Internships

Aida (she/they) is an incoming freshman at Duke University and was raised on Tuscarora land (Cary, NC) by Chinese immigrants. Aida’s interest in anti-racism began in high school as they took on the role of writing for their school news site and received messages targeting her race, heritage, and gender. From then on, she became involved in events from chalk outs and petitions relating to Anti-Asian hate, to period stigma documentaries and environmental justice grants. They seek to unlearn the racist, imperialist, and capitalist structures while honoring marginalized voices through writing, organizing, and community-building. When not interning or volunteering for NCAAT or at school, Aida enjoys Miyazaki movies, coffee-consuming, gift-giving, and cooking.

Shania Khoo (she/they) was born in Singapore to Malaysian parents and immigrated at the age of five to unceded Tuscarora land (colonially known as Cary, North Carolina). They are a rising senior at Duke University, pursuing an individualized degree program in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. As a Seeding Change fellow with NCAAT, Shania hopes to continue to be in and create learning and growing spaces to better understand anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, and the interrelations of structures of power and violence. Whether Shania is pushing for their university to implement more resources for communities of color; creating zines and art unpacking immigration, queerness, and Asian diasporic identity and experiences; or facilitating political education spaces, they aim to use their voice and power to dream and build a better world that centers the needs of working-class communities of color.

Nellie Sun (she/her) is a rising junior from Vancouver, Canada who is double majoring in Political Science and History at Duke University. She became politically and civically engaged in high school, canvassing and phone-banking for the Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould’s election campaign and volunteering in her MP’s constituency office. Nellie has worked with the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice on updating and curating virtual tours for their Durham Civil and Human Rights Map, which showcases historical sites where boycotts, sit-ins, legal cases, and protests for social justice occurred. Someday, Nellie hopes to become a public interest attorney and use the legal system to advance civil and human rights.

In her free time, she avidly competes with Duke’s mock trial team, whom she loves!

Li-Anne is a rising college senior studying English literature and American studies. Her niche interest is in how alternative media (such as newsletters and zines) can serve as historical and potential avenues for organizing. In her free time, she enjoys baking and writing about video games.

Britney Hong (she/her) calls Cary, NC home, but she is originally from the Bay Area in California. As a first-generation college student, daughter of refugees, and a Chinese-Vietnamese-American, she is most passionate about bridging the education gap for minority students, extending voting rights to the AAPI community, and advocating for social justice through an intersectional lens. At UNC, she is double majoring in Political Science and Human Development & Family Studies with a minor in Social and Economic Justice. In the past, Britney worked as a swim instructor and at a Tex-Mex restaurant, where her love for children and black bean bowls emerged. This previous year, she interned for the North Carolina Democratic Party and You Can Vote, a local voting rights nonprofit. In the future, Britney plans to pursue a career in public service, specifically in education policy.  

In her free time, she loves scrapbooking, listening to podcasts (Armchair Expert and The Michelle Obama Podcast are her favorites!), and getting boba or Chipotle with her friends!

Marzuq Islam (he/him) is a second-generation Bengali American living in Cary, North Carolina; a distinct quality of his is that he is a huge advocate for providing resources and knowledge to help people better succeed in life. Before college, Marzuq was part of a variety of activities including FRC Robotics and Cary Teen Council. Moreover, he also had the distinction of being a Governor School Alumni, an NC House Page, and an NC Governor Page. Currently, Marzuq is a freshman attending East Carolina University as a Bioprocess Engineer while on the Pre-Medical track. In addition, Marzuq has the distinction of being an EC Scholar, which is ECU’s highest merit scholarship. At East Carolina University, he is part of the Presurgical Society and Alpha Epsilon Delta, a Pre-Medical Honor Society; also, he is a part of New Beginnings Healthcare, which is a team in ECU’s Honor College trying to provide quality healthcare to the people of Eastern North Carolina.

In his free time, Marzuq loves to read books, watch action dramas, and listen to rock music.

Nyima D. Lama (she/her) is a senior Bonner Scholar at Guilford College, double majoring in Political Science and International Studies with a minor in Japanese Studies. She was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, and went to school in India until she immigrated to the United States in 2011. Nyima identifies herself as a Nepali-Tibetan American; Tibetan from her father’s side and Nepali from her mother’s. She is passionate about the Tibetan struggle for freedom, immigrant and refugee issues, and international politics. She hopes to work with foreign affairs in the Asia Pacific region.

In her free time, she enjoys listening to music, making drinks, chilling at coffee shops, and stargazing.

Tulsi Patel (she/her) is a first-year student at UNC-Chapel Hill from Whiteville, NC. She is majoring in Neuroscience and Anthropology. These disciplines intersect in her interest in how cultural practices affect people’s health. She has been an active participant in the Asian American community for multiple years, as an executive officer of her high school’s Asian Cultures Club and a co-captain for a few Asian dance student organizations. Her academic pursuits and passion for the Asian community have led to her interest in AAPI advocacy, specifically destigmatizing mental health while increasing access to mental health resources in the AAPI community. She hopes to continue to pursue this field through both scientific and cultural research at UNC-CH.

In her free time, Tulsi enjoys long walks, dancing, air frying random foods, and knitting.

Alina Khan was born in South Carolina but spent most of her childhood in Raleigh, NC, after moving in 2010. She is a first-generation Pakistani American and a senior at Apex Friendship High School. Alina has a passion for advocacy, human rights, and giving back to her community. She is an ambassador for the Zakat Foundation of North Carolina and is a member of multiple coalitions for racial equality. 

Alina loves learning other languages and cultures and has studied 3 different languages besides her native language, Urdu. She hopes to learn even more about the AAPI community through this experience as a voter engagement intern. 

She is currently applying to colleges but hopes to major in something related to political science or public policy and, in the future, pursue a career in the legal field.

Audrey Meigs is a sophomore at Davidson College from Asheville, North Carolina. She is a Political Science major and Communications minor pursuing a track that will hopefully take her to law school to study human rights law in the future. In 2019, Audrey was awarded the John Montgomery Belk Scholarship that is given to students who exhibit leadership skills in their communities. She hopes to study abroad in Asia one day with the stipends the scholarship provides her. As an adopted Asian American born in China, Audrey has a unique perspective on the AAPI experience. Growing up in a predominantly white area and going to predominantly white schools, she has experienced the racial and ethnic identity crisis that so many Asian Americans face in their lifetimes. Audrey is the Political Engagement Chair for Davidson College’s Pan Asian Student Association which aims to amplify Asian voices on campus through cultural events and advocacy. Her political activism has led her to set up voter registration booths with organizations working for LGBTQ+ rights in the south, speaking at Democratic events in her local community, working as a page in the NC legislature and for Governor Cooper, and lobbying on Capitol Hill three times for bills that guarantee girls in developing countries can gain citizenship and education. She has also worked extensively with Girl Up, an organization of the United Nations Foundation that helps adolescent girls in underdeveloped nations get the funding and resources they need to live happy and healthy lives in their communities.

In her free time, Audrey is heavily involved in theatre, most notably starring in her middle school production of The Little Mermaid as Ariel. She also enjoys reading, knitting, and hiking. She loves iced coffee, Game of Thrones, and John Green’s podcast: The Anthropocene Reviewed. If you want to contact Audrey, follow her on Instagram @audreymeigs or send her an email at audreymeigs@gmail.com. She’d love to get in touch with you!

Amy Dang is currently a senior at the Wake STEM Early College High School and dual enrolled at NC State University. With an interest to major in business and marketing, Amy plans to connect the community by amplifying Asian American stories, as well as gain traction to NCAAT’s mission, through social media. 

You may see her out and about behind the Cha House Raleigh counter as your friendly neighborhood boba barista or at Vietnamese-centered events, such as the Tét, making banh mi! She is also an avid baker who always has her nose in the newest Netflix food documentary, so if you ever need a recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies, don’t hesitate to reach out to Amy!

Zuhaa Asrar is from Cary, NC, and is a senior at Panther Creek High School. As the daughter of Indian Muslim immigrants, she has experienced first-hand the disconnect between Asian American youth and their identities, thus sparking her interest in youth advocacy. 

She is the current co-president of her school’s Muslim Student Association, where she has worked with Muslim community leaders to design programs meant to dismantle societal barriers within Muslim youth spheres. Additionally, she serves on the board of the Morrisville chapter of YASEER, a youth-run volunteering organization for Muslim students. Previously, she has served as an instructor at Al-Mizaan Leadership Academy, where she has designed and taught Quranic Arabic Reading and Writing curricula for minority Muslim students. She is endlessly enamored by linguistics and enjoys learning about the impact of language on cultural identity. Outside of school, Zuhaa is an active volunteer at both the Islamic Center of Morrisville and the UNCREX Hospital. The intersection of her many interests in science, literature, linguistics, and advocacy has inspired Zuhaa to create Team STEAM NC, an education initiative offering free interdisciplinary education opportunities.

In the future, Zuhaa plans to study Comparative Literature and Anthropology on the pre-medicine track. She wishes to work towards removing the social and racial biases that exist both in the health field and the Muslim American community at large. In her free time, you can find Zuhaa reading contemporary fiction, running at the Tobacco Trail, or designing graphics on her all-time favorite website, Canva. 

As an intern, she hopes to create platforms through which Asian American youth are able to establish meaningful connections with their identities and recognize their potential in advocating for social change.

Caroline Buaron is a senior at North Carolina State University double majoring in Economics and Political Science with a concentration in Public Policy. Born in New Jersey but now living in North Carolina, she is a Filipina American that strives to cultivate spaces for the AAPI community by recognizing its complex intersections and histories, particularly among the AAPI community in the South, through organizational work and initiating conferences. 

From 2018 – 2020, Caroline founded and was president of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) at NC State, an organization that educated the campus community about North Korean refugees and provided aid for those who wished to resettle to another country. In 2019, she was the Logistics Chair for the Triangle-Area Asian American Student Conference (TAASCON), a conference committed to acknowledging the AAPI diaspora and initiating social change. She was also Philanthropy Chair for the Filipino American Student Association (FASA) at NC State in 2019, where she organized service events to be conducted within the Raleigh community.

In her free time, she loves reading Filipinx history, finding new music, and line dancing to September by Earth, Wind, & Fire.

Minh-Thu Dinh is a sophomore at NC State University majoring in electrical engineering with an intended minor in theatre. She has been actively involved in her local Asian American community for many years. In high school, Minh-Thu co-founded a high school-based Vietnamese Student Association and served as an executive officer of her school’s Asian Cultures Club. As an executive officer, she was given the opportunity to host, write, and create an Asian cultural festival with a variety of engaging performances. In 2019, she conducted independent research about Asian American self-segregated social groups in predominantly white institutions. 

Last year, she served as a general body representative of the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) at NC State. Minh-Thu worked predominantly as a scriptwriter and technical liaison for both their cultural ball and for “Viet Night,” an annual cultural show. This year, she is an A/V staff member for the 10th annual conference by the Mid-Atlantic Region of Vietnamese Student Associations (MAUVSA). Minh-Thu is excited to join NCAAT’s team as an intern to encourage Asian Americans to think critically about their political and cultural history. She is also thrilled to be a PIVOT (The Progressive Vietnamese American Organization) North Carolina fellow, which provides resources about voter engagement for Vietnamese Americans nationwide.

In her free time, Minh-Thu enjoys playing the ukulele, watching The Try Guys, and dreaming about theatrical performances. When theater productions re-open, she hopes to volunteer as a technical crew member at her university’s theatre.

Nina Lin is a first-year at Yale University from Fayetteville, NC, interested in studying Anthropology and Architecture. She is a Chinese American artist with work spanning painting, sculpture, and social practice pursuits. Her fascination with the logistics of combining reality and fantasy is thoroughly exhibited within her pieces. Sharing, be it through visual storytelling or vibrant visuals, has become a tenet of Nina’s artistic process that translates to activism and public outreach. The colorful, detailed nature of Nina’s work demonstrates the nuanced nature of the natural world and interconnectedness of human interactions. Her social practice work, “Dialogue: The Immigrant Conversation,” has garnered over 100 accounts of human culture in the cascade of immigration in America. Nina hopes to implement critical elements of her past work and present work with NCAAT to building a more equitable future for cultural advocacy and to eventually attend law school.

Veda Patil (she/her) is a rising senior from Charlotte, NC attending UNC-Chapel Hill. She studies Political Science with minors in English and Education. Some of her organizational involvement prior to joining NCAAT includes: the Campus Y, UNC’s historic hub for social justice and innovation, where she currently serves as one of the 2020-2021 Co-Presidents. Veda is part of the first cohort of Blue Sky Scholars and the Bonner Leaders Program. Through the Bonner Leaders Program, she worked at the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making history, where she dealt primarily with volunteer coordination, grassroots engagement, and workshop curriculum development on local civil rights history in the historically Black neighborhoods of Northside and Pine Knolls, Chapel Hill. Additionally, she interned with the Worker’s Rights Project at the North Carolina Justice Center during the summer of 2018, and formerly served as the Director of Outreach and the Co-Chair of Programming at the UNC Institute of Politics.

Veda hopes to teach after graduation and eventually attend law school. She hopes to work at the intersection of education and labor policy and do her part in creating a more equitable public education system. She also cares deeply about South Asian/Desi community advocacy and the power of narratives and storytelling in changing the status quo. Her interests range from grassroots community mobilization to postcolonial literature to following Sephora’s newest releases. Feel free to reach out to her to talk about anything social justice, literature, or makeup related!

Kimberly Cang is a rising junior at UNC-Chapel Hill majoring in Chemistry with a minor in Social and Economic Justice. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts but spent most of her life in Norcross, Georgia. As a child of Cambodian refugees, she is extremely proud of her Teochew Chinese and Khmer culture which is what galvanized her interest in Southeast Asian American rights and Asian American advocacy in general. She has been involved with OCA National where she was a 2018 Gold Mountain Scholar and 2019 Census Ambassador. She currently serves as the Political Chair on UNC’s Asian American Students Association and is on the Student Council for UNC’s up and coming Asian American Center. She is also a member of Kappa Phi Lambda Sorority, Inc and serves as the treasurer on UNC’s Multicultural Greek Council. During the school year, Kimberly works at Compass Center for Women and Families through the Campus Y Bonner Leaders Program, a non-profit that supports victims of domestic violence in Orange County.

In the future, Kimberly hopes to work with low-income and minority communities in the health care and health policy field. In her free time, she loves volunteering with organizations such as Refugee Community Partnership and UNC Hospitals. She also loves to journal, explore new boba shops, binge movies and TV shows, and listen to musicals such as Hamilton!

Gaomomee Yang is a first-generation Hmong-American from outside the Research Triangle Area. She (very recently) graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and through her time here came into contact with NCAAT. Since she was little she has always been curious and due to this developed a deep love and passion for learning – as it provided her with answers she needed about the matters around her. Particularly she loves learning about social issues and cultures outside of her own because she is presented with unique perspectives and experiences separate from her own – opening her to a different way of perceiving the world. In her free time, she loves to binge-watch TV shows or spend time with her family and friends. She would also consider myself to be quite the chef however her baking skills could still use some work, but, through the amount of free time we have all been presented with, she is proud to say that she has gotten slightly better! Finally, she is an aspiring healthcare professional and will be attending UNC this fall to major in Biology and minor in Chinese!

María José is 16 years old and a rising senior at Garner High School. She is an intern at NCAAT and a senior fellow for ACE (Alliance for Climate Education)! She has worked with other organizations like el Pueblo as a youth council member before. She is really excited to be working with NCAAT and voter registration!

Caroline’s project, Sowing Seeds Collective, serves to create a space for AAPI artists to reflect and find solace while showcasing their talents with other AAPI folx in the state. From 2D art submissions to music, Sowing Seeds displays a variety of inspiring pieces.

Check out Sowing Seeds Collective here | Click here for a mobile-optimized experience

Minh Thu’s project, “Beyond a Repost” is a Carrd that actively and ironically challenges social media activism. Through a series of informational graphics, the user can learn more about slacktivism, the duality of social media for activism, and solutions to transform their online platform for a substantial impact.

Check out “Beyond a Repost” here

Alina created a comprehensive three-minute mini-documentary about the political and civic achievements of Asian Americans, starting from their immigration rights to current events surrounding Asian American activism.

Click here for the video.

Audrey’s podcast, “The Red Thread” is based on the East Asian lore that there is a thread of fate that connects people to one another. Through insightful interviews with others, Audrey tells the stories of Asian American community members in North Carolina.

Click here to check out the podcast.

Amy hosted an event in partnership with NCAAT and Cha House Raleigh, a Tawainese-Inspired Boba Shop, to host a Social Media Discount Day offering free boba in exchange for social media traction and a tabling event to register voters just outside of the store. Her position as a barista at Cha House Raleigh allowed her to touch base with a large audience of Asian Americans here in NC. 

Read more about Amy’s experience here.

Zuhaa’s event, “Power to the Poet,” was a virtual poetry night led by BIPOC creatives local to NC, providing a space for artistic expression, reflection, and revitalization during a time of unrest and isolation. Performers included award-winning poets Dasan Ahanu and Ina Cariño as well as emerging poets Sinthia Shabham and Joshua Francisco.

Nina’s personal project, in collaboration with Planet Gale, took the form of a hoodie and sticker fundraiser whose proceeds go towards immigrants in need of naturalization fee assistance. Nina’s eye-catching designs were promoted to peers and the larger community.

Check out the hoodie and order one here.

How many internship cycles do you have? 

• NCAAT currently offers a summer internship program. 

How many interns are picked? 

• In 2022, there will be 2 summer interns.

What does the internship application process look like? 

• All applicants will be required to submit a general application. Those successful in moving to the second round will be invited to interview. After interviews, NCAAT staff will select that cycle’s cohort. 

Is there a waitlist? 

• We do keep an internal waitlist of candidates. If an internship spot becomes available, we will contact candidates accordingly. 

Interview Tips

• Read about our organization! Make sure you know a bit about our goals, mission, and some projects we have worked on.
• Be prepared to articulate why you care about working with Asian Americans and what you have done in the past that makes this evident. 
• Don’t be afraid to talk about yourself, your accomplishments, and how you are the best fit to work with NCAAT. 
• Read up on best interview practices, research common interview questions, practice sharing anecdotes and experience that demonstrate your skills, or do practice interviews with friends. 

What do you look for in successful applicants? 

• Experience in Asian American spaces and/or organizing spaces is a plus. This can look like holding a leadership position at one of your school’s clubs serving Asian students or helping organize campaigns, rallies, or events for your community.
• An eagerness to work specifically with the Asian American population in North Carolina. 
• A commitment to social justice and equity for all communities of color. 
• Someone who is keenly interested in nonprofit work and could potentially envision themselves working in a nonprofit space. 
• Passion, experience, and skills in your particular internship focus area.