Amber Collective at Uber HQ
At the end of May, we hosted a panel discussion at Uber HQ for Amber Collective, our community-building organization for Asian American creative women. Since May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we closed out the month with this topic for the evening: “On Heritage: how history and identity inform our creative work.” We had three absolutely incredible panelists and a really wonderful discussion about personal history, heritage, and creative journeys. See a bit more of the event below!
A ready room. Thank you to Robbie Gene for the images below!
We begin with mingling and food.
Thank you to the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign for sponsoring with free Phenomenally Asian t-shirts!
Our wonderful panel! Moderator Courtney Yee, chef Melissa King, artist Lisa Solomon, writer Leona Chen, and moderator Do-Hee Kim.
Melissa with her Humphry Slocombe – Whole Foods ice cream collaborations! You may recognize Melissa from her time on television’s Top Chef competition.
Lisa speaks about growing up hapa, the daughter of a Japanese mother and Caucasian father, and how that has informed her art.
Leona speaks about her Taiwanese American identity, something she wrote about in her book of poetry, Book of Cord, which she published at age 20.
After the panel, we followed up with some Q&A from the audience.
And then we split up into six random groups to be able to discuss further and meet each other in a small group setting!
Special shoutout to Chloe, who was our contact at Uber who made this whole event possible. Thank you so much for all your work in putting this together, and thank you to Uber for hosting us!
Thank you to everyone who attended!
And cheers to our crew for pulling this off in a really busy season for each of us. Plus Cassie, who wasn’t able to attend the actual event but certainly helped with the planning and also picked up all our food from Costco and dropped it off before the gathering.
Let’s do it again some time!
Our next Amber Collective event will likely be in July. Visit Amber Collective to sign up for our email list. And follow @ambercollective on instagram for our latest stories.
Gathering: Amber Collective
Photography: Robbie Gene
Venue: Uber HQ
Panelists: chef Melissa King, artist Lisa Solomon, writer Leona Chen
Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She creates beautiful, soft, and timeless imagery while capturing the most fleeting of moments. View her work at annawu.com, follow her daily adventures on instagram, and contact her to book your own session today.
