Did You Know?

Celebrating Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month

WorldStrides celebrates Asian & Pacific Islander (API) Heritage Month. It is a time in which we lift up and recognize the rich historical and cultural contributions of our API colleagues, friends, community members, and leaders. A week-long celebration in 1979 would eventually become API Heritage month, first formally recognized in 1992. Here are a few API leaders you should know!

I. M. PEI:

“Born in Guangzhou, China, Pei is recognized as one of the greatest thinkers in modernist architecture… Pei made a name for himself as an architect in the New York real estate industry and went on to design masterpieces like the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the glass pyramid outside the Louvre.”

Erika Lee:

“Erika Lee, Ph.D., is an award-winning American historian, director of the Immigration History Research Center, Regents Professor, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota… At the Immigration History Research Center, Lee has helped to pioneer new ways of merging immigration history with the digital humanities. She launched and oversees the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Immigrant Stories Project, which works with recent immigrants and refugees to collect, preserve, and share their experiences with a new multilingual digital story-telling website and archive.”

Jonny Kim:

“Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) Jonny Kim was selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class.  He reported for duty in August 2017 and served as the International Space Station’s Increment Lead for Expedition 65 in 2021.  Kim is a U.S. Navy SEAL and has completed more than 100 combat operations and is the recipient of the Silver Star and Bronze Star with Combat “V”.  Kim was commissioned as a naval officer through an enlisted-to-officer program and earned his degree in mathematics at the University of San Diego and a doctorate of medicine at Harvard Medical School.”

Chang-rae Lee:

Korean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing at Stanford University. “In the 25 years since then, he has continued to use his writing to explore the themes of immigration, assimilation, Korean history, the American Asian experience and dystopian America. His work has garnered multiple honors, including the Heartland Fiction Prize, a PEN/Hemingway Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.”