Diwali Asian Diaspora Mini-Jam Registration

Kazu Haga (he/him) is a trainer, educator, student and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice, a core member of Building Belonging, the Ahimsa Collective and the Fierce Vulnerability Network and author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. He works with incarcerated people, youth, and activists from around the country. He works to bridge healing work with the work of systemic social change. He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA.

Karen B.K. Chan (she/they) is a sex and emotional literacy educator in Toronto, Canada. She is an immigrant from Hong Kong, an only child, and a recovering overworker. BK came out as queer at 15, as an aspiring radical at 23, and as pretty happily basic at 42. In the last few years, she shifted personal priorities from being “good” to being warm, from being right to being more forgiving, and the Jam has played a big part in both. BK works full-time speaking and training, and all the time on taking better care of herself. She is also bringing up a couple of jammy babies with her jam love.

효영 Hyoyoung Minna Kim (she/her) is a former public school educator of eleven years. At the moment, she is a Program Coordinator and Curriculum Developer for ThinkGive, a nonprofit offering social-emotional literacy programs for K-8 around the world, and is a facilitator supporting groups in centering healthy-healing relationships and shared leadership while contextualizing collective care through the science of our nervous systems and in the context of our social systems. She approaches her work through a decolonial co-liberatory lens at the intersection of somatics, biomimicry, and pluriverse. Minna delights in experiencing the magic of children’s picture books, is a masterful dog-cuddler, and is (re)learning how to befriend our more-than-human kin.

Amadeo Cruz Guiao is an organizational healer/consultant, facilitator, and spiritual teacher. Born in Brooklyn and raised mostly in Coast Salish/Duwamish territories colonially known as Seattle, Amadeo is a queer, gender nonbinary, decolonizing child of Filipinx immigrants. Their spiritual path guides everything they do, and they have been so blessed to learn from their own mystical Filipinx traditions, and have also studied with and been trained by esteemed teachers from the Brazilian Amazon and Coast Salish territories. They are deeply passionate about their work supporting community-led organizations and visionary leaders from the most resilient and marginalized communities to effect transformative social change. Coming from a healing justice lens, they provide culturally appropriate organizational development strategies in contexts as vastly different as remote upland indigenous communities in war-stricken Mindanao, Philippines, to rural Native reservations in the Pacific Northwest, to their queer and trans communities of color in progressive Seattle.

Shilpa Jain (she/her) is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA. For 11+ years, she served as the Executive Director of YES!, working with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change, and aiming to co-create thriving, just and balanced ways of life for all. Prior to taking on this role, Shilpa spent two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of Other Worlds and ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India, where she served as coordinator of the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkons) Network. She has facilitated dozens of transformative leadership gatherings with hundreds of young leaders from over 50 countries. She is passionate about dance and music, organic and natural farming, upcycling and zero waste living, asking appreciative questions and being in community. A focus on healing, forgiveness, compassion, love and wholeness permeates all of her work and life.