My Life: Growing Up Asian in America

Jes Vu is the Communications Manager at CAPE, a non-profit organization that champions diversity by connecting, educating, and empowering Asian American and Pacific Islander artists and leaders in entertainment and media. Jes has been a long-time associate of the CAPE family having been a volunteer, independent contractor as well as a Program Associate of the CAPE New Writers Fellowship in 2016 before returning to the CAPE team in April 2021. 

A proud child of Vietnamese refugees, Jes grew up outside the suburbs of Philadelphia before spending her undergrad in the nation’s capital at American University studying Film & Media Arts and minoring in Graphic Design. She eventually migrated west to Los Angeles and worked at various production companies, studios and for independent producers. Heavily passionate about inclusion efforts and representation, especially pertaining to her Asian American community, she has been an active participant in organizations such as CAPE, Gold House, and Kollaboration. 

Currently, she is on the Board for Amplify Asian America, previously The 2020 Project (which Jes served as VIP Outreach), a non-partisan Asian American-targeted civic engagement organization. She also served as one of the Story & Cultural Consultant for Disney Animation's Raya and the Last Dragon as part of their Southeast Asia Story Trust and has engaged as a consultant for casting agencies, studios/networks as well as upcoming unannounced independent feature projects.

Outside of work, she is a nerd for pop culture, and impatiently waiting for the next episode of her favorite Korean dramas. She is the producer of Southern Fried Asian, a podcast under The Nerds of Color, which profiles the diversity of Asian Americans from the American South.

Tanaïs (they/them) (née Tanwi Nandini Islam) is the New York–based author of the critically acclaimed novel Bright Lines, which was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize, as well as the essay collection In Sensorium: Notes for My People. Over the course of their career, they’ve worked as a community organizer, a domestic violence court advocate, a probations intake officer, and a youth arts educator. Tanaïs is also a perfumer and the founder of the beauty, fragrance, and design studio TANAÏS. Visit studiotanais.com.

SuChin Pak is a veteran journalist who has been hosting and reporting the news for over twenty-five years. She has reported on ABC, NBC, Discovery Networks, Oxygen, and E! She is most known for her long tenure as the first Asian American reporter for MTV News. From hosting red-carpet shows to reporting on presidential elections and international relief efforts to covering some of the biggest headlines in news, Pak has been a dedicated journalist since reporting on her first show at the age of sixteen. She currently cohosts a podcast, Add to Cart, about consumerism and what it says about who we are. She has focused much of her work on issues involving social change.

Kim Tran is a writer and consultant who brings social justice lessons to movement, research, and organizational spaces. Her work has been featured in NPR, Slate, and the New York Times. She is working on a book manuscript about solidarity during Black Lives Matter titled The End of Allyship: A New Era of Solidarity.

Trung Le Nguyen, also known as Trungles, is a Vietnamese American comic book artist and storyteller from Minnesota. He was born in a refugee camp somewhere in the Philippine province of Palawan. Trung has contributed work for Oni Press, Boom! Studios, and Image Comics, largely in the romance genre. His first original graphic novel, The Magic Fish, was published in 2020 through Random House Graphic. He currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is raising three very spoiled hens.