An Outsider Becomes an Advocate

I was at an evening event in San Francisco recently that took place at a fancy law firm, and at the end of the event I was, as usual, the last person to leave. I left with a woman who was helping with the event logistics, and she commented on how much she liked my pride campaign button. It was the last one I had, so I took it off and gave it to her, and she told me about her three LGBT kids. And I said, no kidding, I have three LGBT kids too and I’ve never met another family like mine. So we bonded a bit and talked about our kids and the process of understanding and acceptance from the extended family as our kids have grown up into young adults. It was such a special moment for me, just connecting with another mom because I had the pride flag on my campaign button.

And it got me thinking about the way being an outsider has helped me in being open to people and communicating with people through my work and volunteering and just traveling through life. I come from a family of 8 kids and grew up in Honolulu, Hawai'i, and we were the weird outsiders our whole lives. I had to learn early how to navigate past a lot of differences to find friends and allies. That carried over once I grew up and went into the hazardous waste business. As a woman, I was definitely an outsider there, and then I started working all over the Pacific and Asia where I physically looked so different and had to be really creative to work with a whole host of government agencies, U.S. military staff, local laborers, and shippers and truck drivers. The work was really hard and complicated, and I discovered that all those skills I had developed as an outsider during my school years served me really well in solving problems. I ended up being especially good in a crisis, and I handled a lot of emergencies after hurricanes and chemical spills and other small disasters.

All along the way, my kids grew up seeing me balancing their needs, my career, and our financial needs, especially after I became a single parent. I dragged my kids with me to graduate school and then later to Tokyo, Japan, where I ended up taking care of the 10,000 employees and family members working for General Electric in Japan after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in 2011. For about a year after that disaster, I had to navigate an unprecedented level of complexity and urgency to help keep our employees safe and ensure they were getting accurate information about the risks from the nuclear meltdown.

I’m running for Congress in California's First District to give voice to people who need a helping hand so that we can lift each other onto the path of innovation and success that urban California has been enjoying. I hope you'll consider supporting my campaign as a volunteer or through a donation.

This post is sponsored by Marty Walters for Congress, FEC ID C00639732

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