Our Stories
Our Organization
In January 2021, a group of Chinese American college students came together to build Bridging Pacific - a nonprofit that provides resources and communities for Chinese American immigrants.
As immigrants’ daughters and sons, we are passionate about establishing a resource bank for Chinese immigrants to navigate the challenges of living in a new country. We are also building a community for the Chinese diaspora to connect and network. With the recent anti-Asian climate in the U.S., the Asian American community-building is more critical than ever. Join us!
Our Stories
Co-Founders
Sharon Chen 陈思沄 (Cornell University 2022，Hotel Management) was originally born and raised in China. She moved to California with her family when she was 13. She experienced first-hand the cultural transition from China to the US and the possible obstacles or roadblocks people may face. With Bridging Pacific, she hopes to encourage and inspire future generations of immigrants to be open and receptive to different perspectives while not losing sight of their heritage.
Brandon Shi 施嘉炜 graduated from Swarthmore College in 2020 with a major in Sociology/Anthropology and a minor in Psychology. He was born in San Francisco and raised in Guangzhou and Shanghai for 8 years before moving back. Brandon understood what it was like to be in a completely new country surrounded by ideas and people that were foreign to him. He hopes to use Bridging Pacific as a way to both help second-generation Chinese immigrants understand their culture and foster deeper and more meaningful relationships with their parents.
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Valentina Xu 许佳 (Cornell University 2022, Hotel Management) was originally born in China. She came to the U.S. at 14 to attend a boarding school in Ohio, and later immigrated to New York with her family. Co-founding Bridging Pacific, she hopes to make the transition to a new country easier for new immigrants. New immigrants often face a common set of challenges that would require them to find resources to overcome. Valentina hopes to help them better access the resources in a centralized place. Bridging Pacific will be a resource bank and a community for immigrant families. In the long term, she hopes the immigrant community building will expand globally and become a “Bridging World”.
Team Members
Alice Li 李玥明 (New York University Class of 2022, International Relations Major) was originally born in China. At the age of 14, she went to high school in Massachusetts and later immigrated there with her family. Throughout her experiences of immigration, she noticed that the sense of cultural identity is crucial for people like her having transnational experiences. Language is often the key to identity awareness. With connections to both Chinese society and American society, many of us access news and information in both Chinese and English regularly. Joining BP, she wishes to help provide more resources in bilingual settings for Chinese American immigrants with diverse needs to adapt to a new environment.
Christy Lin 林慧莹 (Pacific Lutheran University Class of 2022, Nursing Major) was born and raised in Guangzhou China. She immigrated to Portland, OR at the age of 13 and is a first-generation college student. As the only person that speaks English when she first moved to the US, she was the advocate and translator for her family when they encountered hardships due to language barriers and unknown systems. This taught her how fraught the immigration experience is and it deepened her empathy towards other Chinese immigrants. Through Bridging Pacific, Christy hopes to share her stories and resources to those who are going through the same challenges as they step foot into a new country.
Ariel Wu 武楚荷 (Barnard College Class of 2023, Cognitive Science Major) was originally from China, then moved to the US for high school. She was a freshman in high school when she immigrated here with her younger brother and her mom who didn’t speak English. She saw how her family was dealing with different challenges but being confused herself, she wasn’t able to help them in the best way she could. She saw a quote from Twitter that said “be the person who you needed when you grew up”. So she joined this organization to be the person that she and her family, and more families like hers needed when they first moved to the US.
