Bo Thao-Urabe
Executive and Network DirectorBo Thao-Urabe is the Executive and Network Director of CAAL. A social entrepreneur, Bo focuses on creating community-centered, asset-based solutions that result in meaningful progress for those who are most impacted. She has extensive leadership experience having led local, national and global efforts.
In addition to CAAL, Bo served as Commissioner to President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She co-founded Building More Philanthropy with Purpose Giving Circle, Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, Hmong Women Achieving Together, Building Our Future: A Global Community Campaign, and RedGreen Rivers LLC. Bo has received a number of awards recognizing her contributions and leadership.
Fun Fact: Bo is one of the few people in Minnesota with the honor of having the same day named after her in both the City of Saint Paul and the State of Minnesota.
KaYing Yang
Director of Programs and PartnershipsKaYing is a social justice advocate who has built and led community development efforts in Colorado, Minnesota, Washington, DC, Thailand and Laos. She began her career as a community organizer and executive manager providing social services and advocacy for the protection of refugees and immigrants. In the mid-1990s, she served as executive director for the only national Southeast Asian American advocacy organization in the US based in Washington, DC. Nationally, KaYing has worked in coalition with Asian American civil rights groups to address alarming gaps in educational achievements, lack of desegregated data, economic and health disparities that plagued large sectors of the Southeast Asian American community. To ensure that these issues were addressed at institutional levels, she co-founded several organizations, such as the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund (APIASF), and worked closely with the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI).
KaYing has intensified her work around ending gender-based violence and creating gender equity through movement building among the Southeast Asian refugee and immigrant diaspora. Related to this work, in 2008 she founded the first Hmong woman’s organization in Laos to help women and girls access educational and economic opportunities. She also co-founded and serves as President of RedGreen Rivers, a social enterprise working with women and girls in the Mekong Region to bring their handcrafted products to a global market.
Fun Fact: KaYing returned to help resettle the last wave of Hmong refugees at Wat Thamkrabok, Thailand in 2003 and lived overseas in Thailand and Laos for almost 10 years before returning to the US.
Kay Moua
Program CoordinatorKay Moua is a committed and compassionate advocate for multiple social justice and civil rights issues. She is a recent graduate at the University of MN, with a degree in Youth Studies. Her purpose and passion are driven by her belief that everyone deserves to feel included, nurtured, and fearless. As a young person growing up in MN, she has had many experiences of what it feels like to have her voice excluded based solely on her race or gender. At the age of 16, Kay testified at the State Capitol regarding education funding with the encouragement from her mentors. It was a life-changing experience because she realized that many critical decisions are made without the voices of the people who are most impacted. From that moment on, it has been essential for her to be active in advocacy and fighting for justice.
Cameron Yang
Communications and Network AssociateThey are a Queer Transgender Second-Generation Hmong American Citizen; and their professions consists of being a secondary education English teacher, visual artist (2D/3D mediums), radio producer, and community organizer. As a Gates Millennium Scholar, Yang recently graduated from Augsburg University with a Secondary Education in Communication Arts and Literature Bachelor of Arts degree. Under their film production company, PY Production, Yang produced their first feature film, Taboo; depicting a groundbreaking love story with a vision to inspire and change the perspective of love in the Hmong community. They are also a co-producer of Nplooj Radio, a Hmong LGBTQIA+ radio show that provides a brave space for marginalized/underrepresented communities through arts, music, culture, and dialogues.
Natasha Mara Victa
Program AssociateNatasha Mara Victa is firm believer in the power of communities and grassroots organizations. As a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Urban Studies, much of her studies focused on how to create systematic, equitable change with community-based solutions. Natasha has worked with a variety of community organizations in the Twin Cities and abroad in Thailand in a variety of roles such as outreach coordinator, community organizer, and educational intern to understand different ways that organizations work to create changes in thier communities. As a first-generation Filipino immigrant, she understands the power that Asian-American communities have and is excited to work with CAAL to understand how to organize Asian (American) communities to work for social justice.
In addition to her work with CAAL, Natasha also is a 2019 New Sector RISE Fellow and Student Advisor for Higher Education Consortium of Urban Affairs (HECUA) for the Inequality in America Program which she participated in the fall of 2016.
Jenny Srey
Lead OrganizerJenny Srey is the daughter of a Cambodian refugee father and indigenous adoptee mother. She has spent most of her career in the social work field advocating for children and families. Her experience involves working with youth in juvenile detention, child protection and foster care; survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault; and newly arrived immigrant and refugees. She has worked in areas of grassroots organizing, family reunification, violence prevention, court advocacy, systems navigation, refugee adjustment, VAWA, U-Visa and deportation defense. Jenny is a co-founder of ReleaseMN8 and a Humphrey Policy Fellow. She is a proud mother, daughter, organizer and activist.
