurie hung in there. A couple important developments really helped our cause. For one thing, we got California Lawyers for the Arts on board. Their political clout and connections gave us more access to the legislature. Then when Jerry Brown was reelected governor in 2007, that also created a shift, an opportunity. And keep in mind the economy was improving. Long story short, in 2014, the California Arts in Corrections funding was finally reinstated—at six million dollars a year. The highest it had ever been before that was three million. But keep in mind, six million is still only half of one percent of the Department of Corrections budget.

Sarah: That raises a question that was bound to come up in this conversation: What do you say to people who see you as greasing the wheels of a fundamentally unjust system?

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Steve: Progressives have realized over time that if you keep standing outside the system throwing stones, you may not get as big a change as if you go inside. By going into the prisons, I’m changing culture. Laurie and I, by working hard for a decade, were able to bring back funding for Arts in Corrections. If we hadn’t somehow kept the San Quentin program going, as a demonstration program, with guys who could talk about how much it had helped turn their lives around, I don’t know if that would have happened. Instead, at this point the Department of Corrections and the public at large have made a 180-degree shift in their thinking. Before, the thinking was: Lock away the troublemakers. But now people realize, there’s no room in the prisons for all these people and it’s not good for the economy anyway. That’s what working within the system can do. 

By working inside, I influence the prison staff. I’m able to help them realize that they have an opportunity to change inmates by working with them. And in my position now as the coordinator of all the volunteer programs, I’m even able to work with Laurie to help influence legislators and politicians.

This same dialogue goes on with the public school system. It’s easy to criticize the schools from the outside. But my partner Dana’s a poet who teaches in the school system and she gets so many comments from parents of students she teaches: “My son would never write and now he can’t wait to get to your class and he writes poetry and he’s completely engaged in school.” These things are small but they’re also huge. By working within the system, Dana has helped those parents learn to appreciate the arts. And she’s nudged those kids toward a different approach to academia and even to life. Administrators take note of things like that. That has more impact than if Dana were just to say, “The system sucks and I’m not going to be part of it.” 

Sarah: I’m also curious how you answer the opposite challenge: that prisoners don’t deserve fun, meaningful, rewarding activities like art classes.

Steve: Yes, there are people who say, My kid doesn’t get art at her school but you’re giving these prisoners art classes. My response is: Everyone everywhere deserves to make art. And these guys’ experience with art is helping them develop into better citizens. The classes help them develop communication skills, and to create good art they have to get in touch with their humanity. They come out safer for your community and for themselves. Their recidivism rate is lower. So art in the prisons saves money for you, the taxpayer.

Sarah: I want to loop back and ask about your transition from assistant canteen manager into your current position as director of all of San Quentin’s volunteer programs. That’s a giant leap! How did that happen and when?

Steve: While I was the assistant canteen manager I returned to school to get a high school teaching certification because I knew I needed a more stimulating job. In 2012, right after I completed the coursework, the person in the position I have now, Laura Bowman, decided to move out of state. She approached me and urged me to apply for that job. She then approached the warden and recommended me for it. Because of my years of working with volunteers at San Quentin, I was given the position. So ironically, I wouldn’t have needed to do all that coursework.

Next: Mayberry with an Edge

Leadership Without Ego - Part 4: I'm About Ready to Swear

Steve Emrick never sought to be a leader—but leadership found him. This is the fourth in a six-part series of posts based on an interview I conducted with Steve about his three decades running arts programs in California’s prison system. Section 3 ended with Steve explaining that right after receiving a “Heroes of Compassion” Award by the Dalai Lama, he was handed a pink slip.

Sarah: What did you do when you got the pink slip from the Department of Corrections?

Steve: To remain at San Quentin, I took a job as the assistant canteen manager. In my position I was mainly responsible for receiving large shipments of ramen soup packages and cereal and shaving cream. The shipments were offloaded in the warehouse. I received them and broke them into smaller deliveries to be taken to the canteen. I also supervised the canteen workers.

It was quite a step down in salary and stature. I went from running my own arts program to running a forklift. I’d grown up as a laborer in a farming area and I’d worked construction, so in some ways the transition wasn’t that difficult for me. But it was quite a blow to my ego. And the staff resented me because they viewed me as this guy who doesn’t know how to do all these things. Plus they were angry because I’d been given the job over one of their peers who wanted it. But eventually I was able to turn it around and get on good terms with the staff.

Sarah: How did you do that?

Steve: I just acknowledged, Hey, I’m here because I lost my position. I talked to the person who had been hoping to get the job and I said, I didn’t try to take your job. In the end we all got along well. I work hard and I have a fairly cheery demeanor. And the staff are really good at what they do. They have high school educations and I have two masters degrees, but they can run the till and balance the register faster than I can.

But it’s not the most fun work. You’re working at the windows where the inmates line up to buy stuff, and you have to tell some guy he doesn’t have enough money to buy something he wants, and now you have an upset customer who happens to be in for murdering someone. Sure, you have a little window between you and him, but on your work break you’re going to have to walk by this guy.

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There’s a funny story from that time. To appreciate it you have to know that I try never to swear. So this inmate was at the window trying to get us to exchange something he had bought. I said, Look, you ran out of money and you know the prison policy—you can’t exchange goods. He kept arguing with me. Finally I said, Goddammit, I already told you, no! Then I said, And now you’ve made me swear! All the other guys in the line started saying, Look, man, come on, you’re making him swear, that’s not cool!

After that, the workers would say, How’s your day going, Steve? And if I was feeling stressed I’d say, I’m about ready to swear. They’d say, Oh boy, Steve’s having a bad day!

During that period of 2010–2012 when I was working in the canteen, I continued working to keep the arts program alive as best I could, including serving as a liaison between the prisoners and the prison staff. Laurie Brooks, who was working for no money, had to step up and take more responsibility for the functioning of the studio. An artist named Carol Newborg was also volunteering to do program management.

Sarah: What kinds of things were you doing as a liaison?

Steve: For example, there would be a conflict over the tool inventory. Not all the tools could be accounted for, which as you can imagine is a big deal in a prison. In situations like these, the studio would go into lockdown. I’d go in and meet with the artists and the inmates and figured out how to remedy it. Then I’d meet with the prison administration and said, Here’s what we’ve done, we’ve fixed it, please allow us to open back up. And they’d say, OK, but moving forward you need to do X or Y.

So I was mostly working in the background but when big things came up like that, I’d step in. That’s still the case now. Something will happen that locks down the art studio and I can negotiate to get it opened up. I try not to misuse my position. But I do mediate when there are conflicts with officers. And not just for the art program, but for all the volunteer programs.

Next: Everyone Everywhere Deserves to Make Art

Leadership Without Ego - Part 3: The Dalai Lama Breaks All the Rules

Steve Emrick never sought to be a leader—but leadership found him. This is the third in a six-part series of posts based on an interview I conducted with Steve about his three decades running arts programs in California’s prison system. Section 2 left off with Steve’s description of the difficult period beginning in 2003 when Arts in Corrections was cut by the state government.

Sarah: Wasn’t it during that period that you were honored by the Dalai Lama?

Steve: Yes, that’s right. In 2009, we were still deep in the struggle. Laurie was working for no money, and I was keeping the art program going as a volunteer in addition to my full-time job in the Bridging program that I described earlier. I received a letter informing me I’d been anonymously recommended to receive an “Unsung Heroes of Compassion” award. This is an award granted by the Dalai Lama to 50 people from around the world from Zimbabwe to Thailand to India to Sweden to the US.

When I got that letter, I felt undeserving. The recognition seemed way over the top. I thought, Wait a minute, how can I be put alongside a doctor who does eye surgeries in the mountains of Nepal, or someone who comes up with a way to get money to families in India so they don’t have to sell off their daughters?

But a friend said to me, Just embrace it—someone noticed that you’ve put in 25 years in a place a lot of people are afraid to go into, and they thought that merited recommending you for this. Hearing that really helped me.

The evening before the ceremony, my partner Dana and I were at a dinner hosted by the philanthropist who had funded the whole experience. A Navajo woman who’s a school principal leaned over to me and said, I feel like an imposter. And I realized that a lot of the awardees felt the same way. They were a humble group, many of whom, like me, had stumbled into the work they do.

The day of the awards ceremony, the Dalai Lama’s security staff met with us and gave us all these rules. “You can’t touch him. When it’s your turn to receive your blessing, you’ll walk onstage. He’ll put a white scarf around your neck. He’ll bow. You’ll bow. Then you’ll exit the stage.” But the Dalai Lama breaks all the rules. At the meal before the awards were granted, I was sitting at a table with Dana and my older sister, along with people who’d paid $500 a plate just to be at this event. The Dalai Lama walked in. As he moved through the room, he high-fived Dana, and paused to connect briefly with other people too. It seemed like he could sense who needed a special touch.

The Dalai Lama gives a low five to Steve's partner, poet and teacher Dana Teen Lomax.

The Dalai Lama gives a low five to Steve's partner, poet and teacher Dana Teen Lomax.

He touched us onstage too. As each awardee walked onstage, Peter Coyote read the person’s name aloud, and when we reached the Dalai Lama, he took our hands. I don’t cry easily, but I was moved to tears. There were a number of traditional Buddhists at the event and for them this was a life-transforming moment, the equivalent of a Catholic person receiving a personal blessing from the Pope. They broke rules right and left—gave the Dalai Lama gifts, hugged him. His security guard was freaking out but the Dalai Lama was fine. You can tell he’s just present for what happens. People talk about that all the time and it’s true. He has a special presence, an amazing aura that’s palpable. He would look very somber and serious one moment, and then laugh the next, totally in touch with his emotions.

Steve receives the Dalai Lama's blessing.

Steve receives the Dalai Lama's blessing.

It was inspiring to learn about the projects other awardees were doing. There was an American woman named Lynn Poole who worked with Zimbabwean women who sew dolls and make earrings out of coke bottles to support themselves and their children. These are disabled children who are socially ostracized so they especially need support. Lynn Poole’s husband was teaching at an international school in in Zimbabwe. Another expat drove up to them in a truck and said, My visa has expired and I’ve been ordered to leave the country. This is the project; here’s the truck, loaded with materials for the dolls. It’s all yours if you’ll take it on. Lynn stepped up, on the spot. Not only that—over time she expanded the project so the dolls could be sold internationally through fair trade.

After we heard about all these amazing projects, the Dalai Lama gave a speech and said, Look, we’re recognizing you, but your work’s not done. And the work you’re doing now won’t be widely appreciated till way down the road or even after you’re gone. The work is the reward.

Leaving that ceremony, I looked back over the 20 years of my career. I saw that people I’ve worked with have gotten out of prison and are successful. Even though I don’t work in an exotic place, it’s certainly a place where a lot of people would never be willing to work. My job has allowed me to help and support people that needed it.

But at the same time I realized that that award was tied to circumstances I don’t necessarily have control over. I worked at DVI for 10–15 years, but I wouldn’t have gotten that kind of recognition while I was there. San Quentin has a much higher profile. Also, the purpose of the awards ceremony was to get funders and people in positions of power to recognize this work. So I don’t have delusions about how great I am just because I got this award.

The irony is that I received that recognition by the Dalai Lama in 2009, and in 2010, prison education was eliminated statewide, and I was handed a pink slip. My friends said, Too bad about the Dalai Lama award—it jinxed you!

Section 4: I’m About Ready to Swear

Leadership Without Ego - Part 2: The Kids Melted Under That Praise

Steve Emrick never sought to be a leader—but leadership found him. This is the second in a six-part series of posts based on an interview I conducted with Steve about his three decades running arts programs in California’s prison system. In Section 1, we left off with Steve explaining that after running the Tehachapi Prison arts program, he transitioned to a position at Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy, CA.

Steve: When I went to DVI I got involved with the William James Association.

Steve with DVI arts program alumni Dennis Cookes and Robert Vincent at a conference on arts in the prisons.

Steve with DVI arts program alumni Dennis Cookes and Robert Vincent at a conference on arts in the prisons.

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Sarah: Tell me about William James.

Steve: It’s a nonprofit that contracts with the Department of Corrections to place artist teachers in prisons in Northern California. William James screens and places the artists and ensures that they get paid in timely way. I’d let the William James staff know what kinds of artists I needed, and they’d do the matchmaking. I developed a close working relationship with the executive director, Laurie Brooks—which proved important strategically later on. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I ran DVI’s art program through most of 90s. The program was already in place when I got there, in a very nice studio space set up by artist Bobby Altman. We offered woodworking (I taught that class), guitar making, ceramics, painting and drawing, and music. The program was hugely successful. We had a core group of inmates who were dedicated artists, and because of that we were able to raise ten grand a year through art sales, and give visibility to the artwork. We contributed all the proceeds to the Child Abuse Prevention Council of San Juaquin Valley.

I still have a close connection with a lot of those guys, many of whom are out now. They’re off parole, citizens with good jobs who are still making art. One big success story is Vincent, who learned to make guitars at DVI. He’s been out 15 or 20 years now, and he makes high-end classical guitars for a living. His son is also an artist and has become a prison arts teacher.

DVI arts program alumnus Robert Vincent with a guitar he made.

DVI arts program alumnus Robert Vincent with a guitar he made.

Around 1998, I was feeling burnt out at DVI and wanted to try something different. I took a position at the Youth Authority in Stockton. I coordinated programs in six juvenile facilities for young people aged 14–26. I found that work a lot more heart wrenching than working with adults. At that young age, you really can’t argue that these kids are locked up through any fault of their own. The staff were more encouraging than at the adult prisons but the environment was still draconian. Officers, barbed wire fences. And kids are harder to deal with in those environments. Fistfights would erupt.

Wards and painting instructor working on a mural at Youth Authority.

Wards and painting instructor working on a mural at Youth Authority.

The worst moment for me was one time in a paper marbling workshop. One kid was trying to become a big shot in one of the gangs. I saw him order two other kids to clean up his area. I said, No, everyone cleans up his own area. He started to walk away from me. I grabbed his shoulder. He whipped around and said, Don’t ever touch me again—you don’t know what might happen. He was the kind of kid who could have played that up, because there’s a rule against touching the kids. The art teacher called in officers and they dealt with him. At that moment I realized, OK, I don’t have the patience that’s required to work in this environment.

Working with juveniles wasn’t the only aspect of that job I didn’t click with. I’d gone from managing my own program to managing programs in six different places. There are always problems that crop up when you’re bringing people inside—for example, the artist doesn’t have the proper paperwork or messes up a protocol. Previously, when I was running my own program, I had credibility among the staff, so I knew who to call to resolve an issue. But in this situation a lot of my work was by phone. So I couldn’t be as effective.

Wards making books.

Wards making books.

Sarah: Were there any heartening moments there?

Steve, book artist Beth Thielen, and wards in bookbinding workshop.

Steve, book artist Beth Thielen, and wards in bookbinding workshop.

Definitely. I remember a bookbinding workshop where the instructor had the kids making these very complicated books. They were really into it. We had photos posted of them holding their completed books—they were so proud. Others would see the pictures and say, Hey, that looks really cool! The kids melted under that praise. They were so starved for positive attention and feedback.

We had a unit for kids with mental dysfunction. I wanted to place this older woman artist in there as a grandmother figure. At first the administration resisted because they thought the kids would act out. But eventually we were able to get her in there. This one kid was especially dysfunctional—he’d refuse to bathe, spread feces all over his cell. We got him into this class. The staff would tell him, You really need to watch it this week because she’s coming on Saturday and you want to get out to go to your class! He totally improved his behavior.

Steve and Beth admiring a ward's work on a book project as another ward looks on.

Steve and Beth admiring a ward's work on a book project as another ward looks on.

Wards proudly displaying elaborate handmade journals.

Wards proudly displaying elaborate handmade journals.

The Youth Authority staff started realizing that instead of this program being an impediment, it could really help them. They started picking out the kids with the worst problems to send to art class. And other juvenile facilities started requesting art programs.

Youth Authority artist teachers with Laurie Brooks (third from left).

Youth Authority artist teachers with Laurie Brooks (third from left).

But even though I saw lots of positive things happen there, I still wanted to go back to working with adults. And my family wanted to move closer to the hub of the Bay Area. So in 2003, I took a job running the arts program at San Quentin. The person who’d been running that program had moved into an education position at the prison.

That program was very successful as well. But right when I got there, the Department of Corrections eliminated their contracts with William James and another nonprofit that provided the same service for Southern California prisons. Soon after that, my own position was moved under the prison education department. I lost a lot of independence. I was assigned to a program called Bridging, which serves inmates in the reception center. The reception center holds guys in the process of transitioning from county jail to prisons all over the state. Until this point the Department of Corrections had not provided programs for that population. So the Bridging program was an attempt to remedy that. I set up drawing, poetry, origami, and collage classes. These were short-term classes because the guys were shipped off to other prisons after six weeks or so. One of the challenges of that job was that the inmates were assigned to these classes, whereas in the past, I’d only worked with guys who volunteered to take art classes. So it meant I was working with students who didn’t necessarily want to be in class.

William James executive director Laurie Brooks and I started strategizing about how to keep prison arts programming alive. Laurie and Jack Bowers, a retired artist facilitator, testified before the state legislature. But that work didn’t bear fruit right away. We survived in those years on small grants from nonprofits.

Laurie Brooks, Alma Robinson, and Jack Bowers presenting at a conference on arts in the prisons.

Laurie Brooks, Alma Robinson, and Jack Bowers presenting at a conference on arts in the prisons.

Next installment: The Dalai Lama Breaks All the Rules

Leadership Without Ego - Part 1: The Workshop Was Neutral Territory

Steve Emrick never sought to be a leader—but leadership found him. This is the first in a six-part series of posts featuring an interview I conducted with Steve about his three decades running arts programs in California’s prison system.

Sarah: Tell me about your work.

Steve: Currently I oversee all the volunteer programs at San Quentin Prison. My office is in charge of reviewing background checks on volunteers. I also manage the program schedule, coordinate with inmate groups’ schedules, review proposals for new programs, and recommend proposals to the warden for approval. Inmates can pitch proposals, but most pitches come from outside groups.

Now, thanks to the passage of Prop 57 last fall, the Department of Corrections gives rehabilitation achievement credits. Prisoners who participate in volunteer programs that pass approval by Corrections are eligible to get time off their sentences. That’s added a whole level of data entry to track attendance and calculate time spent in those programs. I’m the final reviewer, so each time an inmate earns enough hours to have a week off, I’m the final button.

I’m also responsible for big events, such as performances by outside groups, or events organized by inmates like the Breast Cancer Walk or the annual Day of Peace.

Inmates and supporters on the 2017 Breast Cancer Walk at San Quentin.

Inmates and supporters on the 2017 Breast Cancer Walk at San Quentin.

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Steve with Associate Warden Steve Allbritton at the Breast Cancer Walk.

Steve with Associate Warden Steve Allbritton at the Breast Cancer Walk.

Sarah: What does that entail?

Steve: A group submits a proposal, which at San Quentin is called a narrative. For example, the narrative submitted by an inmate group called "San Quentin Cares" said something like, We all have mothers, relatives, and friends with breast cancer and we want to support the cause by doing a walkathon; inmates can contribute money to participate, and people on the outside can contribute via a designated link on the official Breast Cancer Walk website. Or another example of a narrative is the one inmates submitted for the Day of Peace. That one said something like, We want to have a day on the yard that encourages everyone to get along across gang affiliations, religious faiths, and so forth; we want outside people to perform music; we want a treat provided for every inmate.

2018 Day of Peace banner painted by participants in the Arts in Corrections program

2018 Day of Peace banner painted by participants in the Arts in Corrections program

Day of Peace committee members and set-up crew.

Day of Peace committee members and set-up crew.

 
Day of Peace performance by members of Bread and Roses. Guitarist Kurt Huget teaches guitar playing at San Quentin.

Day of Peace performance by members of Bread and Roses. Guitarist Kurt Huget teaches guitar playing at San Quentin.

I review the narrative to make sure it’s realistic based on any number of factors, for example when the prison opens and closes. It all has to jibe. I clean it up and then it goes up several levels of the administrative hierarchy till it reaches the warden. I work in a system that’s paramilitary.

Sarah: Does the prison system consciously emulate the military?

Steve: Yes. The correctional officer, who’s in there with the inmates, is like a soldier. Next comes the sergeant, who oversees a team of correctional officers in a given location in the prison. The lieutenant oversees a whole cellblock, and the captain manages several cellblocks. Above the captains are the associate warden, the chief deputy warden, and the warden.

Steve at his MFA solo show in 1986.

Steve at his MFA solo show in 1986.

Sarah: How long have you been in this current position?

Steve: Five years.

Sarah: How long have you worked in the prison system?

Steve: This is my twenty-eighth year.

Sarah: How did you get into this work?

Steve: After getting my MFA in fine woodworking in 1986, I got a yearlong teaching position in a community college in Ridgecrest, in the desert, off Highway 395. The college serves military personnel and their families from the nearby army base. When my contract was about to run out, the local Kern County arts council contacted me about setting up an arts program in a nearby prison. Prison arts programs were on the rise, thanks to the visionary work of Eloise Smith, the first executive director of the California Arts Council, which was started during Jerry Brown’s first governorship. She responded to requests from inmates to set up an arts program and then she helped it expand throughout the state. It became a full-fledged program called Arts in Corrections, funded by the California Department of Corrections.

Steve's MFA solo show.

Steve's MFA solo show.

When I was first approached to work for Arts in Corrections, I said no. My view at that time was that inmates were in prison because they had done terrible things, and they belonged in there. I wanted to stay on the college-teaching track. But like so many MFA grads, I had a whole file of rejection letters. So when I got another call from the council, I went to the interview—and was hired a week later.

That first prison job was at Tehachapi, not far from Bakersfield. I was given a room in the prison. I started teaching drawing, and I brought in other artists to teach other media.

Sarah: What was it like to segue from teaching college students to teaching inmates?

Steve: I found that the inmates were much more dedicated and interesting to work with than the college students I’d been teaching. In prison, you’re working with people who have bottomed out. They latch onto art as avenue of expression and a way to have a different, more positive identity—the Artist.

Eloise had felt from the beginning that inmates would be more receptive to learning from high-level artists than from art therapists who come in with the agenda of getting the inmates to talk about their feelings. A lot of inmates resist the touchy-feely approach—“Oh, I was terrible, I robbed this bank.” The Department of Corrections didn’t want outside artists coming in—they didn’t think artists would be able to handle all the security procedures. But Eloise said it would work. She argued that if inmates were taught art by gifted artists, their engagement with the artistic process would lead them to investigate their own character and be able to contribute better to the community. That’s what finally sold it with the department. And as soon as I started working at Tehachapi, I saw the wisdom of Eloise’s approach.

Sarah: Can you give me an example of the positive impact of this approach on inmates?

Steve: I had a ceramics instructor teaching a group of guys how to throw on the pottery wheel. This inmate, a very awkward, nerdy guy, tall and lanky with thick, scraggly hair, would stand in front during the instructor’s demonstrations, blocking the other inmates’ view. He couldn’t grasp the technique and he was getting really frustrated. The instructor said, “Sit down, breathe, feel your body. We’re each going to make a bowl. Now you’re going to follow exactly what I do. Pull up the clay as slowly as an ant crawling up the side of the bowl.” And so on. Well that day that inmate finally was able to make a hollow form. It was thick and ugly, but it was a hollow form. And the next week, he showed up with a haircut and stood in back of the group so everyone could see. Later I followed up by reinforcing what he was already figuring out—“Yeah, you have to be aware of how you’re impacting the people around you.”

Inmate throwing a pot.

Inmate throwing a pot.

Not that that always happens. But experiences like that hooked me. I felt like I could really help make a difference. Guys would be worried if I didn’t show up. They’d say, “If something happens to you, we’ll never have this class again.” “You can’t just take a week off—we need this class.” I’d never had that experience at the college. There, the students were taking five classes, participating in various clubs—they were spread so thin. But inmates are in a monastic situation. In a cell, there’s time to reflect and think about what they’re going to make. If they get this opportunity to make art, they can focus on it. If they’re into writing, then they’re writing all the time. The guys in the Shakespeare class are walking around the yard practicing their lines in British accents.

Sarah: Were you welcomed by the prison staff?

Steve: Hardly! At the time I was hired at Tehachapi, the mission for corrections was only to keep inmates housed safely. There was no mission to teach them, beyond helping them get a high school diploma. My first day on the job, the warden called me in and said, “I didn’t want this program. Keep your house in order. If I see anything out of line, you’re out of here.” They thought a teacher who was already working in the prison would have been a better bet security-wise. But just a week later, my direct supervisor told me, “I didn’t want to hire you. But I’ve been watching you—you’re all right.” He told me, “That lady [Eloise Smith] wouldn’t stop pushing her agenda for us to hire an artist for this job. She waited us out.”

Bit by bit, the prison staff came around. The warden and officers would walk by the art workshop and see rival gang members communicating, black and white guys sitting next to each other. The workshop was neutral territory.

Sarah: When I first met you, you were working at Deuel Vocational Institute (DVI), a medium-security prison in Tracy.

Steve: That was my second prison job. I left Tehachapi and went to DVI in 1989. I wanted to get closer to San Francisco and Northern California. Tehachapi in an arid and politically conservative region. I prefer Northern California’s landscape and culture.

Next installment: The Kids Melted Under That Praise

The Alchemy of Service - Part 5: Watch Out, Someone's Behind You

By creatively expanding the concept of the family unit to include the larger world, Joann Wong fueled a lifelong passion for public service. This is the final part in a five-part series of posts based on an interview I conducted with her. In Part 4, Joann described her transition from health care to program evaluation and how her path led her back to her alma mater.

Sarah: Tell me about your current job—it has a long, fancy title.

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Joann: Yeah, it’s a mouthful: Program and Organizational Effectiveness Director at the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. My role involves assessing the impact of Stanford’s public service and civic engagement programs for students. The work involves data analysis, identifying what’s working well and what can be improved.

S: How do you go about doing that?

J: We collect data through different surveys that ask questions like, “How satisfied were you with this experience? What skills or insights did you gain? How has this impacted your career or academic trajectory?” In addition, we may conduct focus groups, immediately after the students’ engagements end or a number of years later. We have also started looking at trend data.

Stanford has gone through a major shift in how we contextualize service programs. Thirty-plus years ago, Stanford’s President Don Kennedy recognized the value of a life in public service and initiated efforts to better understand the different ways students engage in service at Stanford.  This process revealed the need for greater institutional support. Without that intention, university administrations and students can lose sight of the value of service. Ultimately, the university established Stanford’s Public Service Center in 1985. Since then, we’ve always offered service opportunities at varying levels including fellowships for domestic and international placements where students work with community organizations or engage in public service that links theories learned in class with practical application in the community.

Two years ago, just after I came on board, the university launched an initiative that ramps up its already strong commitment to infusing service into all aspects of an undergraduate education.

The Cardinal Service Initiative has four components. Cardinal Quarter is an immersive, nine-week public service experience at an organization for at least 35 hours a week. There are funds available to support students to participate regardless of their financial situation. I collaborated with colleagues to develop a survey to identify areas of the program that work well and areas that need improvement, in order to understand which aspects provide a really meaningful experience for the students and the community partners.

Cardinal Courses integrates service learning into an academic setting and links students with hands-on service opportunities with community organizations. Also, students who meet certain criteria can apply for a Cardinal Service notation on their transcript. The university’s support and approval to incorporate this notation on students’ transcripts is a major milestone in acknowledging the importance and value of students engaging in public service.

Cardinal Careers provides advising and other programmatic elements that strive to link students with opportunities to explore work in the public interest either as a primary job or in a volunteer capacity. And Cardinal Commitment, the newest component, addresses the fact that many students are already doing service in a regular way, for example tutoring youth on a weekly basis or working on an advocacy or social issue, like the environment and climate change. Through Cardinal Commitment, we’re recognizing that contribution.

We hope incoming students will choose Stanford because service is an integral part of the University’s culture and Cardinal Service has been infused in our admissions and outreach materials.

Jo and colleagues

Jo and colleagues

The Haas Center for Public Service

The Haas Center for Public Service

S: How’s it been being back at your alma mater in this new capacity?

J: As an undergrad, my home at Stanford was the Haas Center. So it’s amazing to be working there now.

But as much as I love Stanford and the Haas Center, it’s not always easy being in a bastion of privilege. There are times I wonder if I might have a greater impact in helping others by returning to work with a community organization. The past two years since Trump was elected, I’ve been heartbroken and shocked to see that privilege and entitlement runs deeper than most well-intentioned white people are even aware of. The racism my parents had to endure is stronger than ever. Sometimes I tell colleagues I’m scared I’m going to become this angry person of color who shuts down and can’t listen. Yesterday I was at Whole Foods, buying a honeydew melon. Good Chinese shopper that I am, I was searching for the best fruit. I spotted one at the bottom of the pile so I was carefully stacking all the other melons to one side. Someone behind me said, Watch out, someone’s behind you. This woman was hovering. As soon as I uncovered the melon I wanted, she reached and took it. I said, Oh, I was going to take that one. She looked at me and turned and walked away with the fruit. I wanted to say something nasty to her about being an entitled white being. I’ve never wanted to say something like that in the past. Then I reminded myself, Jo, it’s a melon!

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By the way, if my dad had been in my situation, he would have cussed her out! Butchers swear a lot. My brother points out that my father always spoke English with a Chinese accent—except when he swore.

S: How’s it going with work-life balance?

J: I’m back to full-time work. But I’ve gotten better at setting clear boundaries. I’ve learned to say no when I feel I need to and am more direct with requests regarding my needs as they’re aligned with my principles and values. Faith now plays a significant part in the way I view my work. I see what I do as ultimately God’s plan, so I’m not as invested in trying to control things as I was in the past.

S: When you say faith, do you mean Christian faith? Do you consider yourself a Christian?

J: Over time, I’ve done a lot of soul-searching and reconnecting with my spirituality. I identify as Christian; I believe in Christ. This is a whole other conversation, but I have issues with Christians who use their faith to push their agenda, particularly political agendas. That’s not what it’s about for me. My perspectives are influenced by how my piano teacher carried herself as a Christian and how she treated others. I’m aware that my time here is temporary, and I view the gifts, opportunities and challenges in my life as part of a plan I can’t even understand. I go to church, and Fred and I are united in wanting to have a home that’s based in faith.

S: You mentioned to me in a recent email that you’re mentoring a group of Stanford students. What’s one thing you want them to know?

J: Embrace change—recognize the importance of flexibility and fluidity, even if it makes you uncomfortable. And know that things really do work out. If someone had asked me 20 years ago whether I’d be working at Stanford now, I would have said, No way! I live by the mantra, Follow your passion. Hone in on what sparks joy and excitement—what you feel a connection to. Don’t be afraid to explore it; develop experiences that honor it. Whenever I’ve tried to work just for money, I didn’t enjoy it. Work has always been far more fulfilling to me if it brought me joy and provided me with a meaningful way to contribute and support others. That’s when I’ve thrived and done my best.

The Alchemy of Service - Part 4: Fireworks and Tears

By creatively expanding the concept of the family unit to include the larger world, Joann Wong fueled a lifelong passion for public service. This is the fourth in a five-part series of posts based on an interview I conducted with her. Part 3 ended with Joann describing her focus in grad school on the relationship between HIV infection and domestic violence.

S: What drew you to work on domestic violence?

I knew of cases of domestic violence in my own community growing up. In one case I even knew of a death that resulted from domestic violence. Over time I recognized that this was a real issue in the Asian American community—as in so many other communities. I felt called to address it.

S: Tell me what happened after grad school.

J: I’d been planning on working on the international stage but my thinking was shifting. I saw a lot of Asian Americans going into medicine, engineering, law—not so much public health. Yet there was a huge need, domestically. I witnessed this close to home—my dad’s sister was a garment worker who never learned English; access to health care was an issue for her family. So when I finished grad school I got a job working as a development director at a San Jose organization that serves Asian Americans. I later became director of their programs that oversaw a range of services including programs for seniors, youth, and survivors of domestic violence. It was great way to apply my public health background, but there was a disconnect between what I wanted to do and some of organizational dynamics of the agency. I ended up leaving, without another position lined up.

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Amazingly, right after that happened, a job opened up at Asian Health Services. It was the same position I’d applied for earlier, and they asked me to come in for an interview but by that time I had already accepted a position at the San Jose organization. This second time around, though, the timing was perfect! I was hired to work for Asian Health Services and stayed there 13 years.

S: Why did you leave?

It was a very tough decision. I had thought I’d continue working there till retirement and really loved the people I worked with. But there was a transition in leadership and I wasn’t totally aligned with the values of the new team. As I mentioned earlier, I’d always been raised by my parents to stick to my values and principles—especially living with integrity. So I felt I had to leave.

I knew my mom would be ecstatic at the news, because she always felt I worked too hard and wasn’t treated very well. My long hours had taken a toll on her, too, because I depended on her a lot for child care. On Mother’s Day we took her out for dim sum and I gave her a box with the question, “Guess what?” on the outside.  When she opened the box, an image of balloons, stars, and a party hat greeted her along with the messages, “I quit my job!!!” and “Happy Mother’s Day!”  She looked at me, her eyes brightened, the tears fell. She thought I’d finally made the decision to put family first.

 

Goofing around post-quitting.

Goofing around post-quitting.

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But as it turned out, I didn’t even stop working! Someone from another health care organization immediately asked me to work with them as a consultant. I realized I wanted to remain connected to community and service; I couldn’t just stay at home. So I consulted for this organization for the next year and a half.

S: That was your last job before you went to work at Stanford, is that right?

Doing consulting is way less stress ... time for a sewing class! Cozy PJ pants for the kids.

Doing consulting is way less stress ... time for a sewing class! Cozy PJ pants for the kids.

J: Almost. I had one more job at another health center in the Bay Area before returning to Stanford.  But I felt an increasing desire to leave health care and work on program evaluation again. I had coffee with someone I knew at the Haas Center and I asked, do you have any needs that I can help out with? She tried to connect me with folks she knew in the health care field and I told her I was actually interested in doing more work with data analysis and program evaluation. She said, Funny you say you’re interested in this area because we may have a position opening up for evaluation in the future. I started volunteering there, and in that same period I interviewed for a curriculum development job at a health center in the Bay Area. The health center offered me the job. I told them, I’ll need to work part-time so I can attend to my kids and to my mom, who has health issues. I’d always put the job first and I was clear that that needed to change. I also told them, Being honest is important to me so I want to let you know that there may be a job opportunity that comes up at Stanford that I am interested in; if this job comes through at Stanford, I will apply for it. They hired me anyway, at a high salary.

That experience showed me the importance of going into a job interview with clarity and resolve. You need to able to say, “This is what’s important to me and if that doesn’t fit with your needs, so be it." Be willing to walk away.

And then six months later, the job came up at Stanford. I applied and was hired in October 2014.

Next Installment: Watch Out, Someone’s Behind You