Meet our 2024 Fellows
August 2024
In July, AAPI FORCE-EF launched our 4.5 month, paid fellowship program and we are excited to have five incredible fellows join our team. They are working alongside us to advance our progressive AAPI statewide policy agenda, expand our media presence, and lead a significant voter mobilization effort this Fall. Their contributions are vital in promoting democratic engagement, countering corporate threats to our communities and the environment, empowering grassroots activism, and increasing AAPI voter participation.
Already, they’ve been pivotal in organizing upcoming virtual Get Out the Vote postcard-writing events, hosting a Volunteer Meet & Greet, facilitating an Integrated Voter Engagement Bootcamp for our partner networks, and preparing for a special release next week.
Keep reading to learn more about who our amazing fellows are 😊!
Alyssa Mamaclay, Policy Fellow
Alyssa Mamaclay (she/her) is a proud Filipinx-American, eldest daughter of working-class immigrants, and first-generation college graduate born in the Philippines and raised in the Bay Area. She is passionate about social justice, health equity, and empowering communities to thrive.
Alyssa holds a degree in Public Health and a minor in Data Science from Cal State East Bay. Through her involvement with various organizations across different sectors in the Bay Area, she has developed strong organizing and project management skills, always aiming to bridge gaps and build stronger, healthier communities. She has accumulated extensive experience in grassroots and community organizing, civic engagement, and policy advocacy. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, camping, and spending quality time with her dogs.
Alyssa’s commitment to health equity and social justice continues to drive her efforts to make meaningful change, leveraging her skills in research and data analysis to inform her advocacy and ensure the representation of underserved communities.
Working as the policy fellow at AAPI FORCE offers a unique opportunity to contribute to meaningful policy changes that empower and uplift the AAPI community while also gaining valuable experience in policy analysis, advocacy, and community organizing. This role allows me to directly impact marginalized voices, promote social justice, and develop a deeper understanding of the legislative process and the skills needed to influence public policy to actually meet our needs.
Fun Fact: Alyssa recently ran her first half-marathon!
Christina Vo, Communications Fellow
Christina Vo (she/they) is the 2024 Communications Fellow at AAPI FORCE-EF. A first-generation, low-income Vietnamese American from San Jose, she is a senior at USC majoring in Sociology and NGOs & Social Change with a minor in Digital Studies. Christina is dedicated to empowering her communities through storytelling, community-building, and grassroots organizing. She is especially thrilled to learn how to craft narratives, strengthen ethnic media networks, and design earned media strategies, especially in this crucial election year!
Previously, Christina developed a social justice summer program with South Bay Youth Changemakers, guiding Asian American youth to become changemakers. As Advocacy Chair of USC’s Asian Pacific American Student Assembly, she led workshops on AAPI issues and collaborated with VietRise to raise awareness about the prison-to-deportation pipeline. She also served as Communications Manager for the USC Prison Education Project, curating media content and leading storytelling campaigns.
Outside of work, she is finding the best matcha spot, cooking with her friends, or exploring SoCal ❤
Justin Lim, Research Fellow
Justin Lim (he/him) is a first generation Cambodian-Chinese American from Long Beach, California studying Management Science and Engineering and minoring in Data Science at Stanford University. He was the Co-Chair for the school’s Asian American Students’ Association (AASA) for two years, having assisted in the revitalization of “Asian Images”, an annual event hosted at Stanford that showcases a diversity of AAPI artists within the Bay Area. He has also led AASA’s annual Asian American issues conference, Listen to the Silence, that brings together local nonprofit and grassroots organizations to offer workshops and teach the community about the status of AAPI issues today.
As the research fellow for AAPI FORCE-EF, he is most excited to support AAPI voters in their understanding about the community around them through valuable data. Through his previous experience in engaging with Asian American identity and his academic knowledge on the impact data can have, he looks forward to see how combining these two fields can support wide-scale political campaigns.
In his free time, Justin enjoys playing board games, exploring places to eat, and learning new languages.
Rose Son, Field Fellow
Rose Son (she/her) is a second generation Khmer American from Stockton, California. She is a recent UCLA graduate with a degree in Anthropology and Asian American Studies. Her passions are rooted in leveraging the voices of underrepresented communities. She is specifically interested in cultivating a space for communities of color to unapologetically share and preserve their cultural heritage through arts and entertainment. Some remarkable projects she’s worked on in her undergraduate career include a documentary called The Art of Kun Khmer on Khmer Kickboxing and producing a play called My Morning Sun on the 1.5 generation Khmer American experience with her classmates and friends.
Rose is one of the Field fellows for this cohort, and she is most excited to see how to draw in and create new leaders through civic engagement. She has had canvassing and phone banking experience in the past, so as a field fellow this year, she also hopes to gain a better understanding on how to run field campaigns from an organizer’s perspective. In her free time, Rose enjoys going to concerts, cafe hopping, and painting.
Fun fact: She has a growing smiski collection!
Silayan Camson, Field Fellow
Silayan Camson (she/they) is one of the Field fellows for AAPI FORCE-EF. She is a second generation Pilipinx from Garden Grove, California. She finished her undergraduate degree in Media Studies, with a minor in political economy at UC Berkeley and a certificate from Berkeley Center for New Media. During her time at Berkeley, she was the first Undergraduate Pilipinx Organizer within the Asian Pacific American Student Development office and helped pass down the new role. She helped cultivate cultural collective storytelling spaces for Pilipinx Cultural Night as a writing director, and created the first digital archive for {m}aganda magazine.
She focuses on how our conditions shape our stories, so her work as an organizer, cultural worker, and designer informs her vision of how isolating issues can be tackled and turned into expansive collective action. She is excited to continue building empowerment and education for marginalized AAPI communities to organize around our issues and uplift our conditions through collective action and civic empowerment as a Field Fellow for AAPI FORCE-EF.
She enjoys sharing oranges with people, fish-shaped objects, public transit, and paper material/crafting.
