Meet PacifiChime, our Asian Pacific Islander Desi Chimer Resource Group
For many Asian Americans and Canadians, growing up and living in North America involves minimizing their racial identity in an effort to fit in. “I spent my first year of college trying to not do anything ‘too Asian’,” says BerBer Xue, a member of our Enterprise Risk team. “I realized that it was not conducive to my mental health to go against my heritage — after all, it’s a huge part of how I move through and interact with the world.”
In her following years in college, she enrolled in an Asian American Literature class and got involved in various campus cultural organizations. “I started to question the adage I’d been taught growing up that ‘The nail that stands out gets hammered down.’ I began to find my voice and the courage to show my Asian pride more publicly,” she says.
Eric Shen, a member of our Business Operations team, had a similar experience growing up: “I was raised in the Midwest and tried my hardest to fit in,” he says. “I was never really in touch with my Asian roots until recently, when I started to learn more about and take pride in my heritage.”
Recent tragedies in the community: A catalyst
In the wake of the recent rise of violence against Asian Americans, Eric found himself consumed with sadness and anger about the tragedies. “Seeing members of the Asian community mobilizing really inspired me — I went from wallowing in my feelings to wanting to achieve positive change,” he says. So he started exploring Slack channels at Chime, looking for fellow Chimers to connect and take action with. “I came across the Asian Pacific Islander channel, where there was already a community sharing experiences around recent events.”
The channel was only recently started by BerBer and was the first step towards identifying and activating the Asian Pacific Islander Desi (APID) community at Chime. Eric reached out to BerBer to see if they could collaborate to take the channel of communication to the next level and form a Chimer Resource Group (CRG).
So PacifiChime was born — it’s our APID CRG. Though it came out of a time of frustration, sadness, and anger at the state of the world, it has rapidly turned into a positive place for healing, sharing stories, connection, and education.
Launching PacifiChime
“From day one, we were fully invested in making PacifiChime a success, with guidance from Erica Johnson, our Head of Diversity, Equity, and Belonging, and an outpouring of support from Chimers, too,” BerBer says about starting the CRG.
Starting a CRG just a month before APID Heritage Month was no small feat. Eric and BerBer had to think strategically and long term while also tackling the tactical details of what APID Heritage Month would look like, including external speaker events, an internal employee panel, and Chimer education on APID heritage and history.
Perhaps the biggest challenge in starting an APID CRG is honoring and celebrating the many nuances that exist within APID culture: “Often, APID culture is viewed as white-adjacent, which paints APID folks with too broad of a brush,” explains BerBer. “These broad strokes misrepresent APID populations and subgroups, pits them against other minorities, and creates a false dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ minorities — it just doesn’t serve to celebrate diversity and unify communities,” she adds.
“By creating a group to address these nuances, advocate for all APID populations, and celebrate the many diverse perspectives across the APID experience, we hope to help all Chimers understand how to stop racism against Asians and provide a safe space for everyone who identifies as APID at Chime.” — BerBer Xue
APID identity at work
Starting an APID CRG is critical not only to highlight the nuances across APID culture but also because the APID community has historically been overlooked for management roles and taught, culturally, not to advocate for itself. In fact, research shows that Asian Americans are the least likely to be promoted to management positions.
“I was taught to swallow my emotions, stand aside, and not cause a fuss — at home, at school, and at work,” Eric says. “But in response to the recent wave of violence against the API community, there’s a massive identity movement happening. It’s led to a surge of pride in the community and in individuals — I, myself, have felt a strong desire to get more in touch with my Asian heritage and show it at work so that we can start to rewrite our collective story,” he adds.
“PacifiChime will serve our community’s needs of connection to self and heritage, while also serving as a platform for advocacy in the workplace,” BerBer says. “It will help us raise our voice and achieve cultural and professional growth.”
Supporting the community — and becoming better Chimers
To achieve their goals, PacifiChime hit the ground running. At the recommendation of their friends at AfroChime, they provided an internal private Slack channel for APID Chimers to share their experiences and connect privately. “We’re so grateful to AfroChime for the suggestion — after they mobilized to support their community after the deaths of George Floyd and many others, we knew they’d have suggestions for how we can support our community at this time,” Eric says. They also partnered with Modern Health, Chime’s mental health service provider, to facilitate circles for APID Chimers to talk about their emotions and responses to recent events. “Our goal is to recognize, not minimize, what PacifiChimers are going through,” BerBer says.
Providing a place to recognize emotions is one part of PacifiChime’s work. Using positive moments to highlight culture is another. In honor of APID Heritage Month, PacifiChime launched several events, including a yoga class — complete with historical context on the South Asian roots of the practice — lunch and learn, and a speaker session with figure skating and diversity advocate, Michelle Hong.
“Ultimately, inclusiveness is our number one focus,” says BerBer. “Though we know we might never be able to represent the full range of APID American identity, we will do our best to help Chimers build empathy. By prioritizing learning opportunities and representation of the various APID experiences, we hope to provide the space and resources for APID Chimers to have a voice and be seen by our colleagues.” PacifiChime also helps Chimers connect with others they may not work with on a day-to-day basis and embody Chime’s values, like Be Human and Team Up, to affect change.
Increasing visibility and awareness of APID Chimers, as well as their broader culture, also helps us all become better at our work. “It’s important to recognize our member base is diverse and comprised of many folks from under-represented and under-served communities,” Eric says.
“Diversity brings together Chimers from different backgrounds and walks of life. It brings different perspectives and opinions into the room to help us make decisions that better support our members. One key example of this is folks from different CRGs coming together to review our app language to make sure it’s inclusive. By harnessing empathy and understanding of experiences that might not look like our own, we can better understand our members and their needs — I’m personally looking forward to seeing the ways our CRG impacts how we show up for our APID members.”
