#itasaboard

Hi everybody!

My name is Yen, and I was ITASA’s Vice President last year. I’m currently working full-time as a software engineer in Austin, Texas! When I first joined ITASA, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Seeing groups of people flying into Texas for an ITASA conference from all over the states was an eye-opener, and I knew I wanted to get involved with the organization to be one of them, to see what’s out there and broaden my then limited view. That’s how I started out as the Texas District Governor for ITASA more than two years ago.

Fast-forward a little, after a hectic school year of planning events with a small number of Taiwanese American student organizations in Texas, I’d learned quite a few things and made many new friends. That’s when someone asked me, “hey..why don’t you run for Vice President?” HAHA - NO. That was my first reaction. Come on, are you kidding me, I had only been on the board for one year, and you want me to take on the responsibility of the whole organization? Obviously, I did end up running for the position. Thanks to the encouragement from those many friends I made, I decided to step up and away from my comfort zone. So throughout last year, along with my strong involvement with the TASA at my school, I looked at things from a broader perspective as the VP of ITASA.

I started thinking about how to better connect our Taiwanese American community and the larger Asian American community, and I became more connected through branching out into different organizations. There were definitely times when I felt overwhelmed by all the responsibilities that came with the role and opportunities that I may be missing out on outside of ITASA. Sometimes, I felt incompetent and that I wasn’t fulfilling my duty as the VP of ITASA. However, I was able to pull through with the help of friends that I’ve made along the way, and my involvement with ITASA and the TA community has proved to be immensely helpful with both my career and my personal development.

One lesson that I would tell the new ITASA board members and other students who would like to be involved with the community is to attend as many ITASA conferences as possible. I have attended every conference during my involvement, and I was amazed every time with how much I could take away with me. Our friends spend a lot of time and effort to bring the conferences to us, and attending them is the easiest way to get involved. So..(here comes the cliché) despite the hardships and difficulties that I’ve faced with ITASA involvement, I’ve grown myself as a person and a leader and made fantastic connections along the way; EVERYTHING WAS WORTH IT. If given another chance, I would choose to do it all over again in the blink of an eye.

(Did I mention I made super-duper awesome friends because of ITASA?)

Go ITASA!