Today we’d like to introduce you to Doorae Shin

Hi Doorae, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I’m a second generation Korean-American. My parents immigrated from South Korea to the U.S. when they were in their teens and twenties and I was born near Philadelphia, PA. While I was growing up, my parents were involved in a group called Young Koreans United, where they were part of a national network of activists advocating for Asian-American issues. From this experience, I was exposed to the power of activism to empower communities and create real change.

By the time I got to college at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I dove into student activism, first being involved in a successful effort to get DACA and undocumented local students access to in-state tuition in Hawaiʻi and then diving deep into the world of sustainability and plastic pollution. Since then, I have been committed to advocating for a more just and sustainable world. I take the quote “Think Global, Act Local” to heart by focusing nearly all of my efforts on local changes through a global lens. I truly believe what happens in Hawaiʻi (and any local community) can inspire the nation and the world.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

Most advocates work in the nonprofit sector and that tends to come with financial sacrifice. It is one of the lower-paying sectors and many people who dedicate their careers to community organizing and nonprofit missions tend to settle for salaries that make it difficult to achieve financial security or independence. There is also, unfortunately, a fair amount of burnout in the nonprofit space. Having experienced both of these common hardships at a young age, I have found a good balance that allows me to get compensated fairly for working in this space while also avoiding burnout.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?

I opened my consultancy in 2022 to offer services to mostly nonprofits in the areas of sustainability, justice, and equity. We are able to provide services that span from project management and event planning to community organizing and policy advocacy. I am proud to have past and current clients that make deep and lasting impact for Hawaii’s environment and community, including securing millions of dollars in the State for conservation and climate action as well as moving the needle on therapeutic psychedelic access for Hawaiʻi, among many other issues.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?

Most people who know me and my work do not know that the first issue I worked closely on as a young advocate in high school and college was on immigration reform. As a summer intern at a nonprofit in LA, I worked to prevent deportations of Koreans who were brought to the country at a young age by their parents and had their entire lives and families built in the U.S. We also supported Koreans in getting naturalized along with fighting for various social rights from healthcare access for Asian-American children to language access for Korean-Americans. And as a college student, I advocated successfully in a collective effort to get in-state tuition secured for undocumented young students who were raised in Hawaii, which was an important victory for that community. Since becoming primarily an environmental advocate, many people do not know that my roots in advocacy started in support Asian Americans and immigration reform. As a child of immigrants who had the privilege of being born in the U.S., I had automatic citizenship, and I saw how my friends and community members without that simple privilege deeply struggled to secure jobs, feel like they belong, and to even find a legal path to citizenship. I now hold a deep sense of intersectionality in all of the work that I do, seeing the ways that social and environmental issues are inextricably linked to one another.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hawsaiiimpact.org