2023 Speaker Series | Lift

How to make peace with your belly fat

Susan Lieu

For years Susan was disgusted with her belly fat until her ancestors smacked some sense into her in a sweat lodge. Hear about how Susan’s experience in losing her mother to plastic surgery at a young age changed her perspective on beauty, self-love, and forgiveness.

Susan Lieu is a nationally-acclaimed Vietnamese American author, playwright, and performer who tells stories that refuse to be forgotten. A daughter of nail salon workers, she took her autobiographical solo theatre show 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother on a national tour with sold out premieres and accolades from L.A. Times, NPR, and American Theatre. Eight months pregnant, she premiered her sequel Over 140 LBS at ACT Theatre. Within one year, she gave 60 performances to over 7,000 people.

Her award-winning work has been featured at Bumbershoot, Wing Luke Museum, The Moth Mainstage, On The Boards, and more than a dozen universities. She has developed new work at numerous residencies including Hedgebrook, Vashon Artist Residency, Mineral School, and Millay Arts. Susan is co-host of The Model Minority Moms podcast. She is an alumnus of Harvard College, Yale School of Management, and Coro. Her forthcoming memoir, The Manicurist’s Daughter (Celadon) is her first book.

The one question to ask about your child’s grades

Cindi Williams

Decades of parent mindset research have revealed that nine in ten parents (regardless of income, race or geography) believe their child is at or above grade level. However, data shows that academic performance of our nation’s students has reached historic lows with less than one-third of our students being proficient in reading and math. This huge disconnect is due in no small part to “good grades.” How do we build a public education system that nurtures parent teacher partnership and equips parents to advocate for their child’s learning needs?

Cindi Williams is the co-founder of Learning Heroes – a leading education nonprofit researching parent and educator mindsets, providing solutions for meaningful parent engagement at the state, district, and school levels – and the CEO of Waypoint Education Partners. As a mom and evangelist for the power of meaningful parent engagement, Cindi works to ensure each parent has an accurate picture of their child’s academic progress to fully engage as an informed advocate for their child’s learning.

Mrs. Williams’ insights are grounded in decades of experience in research, advocacy, and communications as a senior official in the White House, US Department of Education, US House of Representatives, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a leading public policy firm, HCM Strategists. At Learning Heroes and Waypoint Education Partners, she and her partners work alongside leading nonprofits and state leaders to make our public education system more effective and equitable.

Curiosity as a practice

Julie Pham

Curiosity is often described as a personality trait focused on wanting to learn new things. What if we were to liken curiosity to a practice that starts with trying to understand ourselves first so that we can then be more open to understanding others?

Dr. Julie Pham is the founder and CEO of CuriosityBased, which helps people practice curiosity in the world. She is the author of the #1 Amazon New Release and Bestseller 7 Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Your Communication and Relationships at Work (2022). Dr. Pham was born in Saigon, Vietnam and came to the US with her parents as boat people in 1979. Her parents founded a Vietnamese newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, where she got her “real life MBA” by running it during the Great Recession.

She has been recognized with many awards for her community leadership, including Female Founders Alliance Champions Award in Advocate category, Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program, German Marshall Memorial Fellow, and Puget Sound Business Journal ’40 under 40’ honoree. Dr. Pham earned her PhD in history at Cambridge University as a Gates Cambridge Scholar in 2008 and graduated magna cum laude from University of California, Berkeley as a Haas Scholar in 2001. 

The power of not looking away

Chezik Tsunoda

Grieving mother turned passionate advocate, Chezik Tsunoda, shares her powerful story of loss, purpose, and passion. She makes an urgent plea to everyone: don’t look away. In the wake of the devastating loss of her 3-year-son, Chezik shares her experience of breaking cycles to prevent tragedies and forging pathways to solutions and healing.

Filmmaker Chezik Tsunoda emerged as an impassioned water safety advocate after her 3-year-old son Yori’s tragic drowning in 2018. Having experienced the drowning epidemic’s deadly consequences firsthand, Tsunoda channeled her knowledge into founding No More Under, a nonprofit dedicated to saving lives through increasing equitable access to swimming lessons and tools. She directed Drowning in Silence, a documentary that chronicles her quest for answers and healing.

In recognition of her efforts to close systemic water safety gaps and create a world where no child drowns, Tsunoda has won several awards relating to her work around equity in aquatics. She worked to pass House Bill 1750 in Washington State, also known as Yori’s Law, and continues to advocate for more access, awareness, tools, and training. Along with her water safety work, Tsunoda heads Visually Inspired Productions, which creates social impact films that help shift the narratives of systematically excluded communities.

The mental health crisis in college sports

Cailin Bracken

Cailin is the face and voice of the mental health crisis facing student-athletes today. She will outline the challenges and needed solutions during her talk, while calling on those in power in this area to make needed changes. Cailin Bracken is a mental health advocate, writer, public speaker, and podcast host. She is a member of Vanderbilt University’s class of 2024 where she played on the school’s Division 1 women’s lacrosse team.

By age 16 Cailin was ranked by Inside Lacrosse as a top 20 lacrosse recruit in the US making her entrance to college sports highly anticipated. Carrying this pressure, Cailin gained notoriety after penning an impassioned piece called “A Letter to College Sports” where she shared her mental health challenges as a student-athlete. She appeared on Good Morning America and was featured in Politico, The Associated Press, NBC, and Global Sport Matters.

Cailin hosts a podcast focused on mental health, personal growth and wellness. Cailin also joined Colton Underwood and Legacy Foundation to create a docuseries about the mental health crisis of student-athletes and to advocate for US federal legislation to protect the mental health of student-athletes through a bill called the TEAMS act.