Speaking
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
The Power of Storytelling: How to Avoid Pathologizing and Empower Your Clients to Heal (Or: Surrendering Power in Session: How to Empower Your Patients to Take Control of their Healing): Oklahoma Dept of Mental Health, Iowa Dept of Mental Health, Missouri Dept. of Mental Health
Therapists come from a position of power and influence, and the story you tell your patients determines how they define themselves. How are ways that you can surrender power in session and help them tell empowering stories about themselves and their experiences? A talk for therapists/clinicians/doctors/caretakers.
How to Recognize and Support Traumatized Students - East Side Union High School District, National Education Association Rhode Island, Chicago Private Schools
As a teacher, you never really know what your students may be going through. Some of them may be high achievers, but have you ever questioned what drives their achievement? Here’s how to build a safe school environment that allows your students to heal and to feel comfortable coming to you for their needs.
Getting the Mental Healthcare You Deserve - Owens Community College
A talk on how to find the best therapist for you, how best to work with and communicate with them to get them to cater to your needs, how to try different kinds of therapy, and a brief exploration of therapy that doesn’t feel like therapy, for people who hate therapy. A talk for anyone looking to navigate the mental healthcare landscape with more agency.
Why Love Isn’t Enough: Building a Safe Environment for Traumatized Kids - Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition
Raising foster and adoptive children can be a very difficult process. We want to think that if we shower them with love, that will be enough. But severely traumatized and abandoned children have specific needs in order to feel safe – here’s a short guide to helping provide them with some of those needs. Told from the perspective of an abandoned child.
How to Report on Mental Health Respectfully - Knight Center
A talk for journalists/writers on how to report on mental health while protecting the populations they’re writing about – by not pathologizing them, providing hope and solutions, and using respectful language and appropriate storytelling.
Managing Your Mental Health in the Anthropocene - NPR, Third Coast Festival
Capitalism, bad news, the environment: it’s hard out here. How to manage a stressful job (like journalism), a toxic news cycle… and stay sane.
Getting It Right – Blending Personal Narrative with Reporting - Brooke Warner’s She Writes Class, Esmé Weijun Wang’s Unexpected Shape Writing Academy
If your memoir writing centers around the identity groups you belong to, there’s a lot of pressure to “get it right” and be fairly and accurately representative. In this talk, journalist and memoirist Stephanie Foo explains how she blended personal narrative and reporting to create a story that feels honest to you – and fair to the people it represents.
Not Broken: How to Heal and Harness the Power of Your Trauma Google News Initiative/Video Consortium, 2022
We often think that our traumas make us weaker. They can absolutely make life more difficult — there’s no minimizing that. But they don’t make us broken, and in many ways, they can even make us more powerful, and give us talents others don’t. Some tips on how to heal from our trauma and reframe it to understand its nuance.
How to Navigate Intergenerational Trauma for AAPI Communities
Talk for AAPI/immigrant populations about how to advocate for boundaries with Asian parents, how to get them help/culturally responsive therapy, and how to heal your own trauma wounds while still embracing your culture.
How to Practice Culturally Responsive Therapy in AAPI Communities / Decolonized Therapy Practices: Why They Are So Important
A discussion that breaks apart our understanding of traditional therapy and its effectiveness. Why is therapy medicalized? Why does it usually take place alone, with the assumption that a person needs to heal themselves? We explore alternatives like art therapy, horticultural therapy, culturally responsive therapy and others teach us that sometimes, it can be more satisfying to heal in community.
How to Find and Pitch Great Stories - PRX, Columbia University, The Brooklyn Public Library, Salt
Being able to find meaningful stories that will relate to audiences is an evergreen skill that basically guarantees you a job in a newsroom. How do we develop this skill? From Snap Judgment and This American Life’s pinch-hitter — my boss used to say, “If you need to find a story, just Foogle it” — a crash course in becoming a story finding fiend.
I also create custom speeches for your organization’s specific needs!
UNIVERSITY GUEST LECTURES
Owens Community College, 2023
University of California, Santa Cruz, Stevenson College Commencement Speech, 2020
UCSC, 2020
Vassar, 2016
Columbia, 2016, 2019
CUNY, 2015, 2016
KEYNOTES, PANELS, PRESENTATIONS and WORKSHOPS
Mental health and journalism: How journalists can responsibly report on it and take care of themselves MOOC, Knight Foundation, 2022
8-week Intensive Podcast Course, Columbia University, 2020
12-week Intensive Podcast Course, Brooklyn Public Library, 2020
Two-day Podcasting Intensive Workshop, Columbia University, 2019, 2020
The Podcasting Revolution: Women in Podcasting panel, Barnard College, 2019
The Kennedy Center Arts Summit, Washington D.C., 2019
Weeklong radio storytelling course, Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, 2019
Yale’s THREAD Storytelling Conference, New Haven, 2016, 2017, 2018
"Asian Americans in Media" Panel with George Takei, New York, 2017
AAJA (Asian American Journalists’ Association) Conference Pitch Panel: 2017, 2015
Berkeley J-School Pitch Panel, 2016, 2015
Third Coast Pitch Panel, Chicago, 2016
BinderCon, New York, 2015, 2016
"Launching Shortcut" Panel, Columbia, 2016
Tow Fellows Lunch, Columbia, 2016
Columbia J-School Audio Renaissance Panel, Columbia University, 2015
Alaska Press Club Conference, Anchorage, 2015
Audio Hackathon, New York, 2015
JAWS (Journalism and Women Symposium), Whitefish, MT, 2015
Transom Story Workshop, Cape Cod, 2015
Soundcloud's TechRaking Four, San Francisco, 2013
“Musicians’ Tribute to Public Radio,” Noise Pop Festival, San Francisco, 2012