April 2021

With mixed emotions and excitement for her journey, I announce the departure of KaYing Yang, who has served as our Director of Programs and Partnerships. KaYing will complete her Bush Fellowship and spend time on RedGreen Rivers, a social enterprise she co-founded to preserve indigenous art forms and increase the livelihood of women. Her last day in-office is May 28, 2021, but she will remain at CAAL until June 30, 2021.

KaYing joined CAAL in 2015 and brought energy, passion, extensive experience in public policy, community organizing, and relational leadership skills that have had a tremendous impact on our work in education and economics.  She also has provided invaluable leadership to the CAAL Network, helping to grow our network and expand our partnerships with many allies. 

In her tenure, KaYing built powerful connections between our network of Asian Minnesotan leaders and policymakers at the Minnesota State Legislature, always centering the voices of impacted communities. She brought passion, fierceness, and love to our organizing work and was instrumental in creating large multi-racial and multi-ethnic coalitions to advance our community’s priorities. Her leadership was instrumental to CAAL’s legislative wins in education on disaggregated data and improving the economic  ecosystem of cultural nonprofits through the Nonprofit Infrastructure Grant Program. She also shepherded the publication of important reports that informed CAAL’s ongoing community campaigns. There is no doubt that we will miss KaYing. 

We wish KaYing every success, look forward to following her journey and having her continue to be a leader in our network. We will have a celebration of KaYing soon —  details are forthcoming and hope you can join us.

Our education, economics, and immigration programs are poised to continue making significant impacts led by a talented team. We are pleased to announce Kara Carmosino as our new Program Director and Jenny Srey as our Senior Manager for Civic Power. 

With appreciation,

Bo Thao-Urabe
Executive & Network Director