6. Chatting with Cassandra Lam & Karen Mok, Cofounders of The Cosmos — Part 1

Hey there! You’re listening to Chatting with Asians. This is part two of my conversation with Cassandra Lam and Karen Mok, cofounders of The Cosmos. In this episode, we talk more about their crowdfunding project for The Cosmos Summit! They’re looking to raise $75k this month to create a historical gathering of 500 Asian women creators, coming to NYC in late summer 2019. They talk about their vision for the event and why we need this to happen! So here’s part two of my chat with Cassandra and Karen.

Angie:
Well thank you so much guys for joining me on the podcast today!

Karen:
Thank you! We’re very excited.

Cassandra:
Thanks for having us!

Angie:
Yeah I — I’ve been such a big fan of The Cosmos even though I haven’t even gone to like a retreat or like a big event with you guys but I really love the work that both of you are doing so I’m really happy to have you on the episode.

Karen:
Thank you. That means so much that — that keeps us going. So Thank you.

Angie:
I would love to kick things off with a question. So I mean you guys actually started The Cosmos off with a question of your own that you posted on social media which was, “How would it look like for Asian women to flourish and thrive?” Can you kind of walk me through like what you guys’ daily lives were like before you posted that question and why you decided to post it in the first place?

Cassandra:
So on my side: I kind of grew up never really thinking that I was creative and so my my whole life was all about following a certain template for success like going to the right school, getting a good job, having a nice salary and, you know, one day getting married and doing all the — all the things and checking off the boxes. That’s something that kind of came my way right after undergrad when I realized like the career path that I had, you know, like, put all my — I put all my eggs in this one basket. And I realized, “Actually, I don’t want to do that.” So I kind of had the rug pulled really quickly right from under me and I had to spend, you know, about three or four years being lost. And that forced me to realize that a lot of the foundation upon which I was thinking success, happiness, fulfillment, all these really big categories that, you know, we’re all striving for in some way in our life, I had to question like all of that and come — come to my own kind of answer and that entire journey really propelled me to, you know, question like how — how much of what I was doing was based on survivorship and why was none of that aligned with what actually made me happy and in turn. So when I — when I met Karen, that’s when I realized like, “Oh I’m not the only person who is questioning this and, you know, living — living out that question daily and trying to get closer and closer to her own answer.” And so this journey has really allowed me to get more comfortable with the question I don’t think I have an answer to it yet but I feel really supported as I work towards that answer.

Karen:
When I met Cassandra that weekend in New York, I was a part of the Asian American Journalist Association accelerator for media projects and that was the first time I remember ever being in a room with all Asian women. And I remember feeling both inspired but also surprised that it took that long for me to be in a setting where I felt the power and creativity and voice of Asian women. And Cassandra and I were both working on different projects when we met and I was working on a narrative project around immigrant stories and immigrant creators and I was questioning a lot of the parts of my own identity that for a long time I felt were — were a disadvantage. And I didn’t want to see them that way anymore. So it took this, it’s similar to Cassandra, a lot of questioning and a lot of non-linear adventures so to speak to arrive at a point where both of us when we met we said, “Oh we are asking the same question.” All these other projects, all these other lives we’ve had before The Cosmos fundamentally arrive back at being Asian women and not knowing what to do with that and wanting to celebrate it, wanting it to mean something positive but never having the tools or really the community to see it. And so that snapshot in time was a moment of confusion and I think it’s something we try to share a lot because we want to acknowledge the reality of what I think a lot of Asian women are still going through today which is that questioning.

Angie:
Yeah. And I think it’s really amazing because you guys kind of took that moment of confusion, really turned it into something positive and that’s like obviously resonated with so many women, right? You guys had really received like a flood of responses from women. I mean literally like all over the US, even some from London, I don’t know if it spans any further than that. Were there any responses, you know, after you posted that question that really surprised you guys or maybe impacted you guys the most?

Cassandra:
For me, I think the hardest thing about the flood of responses was realizing just how deeply confused, lost, and lonely so many of us felt. On the one hand, obviously Karen and I were overwhelmed and overjoyed to realize we weren’t alone. But there’s also a really dark reality to reckon with that. The fact that this question, you know, “What does it look like for Asian women to flourish and thrive?” felt so radical and revolutionary in 20 — this was 2017, fall 2017 when we launched that. That really hurt me on a deep level too. It was touched upon like this kind of sadness that I really felt about my own experience and my community’s experience. And in the moment of facing that, we kind of looked at each other and we were like, “Well now that we see like what’s actually going on here in our own lives and in our other fellow Asian-American women’s lives as well as Asian women around the world, we have to do something about it.” You know, you can’t — you can’t look at it in the face and just ignore it as if it doesn’t exist. Like there’s clearly like a pulse, a larger — a larger movement that we were — we’re touching on with that question. So I really felt like we had no choice but to pursue this and to see if we could actually work together with other people to imagine a totally different future for ourselves.

Karen:
Yeah I cling to Cassandra’s point, I think we were surprised to see the response that we did because we didn’t really have a reference point. You know, we were really unsure if this would resonate beyond, you know, the few friends who read our Medium posts or follow us on Medium and I think it was most meaningful to hear from strangers and still today. That’s the part of The Cosmos that still feels very surreal and yet also very heartfelt because we realize that we don’t need to necessarily have gone to the same school or worked at the same company or live in the same city to have a universal desire to celebrate and question and explore our identity. And that’s also the great privilege we have of doing this work in 2017, 2019 because our parents’ generation didn’t have those tools. Right? And the nucleus of the Chinatowns in the communities were the — the place where they got that kind of support and validation. And as our generation is, you know, leaving home, moving across the US, moving across the world, we don’t have that connective fabric anymore. And so it’s been really impactful to see what that looks like with, you know, the digital tools and social media that we have and really asking ourselves how do we use these mediums to form a collective sense of community in a world where our sense of community is going to look a lot different from what our parents and grandparents knew.

Angie:
And I think it’s so important, the sense of really community building at least with — from my personal experience, ever since even just joining the Slack channel for The Cosmos, it’s been — it’s been an eye-opening experience. Like as an Asian-American woman myself to join, not realizing that I needed a community to join and feeling like, “Oh actually this is something I do want to be a part of.” And I didn’t realize I really needed it. So when you guys asked that question, it seemed like you guys very specifically or intentionally chose the verbs, you know, “to flourish and to thrive”. Was there a reasoning behind that or was a purely just, you know, choose something out of the dictionary sort of situation?

Karen:
We thought a lot about growth and we realized that the words we would — we were using to talk about our identity, we’re very much about growing into it and that’s not to assume that anyone feels immediately confident about their identity and that it’s a lifelong journey. And we wanted to create, and we still do, it’s still our North Star, a community that is most authentic to that experience. And we know there’s a lot of naming in the Asian community around “rising” and we didn’t necessarily want to be always seen as like in the process of rising. Because that always assumes that we don’t ever make it anywhere and like “flourish” and “thrive” are also words that are very positive and a lot of the negativity that we felt, that we’ve encountered, is something we very intentionally wanted to imagine out of. And so we were very intentional about trying to create language that represented the positive reality, you know, without necessarily erasing the negative and that’s that balance of light and dark that we’ve talked a lot about is “flourish and thriving” can — doesn’t mean you’re always flourishing and thriving. It means we’re in this journey of figuring out what does that look like and that — that is why we really wanted to ask it as a question versus just necessarily a declarative statement because we realize a lot of the realities we’re imagining, we’re in that mode of imagining.

Cassandra:
Just to carry on what Karen is saying, that question actually came out organically from our conversation because a lot of times when we were talking about our own identities, we have to also honor the fact that they’re very much reflective of and influenced by, you know, our — our parents and our grandparents and our ancestors. And something that is really I think profound and not spoken about enough in immigrant and refugee families is, you know, the — the gap between the first generation that’s like born and raised here and the generation that came to America is I think compounded in terms of like challenges by the fact that, you know, one — one generation had a survivor toolkit and the other generation is raised on that but also being asked to self-actualize, being asked to show up in and gets the privilege to think about things like — like mental health and fulfillment and self-care and, you know, like, carving out representation that reflects us. So for us to choose flourish and thriving, that’s like kind of a direct juxtaposition to that survivorship language and, frankly, scarcity mentality which is very pervasive in any, I think, immigrant and refugee community, not just the Asian community. So for us, you know, language is so important. Right? Like if there isn’t a word for something, it simply doesn’t exist. And so us saying “flourishing and thriving” and really, you know, allowing other members in this community to embody that language, to feel in their bones, you know, what — what that could look like is really a profound shift I think. And if you can begin to empower yourself with this language, you know, it’s going to translate in other areas of your life. So we’re very very, you know, cognizant of how meaningful these words are.

Angie:
And it’s really important kind of choose that right language in order to really communicate, right? To people outside of The Cosmos who feel like that they want to learn more. Right? What — what The Cosmos is really all about. I think kind of moving into like language and labels, right? One of the pillars for your guys’ mission is identity. Right? Really really trying to create a very inclusive community. You guys — what I love about you guys is that you constantly reassess and change what The Cosmos really represents because I think, at least in my opinion, the label of Asian or Asian-American it’s so — it’s so general. Right? I mean there’s a million different experiences underneath that label. I’m totally open to like having like a free flow topic about what Asian or Asian-American means to either of you guys. So anyone —

Karen:
I was just asked this the other day and I find it interesting because I think of Asian-Americans the same way I think of my given name. Like Karen Mok is not a name I chose and yet it carries so much weight and significance for my family and for my day to day life. Like especially Chinese names, right? They — each word means something. And for my mom it was very auspicious that I was chosen to be Karen and then my Chinese name, which translates to like “bird piano”. Because she really wanted me to play piano and I guess like birds are free. And my last name Mok like means “no”. And so I spent like a lot of my childhood trying to understand like what does this name mean to me. And it doesn’t help that like there’s a super famous like Hong Kong pop star named Karen Mok. So I’m like, “Am I her?”. And I like the way you phrased it. It’s an evolution. It’s growing into and evolving like what my name means and what my association with my Asian-American identity means. So even like today when people ask me how I identify, it’s really hard because Asian-American is a term that was coined, you know, in California, in Berkeley with a historical movement that our generation was not part of. And so we don’t claim it the same way that they did. And today I, and I personally believe, and I think this is where my personal beliefs influence like some of the tenants of The Cosmos in that we want to create a space for people to explore and question what that name means. We don’t want to be definitive and say, “This is the Asian woman,” or “This is the Asian-American woman”. And there’s a lot of pressure in this, like, personal brand era that we live in to, like, always have the definitive answer and — and yet at the same time, it’s like a, you know, a white piece of paper. Like today, it’s going — if you paint on it, it’s gonna look like this. In five years, when you paint on it and you’re expressing what Asian-American means to you, I think it will look different. Right? And that’s beautiful. And that’s the authentic experience that we’re trying to support our women in the community with. And so I guess this is really not answer to your question. There’s no answer! But I — you know, we spent a lot time like, “Should we say Asian American? Should we say Asian-American with the hyphen? Should we just say Asian woman?” And we arrived at Asian women because we wanted to recognize that still a significant number of self-identifying Asian-Americans are foreign born. And we didn’t want to exclude them because they’re foreign born but they live in America.

Angie:
Right.

Karen:
Because that is a valid and important and meaningful experience. Right? And so there’s that. And then for myself personally, it’s the intersectional identity of — of being American and Asian that I’ve struggled with. It’s being a woman that I’ve struggled with and I want to get to and arrive at a point of how do all of these identities influence how I show up day to day. And I’ll give you an example. So I, in a meeting, like in working in tech and being in venture capital, I always feel like part — one of my identites has to go and it’s usually the Asian identity first and that part of me is the consensus builder, it’s the empath, it’s the deference to other people’s opinions in trying to understand — it’s probably my most compassionate and communal self and I’m — that at odds with being American, being individualist, being about my opinion and I don’t like that that’s the only model of leadership that I know. And so I’m like, “Okay. What does it like to be a leader who is going to be able to bring in those Asian parts of herself and still be effective and still be able to make decisions. So those are I think more of the questions that arise when I think about being an Asian-American woman.

Angie:
Any thoughts, Cassandra, for your side?

Cassandra:
How many hours do you have?

Angie:
I know, I know! I realized I just opened, like, a Pandora’s box by asking this question.

Cassandra:
No worries! I think it’s an important one and it’s one that’s often, I think, glossed over because there is a presumption that everybody has the same definition. So I think you asking this question is really thoughtful and it’s a can of worms that I think honestly needs to be opened more frequently. So our focus on Asian women is also because we recognize that the mission of The Cosmos is not something solely resonant for American women. I think, you know, when we — when we launched initially with that Medium post, we had women write in from Hong Kong and Korea who said, “I want to bring this here.” Even Australia. And so I think like the question, you know, like, how do we flourish and thrive truly is a universal human-driven question. What makes it unique is that we’re trying to navigate that answer from a culturally relevant context, you know, with — with our own perspectives. And so that’s why we position it as “Asian women” and we do use the loosest definition of “women” possible because we are inclusive of, you know, queer, femme, and gender nonconforming as well as transgender individuals. But for me, Asian-American, it’s a powerful word and it’s a word that frankly I wasn’t proud of growing up. I was born and raised in Covina in California and I had — growing up, a lot of my closest friends were actually Hispanic or Chinese or white. And so I didn’t have very much contact with other Vietnamese Americans or even, frankly, other Southeast Asians. And so a lot of my personal journey, you know, in college and even after college and certainly now throughout my adulthood and later 20s has been coming back to myself in a very, you know, spiritual as well as cultural way and trying to learn how to love every single part of my identity, including the ones that I repressed or felt deep shame and sadness over growing up, you know, as I was unpacking. Times when I’ve internalized racism against myself or times when I felt like I didn’t know how to be proud in a world where I couldn’t see anybody that looks like us like in magazines or on screens or in movies. But as I have gotten older and really begun to dive deeper into Asian-American history as part of like, you know, reading as much as I could in the Asian-American canon to fill in the gaps of my own understanding, you know, of how we became, honestly, like a group here, a political group here in America, I realized that this term can be so empowering if we know the history. So now that I understand, for example, prior to the word Asian-American being termed in the 60s, most Asian folks actually identified most closely with their own like ethnic or racial makeup. So people would say, “I’m Chinese American or Japanese American.” People weren’t saying Asian-American but the fact that the term exists indicates that we have an opportunity for solidarity and to unify as a larger group, you know, for political power, honestly which is really important. I know it’s something that our community is not necessarily always comfortable talking about but it’s a really big deal and it opens more doors for us if we can learn to engage in that way. So for me, becoming more comfortable and using this term, developing pride in what it means, and constantly being committed to critiquing and unpacking, you know, how I embody it in my life, that has allowed me to develop a sense of confidence and self-love that I think people can feel. It’s something that I have noticed, you know, it’s completely changed my outlook and how I connect with other Asian-Americans. The closer and closer I get to embodying, you know, this really complicated term and I think it’s a journey for all of us. And I don’t think I’ll ever be done unpacking this word but for the first time in my life, you know over this past year, I can honestly say I’m so proud to own this — this label, this label that I didn’t think was important for the first, you know, 20 years of my life and now I don’t feel I can live without.

Angie:
Yeah, that also really resonates with me. I think — I was just thinking while you guys were kind of responding, the way that I grew up, too, was like I felt more American than — I’m Chinese American. So I felt more American than Chinese in a lot of different ways: in my daily life, you know, interactions with my family. And so it really wasn’t until maybe early to mid 20s when I really started to kind of grow an appreciation for it, maybe not fully understanding it, and it really came from me taking Asian-American history courses at City College for me — Yeah it’s amazing! Yeah! To — to really be like, “Oh shit, I’m woke now.” That’s all it took. You know, it really took like just kind of like the one or two, you know, 30 minute classes for me to be like, “I should really kind of do a little more introspection now and — and get to know my family a little bit better and — and maybe ask these kinds of questions with my friends. Right? Or other people in other communities whether that’s school or churches or other places of worship.” That seems to be another pillar, right? Like a second pillar of the mission is community. And you guys have held a lot of events. A lot of strangers seem to just join and then leave from the retreats feeling like more of an effortless sisterhood. What do you think The Cosmos is doing so differently in terms of community building versus like someone who’s trying to find their place at work or school or places of worship?

Cassandra:
I guess I can go first on this one. This is another can of worms. I’m like, “How do I give you the Wikipedia version?” In short, I have to say, I guess for context, most people of color communities do not have the privilege of, you know, time or money. And so we’ve always had to get really creative with anything that we put out into the world. Right? And like when you are working with limited resources of any kind, you’ll have to, you know, figure out how do I still get the output that we’re looking for and support, you know, the people I want to support while I have some sort of disadvantage. And so when Karen and I came together to build The Cosmos, not only did we have shared, you know, bad experiences of being parts of different communities, not just Asian ones like anything, you know, work, certainly other, you know, other personally fun hobby communities, all of these we’ve had misgivings with. And so we decided, honestly, well we don’t have a ton of money. So if we are going to do something, it’s got to be good. And we’ve trusted our own creativity. So we’ve kind of scrapped any template and decided to build everything from the ground up, infusing our values and our mission into everything. And I think something that’s really unique about our story that I don’t think Karen and I talk that much about is one of the very first things that we developed for The Cosmos was — were the community principles that we still abide by, that we still share with everybody that comes to any of our events or retreats. It’s something that’s always prominently posted if not read aloud, you know, popcorn style by the attendees of that particular event or whoever is occupying that space. And I think that’s really essential to creating the kind of vibe that we’ve been wanting to co-create with everybody in our community. So by — by doing that, it always felt really authentic to us. And I think that — that shows. Like the women who come into the spaces that we create, they know that they’re not just the guests. They’re really truly invited to co-create the experience that they want to have. They’re invited to, you know, have autonomy over — over their futures and the types of engagements that they have with the other women there. They’re — they’re also always addressed as human beings and we go out of our way to maintain intimacy even if it’s a larger larger things such as like the last retreat we had had 30 people you know like that’s a lot bigger than than 20. But there are always ways that you can design and make sure that the architecture of your event is true to your values and creates the type of experience that you want your needs to have. And I think the other thing that’s unique is we’re always thinking about both the introverts and the extroverts in the room. My — my problem with a lot of events is that they’re designed for one kind of person. It’s a person that’s the gunner, you know, that’s not afraid to pull out their business card and ask for people’s Instagram and like, you know, like that they’re — they’re always asserting themselves and I think that’s wonderful but frankly like that’s not a personality type that — that’s not the only personality type out there. And so that’s something that Karen and I, in our own relationship, you know, as friends and co-founders, realized, you know, if we want this to be a success for everybody, we have to think about that differently.

Karen:
Yeah I think Cassandra summarized it really well. And part of it is I think Cassandra and I, we overthink to a fault but I think sometimes it’s useful hopefully. But the thoughtfulness is a word that comes up a lot in our internal team. And part of it is we know that as leaders and as community builders, we are limited in our perspective and we spend a lot of time and still do thinking about the narratives that aren’t being heard. And it’s so paramount to us that we are holding ourselves accountable to the vast diversity of the Asian diaspora and the Asian community. And instead of, I think, being frustrated or despondent about how big and vast that is, we are thinking to ourselves, “OK what can we do to reach out to a community that hasn’t been heard before within the Asian diaspora?” If we don’t do that, then, you know, we aren’t doing our role very well as as community builders. And from, you know, I think a leadership standpoint, that integrity is the core of The Cosmos because we’ve always held that like we don’t need to be here just to be another Asian organization. And we — if we’re not impacting the women in a healthy and hopefully meaningful way, right? And we don’t ever assume that our first try at something is the right answer. I think there’s a lot of humility that Asians are known for but trying to really integrate that in a way that helps us do our work better. So we, I think, are very much are like unsatisfied with the way we have been told to do certain things like panels, for example. I have gone to so many panel events in my life and I finally got to the point where I was like, “If we don’t like the experience, if we feel like we’re just being talked at versus talked to, why would we recreate that same experience?”

Angie:
Makes sense.

Karen:
And instead of just kind of accepting that that’s all that there is, we’ve thought a lot about, “OK if we sit in a circle and if we actually pass the mic to every single woman in the room.” Like that’s one of our tenants at the retreats is in the first 30 minutes, every Asian woman speaks and that has a profound difference in the engagement of every woman at the retreat because she hears her voice. Everyone in the room hears her voice and that begins this journey of being seen and being heard. And so we’re thoughtful and we’re also I think playful with it. You know, we’re open to seeing what does and doesn’t work for the community. We don’t ever assume that we’re right. And so I think just removing the ego and and constantly being curious about all of the perspectives that aren’t our own. And the second is our experiences are very much designed and facilitated and the reason is we have, I think, been to a lot of the what I call the “networking experience” where you’re like thrown into this room and there’s like alcohol as like a lubricant to like social, which I think is OK. Like again, I think there’s certain people who like love that experience and it works for some venues. But I, personally, and I think a lot of Asian women in our community are more introverted and find it really uncomfortable. And so we thought a lot about that woman. And it helps that a lot of the, you know, women we’ve spoken to in our team also identifies that. And so what would a great experience for you look like? And so we always try to think about almost pay like more attention to the women that we know aren’t the ones that are always being served and in like the networking community events that we’ve been to and just not being satisfied with accepting things as like —

Angie:
Kind of like status quo.

Karen:
Yeah exactly. And like constantly believing that we as Asian women deserve a community and an experience that is authentic to us. We don’t know what that looks like because today, like advertisers, media, somewhat, like they aren’t catering to us. And we are like, “That’s that’s not acceptable.” Like what would it look like if we just design everything from the beginning as Cassandra said. And so if we always start with that principle, then I think what happens is we get closer to as much of the authentic experience as we can. Right? I think as Cassandra said like from the beginning, very principle driven.

Thanks for listening to part 1! If the mission of The Cosmos resonates with you, check out their website at jointhecosmos.com. They’re also crowdfunding right now to produce a one-day event called The Cosmos Summit! They’re looking to raise $75k this month to create a historical gathering of 500 Asian women creators, coming to NYC in late summer 2019. You can check out the show notes for the link or go to ifundwomen.com and search for “the cosmos summit”. Alright, now go and listen to part 2. Now now now, go go go! You don’t want to miss it.

More details here: https://ifundwomen.com/projects/cosmos-summit

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