Staff

Linda Lelis-Her is a 2nd generation, Hmong American, queer-feminist. Born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Linda is the Executive Director of Asian American Organizing Project (AAOP) and was one of the original founders and leaders. In late 2015, she became the Executive Director and along with LGBTQI+ young people, and womxn identified leaders, they grew AAOP into an Asian youth and young people centered, grassroots organizing, and gender justice-focused organization. 

Linda’s professional career as a writer-poet, community organizer, fundraiser, and Executive Director spans 15+ years. Her organizing framework and experiences focuses on the intersections of gender, class and race, healing work, and has organized on social justice issues, local and national non-partisan and partisan campaigns, philanthropy, and community development. Creating change work is a lifetime commitment and Linda hopes to make an impact on a generation of young Asian Americans, immigrants and refugees where Minnesota infrastructure, leadership and decisions reflect and empower young people.

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Zong is a passionate community member who cares about social justice. She’s a mother of three ages 2, 14 and 16. She is a certified yoga instructor, enjoys practicing yoga, biking, hiking, jogging, weight lifting, and is a huge foodie. Her professional roots remain in St. Paul for the past 15 years in non-profit education, youth development, policy and evaluation. Zong is passionate about establishing new ways to disrupt the systems that perpetuate marginalized communities from advancing accessible education (Primary through Post-Secondary options), home ownership, reproductive rights, and civic engagement. She looks forward to navigating through this process with AAOP and supporting the operations of the team. 

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Being a 1.5 generation immigrant and a mental health advocate, Vang Xor is at a unique intersection that enable me to bridge both world in a way that’s not commonly done before. That’s the vision that he sees himself working for; his dream is to push for an intentional movement of mental health acceptance within his community. Mental wellness check-in should be a regular choice of conversation. He also plans on expanding his work to open up opportunity for voices from other marginalized community such as the AAPI queer communities.

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Summer is a 2nd generation, Hmong, Lao, and Chinese American, who continues to explore her identity as an Asian American and how that is impacted by the infrastructure of our country’s government. Through her studies in fashion design at the University of Minnesota, her passion for sustaining and preserving the environment and ethics surrounding human rights intensified. She wants to utilize the skills and knowledge that she learned in school to help people and organizations to talk about important issues in underrepresented and marginalized communities through creative storytelling. Summer also wants to explore creative ways that cultures can continue to be preserved and shared with the world through art and design. When she is not working at AAOP she enjoys soccer, photography, cooking, art museums, and dancing at DJ sets.