Leading Community Starts at Home

I mean, it doesn’t really matter what your title is now, Eric. I’ve seen you on a number of platforms during interviews, whether it’s at the network level, or smaller community-based media outlets. You’ve become quite influential in the Asian-American community. As a leader, how do you use your influence to advance people forward toward the vision and goals of your organization, and your vision for your community?

I have to tell you something that I think about quite often, and the only thing that guides me is creating a better world for my two kids. That’s the true guidance for me. It’s not for the larger community at large, it’s not for one group over another. It’s literally to build a better world for my kids, so that they don’t need to experience the level of racism that I did growing up, the level of bias that I had in the early parts of my career, or even the pushback that I’m getting right now.

So, when I go out there talking on the network level, or talking in smaller community gatherings, I do it for my kids. And that drives me, right? And in doing so, allows me to make greater changes for everybody else’s kids, and for the community at-large. But the purest form of my target, of who my target audience is, is my two kids, who probably will never remember me doing this because they’re three years-old and two years-old. But that’s okay with me. That’s okay.

We have the video to prove it.

But that was always the driving force. I’ll tell a quick story. My first TV broadcast interview was on KTVU with Heather Holmes, and I was super nervous. And I was in this office right here. And I told my kids, I was like, “Hey, Daddy’s about to go on TV, so you’ve got to go to the other room,” right? And this picture is on my Instagram. And as I’m doing the interview, I had to stop it a little bit to say, “Heather, hold on a second.” And she’s like, ‘What’s wrong?” I was like, “my wife just sent me a picture of my son watching me on TV in the other room.” We’re doing it live. That’s when I realize this is all for them.

Every single thing I do, this, this is all for them. This is all for them. Because I know that if I can affect change in the larger community at-large, it will affect them. It will affect them for sure. Maybe it creates a more empathetic world, maybe creates a more understanding world. Maybe me being on the Smithsonian Board of Directors, allows K-12 curriculum to be more inclusive of their people’s stories. And maybe in doing that, it affects everybody else’s kids and everybody else’s experience. So, I don’t really think about who I’m doing it for, the people texting me and DMing me, or the people that may watch this. I literally do it for them. And in doing so, I do think I’m changing a lot of other people’s minds.