Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Julia Ho. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Julia, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

I wouldn’t really describe my self as a business owner, moreso as a community organizer and founder of a couple organizations in the St. Louis area — Solidarity Economy STL and STL Mutual Aid. However I feel like the experience if building a team and knowing how to find the right people to partner and work with is similar to what business owners go through.

STL Mutual Aid started in response to COVID-19 and the overwhelming need for support and resources in the community. So from that perspective, we actually had a flood of interest from the start because so many people were looking for help and also looking for ways to help others. Everyone was in crisis mode at that time and more willing to come together to address crises like food access, housing, public health crisis, mental health crisis, etc.

Probably the most difficult transition was the shift that happened from 2021-2022, watching so many people burn out and withdraw from the network because they couldn’t sustain the level of organizing that they had been engaged in anymore. People were tired, finding new jobs, dealing with family and personal crises, and just generally trying to cope with all the major changes and struggles they had been through in 2020. Now, in 2022, our team is much smaller but also more focused and operating from a much more healthy place. Our focus is not just on responding to and responding from crisis, but actually building a network that can help people thrive and transform their communities.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a 29 (almost 30 in October) year old Taiwanese American who grew up in Lubbock, TX and have been living and organizing in St. Louis since 2011. Part of what inspired me to become a community organizer is seeing my mom get involved in our community in Lubbock — when I was about 8 years old, she established an organic farm called TreeGrace Farms (the English translation of my grandfather’s name, Shu-En) and started a community garden at my elementary school. Her passion for growing food and teaching people how to grow their own food is still a big part of the community work that I do now.

Another major event that transformed my life was the Ferguson Uprising that was sparked by the murder of Mike Brown, Jr. on Aug 9, 2014. Like thousands of other people in the St. Louis area, Ferguson changed the way I thought about race and motivated me to be more involved in the community. Ferguson really made me think about what it means to be a young, Asian woman engaged in racial justice in a mostly Black and white city. It also connected me with so many amazing people who I am still close with today and made me feel committed to making St. Louis my home.

I would say the thing I’m most proud of is the connections and relationships that I’ve helped facilitate through my work. I’ve seen a lot of projects and organizations grow because they’ve been able to connect to the right people, resources, and opportunities to move them forward. I love the feeling of connecting two amazing people and seeing them work together and develop new projects and ideas together.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve had to unlearn a lot of ideas around leadership and what it means to be a “good” leader. I used to think that being a leader required stepping up to do everything and always being willing to show up and “fix” every problem. The longer that I do this work, the more I feel like being a good leader is defined by your willingness to help develop new leaders. My goal isn’t to be the person at “the top,” it’s to be part of a team of people that is working together and eventually to make myself obsolete because other people are able to carry the work forward in their own ways. I also realized quickly that being the person who says yes to everything isn’t sustainable — we all need to ask for and receive help so that we can continue to stay present and engaged over the long term.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

One of the books that has been a really valuable resource to me is Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-06216-7.html

Contact Info:

• Website: stlmutualaid.org
• Instagram: @stlmutualaid
• Facebook: STL Mutual Aid

Image Credits
Artwork by Sophie Devincenti