It is proven that organizations perform better when they have gone through an anti-oppression process. Not just unconscious bias, diversity or tolerance, but anti-oppression.
Better Performance
Organizations with more awareness of diversity and anti-oppression outperform other organizations in every aspect.1,2
A Happier Organization
Research shows staff members are more likely to remain committed and present with more investment in anti-oppression work.3
Innovation
Going through a process of anti-oppression keeps organizations on top of their creative and innovative game.4
This work is multi-faceted, and multi-dimensional. It requires experience fielding all scenarios, a breadth of history, and a solid understanding of how organizations develop.
This is where I come in.
WHY HAVE ME WORK WITH YOU?
With over 20 years of proven results, experience nationally and internationally with 100s of organization types from non-profits, to universities to start ups, to Fortune 500 companies, I come to the table as an expert. Explore what my experience brings to you.
Anti-Oppression
Beyond Diversity
Workshops and Talks
Topics and Formats
Talks and Writings
Press and Media
Culture Audit/Assessment
Details and the Bigger Picture
People, HR and PR
People Management, Brand Management
Projects
Creative and Tech
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT
The process of seeking organizational change
CONTACT
Our First Conversation
We will start with a conversation about what you're looking for, what you want it to look like, who will be in the room and how we can make lasting and impactful change over time. This first contact is critical in assessing how I can be the best fit for your organization.
THE ASSESSMENT
Measuring where you are
We continue with rigorous information gathering to determine who will be in the room, who are the stakeholders, the history of how you arrived to where you are, where you want to be, and timelines.
THE PROCESS
A Lifelong Journey
We begin the process as an arc, not as an isolated talk or workshop. Whether we have one session or several, the work will be embedded with your organization for long-term change. This is urgent and necessary work, and the work we do together will position you to move forward.
STRATEGY
Continue the Process of Transformation
My goal is to make it so that when we are finished with our process, you will have mechanisms in place to continue the work without me. A sign of my job well done is that you no longer need me. Our process includes tangible and long-term solutions throughout the period of work that will ensure you will have impactful and effective transformation for the next cycle of your organization.
IT STARTS
WITH
CHANGE
TESTIMONIALS
YK Hong is a tireless advocate for a more equitable world. Our staff work with YK at Creative Capital was transformative for each of us personally and for the organization. I so appreciate how tough and uncompromising she is, and how fiercely committed she is to her clients' personal, professional and organizational advancement. YK helped to challenge--and strengthen--the organization in ways I couldn't have predicted. She was a gift to us!
Ruby Lerner
Executive Director (Retired)
Creative Capital
YK- Extremely bright and undeniably one of the most genuine people I have met. Her confidence in subject matter is obvious and her ability to share and teach to a lower level than her own skill set is remarkable. I could see her teaching as easily at MIT as I could to ... youth. I was extremely fortunate to have her as an instructor both days. She would be suited well working with any population and skill level.
Joanne Bogrett
Northeast Regional Director
YMCA
YK’s commitment to anti-oppression and accountability work is evident in the way she brings in her own life experiences, providing practical ways to dismantle the oppression we may face day to day. Her training style is includes a mixture of compassion, humor, and authenticity that challenges the participant to dig deeper and pushes each of us toward realizing liberation.
Michelle Lin
Training Coordinator
Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS)
It was probably the most important and valuable training I’ve ever done. I came in as a well-meaning, good liberal, but I didn’t really get what it means to be an anti-racist – a real ally – until the training.
As a professional, political person I’ve been part of many “liberal” coalitions and efforts that were completely devoid of involvement (let alone leadership) from people of color. At the end of the training I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to do that anymore. After a tough interview process, I have been hired as a central staff person who works with a coalition of groups, led by and comprised of 2/3 people of color. There’s no way they would have hired me if I hadn’t had the benefit of your training. I feel really lucky.
Stephanie White
Executive Director
Equality Michigan
YK Hong is a dynamic and skilled trainer. Her sense of humor and ability to relate to people allow her to push participants to examine their ways of thinking helping them to grow. She has a rare talent for addressing multiple issues of oppression in an accessible way while making clear the many connections between them. As a fellow anti-oppression trainer, I often look to her methods to strengthen my own work.
Bree Carlson
DR Works
Senior Trainer
I was first drawn into YK's work when I invited her to do a day-long training for Asian Pacific American students at the Claremont Colleges in Claremont, California. The feedback was incredible. The students who attended her training (many of whom came from less politicized backgrounds) told me that because of the training, they felt they had a deeper and stronger understanding of systemic oppression, the root causes of social injustice, as well as the politics of power and privilege. I see YK's work as foundational to building self-determined communities and forward-thinking leaders.
Diana Ming Yin
Business Owner
Poppy and Rose
Contact
Take the first step to the next step.
Anti-Oppression
In the form of workshops, talks, trainings and community organizing.Because, if you're not doing anti-oppression work, you're doing oppression work.
YK Hong is a nationally renown leader in organization development and anti-oppression work. She is considered one of the foremost experts in developing new curriculum and material for the constantly expanding idea of organizations and groups. She has been professionally facilitating and training organizations, groups and individuals in anti-oppression work, organization development, grassroots fundraising and strategic planning since 1998. She also has training in Human Resources Management and Organization Development.
Whatever you terms you use to refer to it, whether it be diversity training, unconscious bias training, inclusivity training or sensitivity training, YK brings it to the next level with an anti-oppression curriculum created through 20 years of working with groups with the most up-to-date analysis.
Experience matters in this work, and YK has a comprehesive lexicon of experience to share. In addition, her work with organizations of all sizes and types gives her distinct insight into taking the best facets and lessons from each to bring your group to its most authentic potential.
YK has worked with a large range of non-profits, independent organizations, universities and colleges, startups and Fortune 500 companies all over the world to shape the most effective curriculum based on solid, interactive and challenging methodologies. She is even at times brought in to re-train organizations that have gone through ineffective diversity or implicity bias trainings by other companies. By using popular education methods, with the foundation for all workshops based on the need and wants of the communities involved, she insures that all material is relevent and necessary to your specific organization or group.
This work is a matter of life and death. These conversations are that important and necessary.
YK Hong is a dedicated community organizer on local and national scales. She bases her foundational philosophy in grassroots community organizing principles and popular education. This is reflected in her events and projects.
In addition, YK leverages technology, code and data to pull together communities and put the power of technology in everyone's grasp. She teaches code, data, tech, and cyber security. She also holds events and spaces for folks of color to come together and share rare spaces of intention and consciousness-raising together.
Workshops and Talks
Partial list of workshops and talks given in the past.
Workshop List
A sample PDF list of a fraction of the workshops YK has given in the past, is available here. There are 100% tailored to your audience and context.
Sampling of Past Talks
▫ Anti-racism in Organizations and Groups
▫ Working on a Multi-issue Movement
▫ Asian Activism
▫ Genderqueer/trans/intersex people of color
▫ Building with Different Communities of Color
▫ Pushing the movement to the left
▫ Internalized Oppression
▫ History of International Radical Movements
▫ Political Popular Education, Why we Need it
▫ History of Queer Liberation
▫ Coalition Building
▫ Tension between Blacks and Koreans
▫ Creating our Own Communities and Families
▫ Creating Our Own Language
▫ Naming our Desire: Know What We Want
▫ Strategic Planning
▫ Accountability
▫ A Revolutionary Vision
▫ Evaluating Ourselves: Self-Evaluation Tools
▫ Beyond Diversity, Inclusion, Unconscious Bias
▫ Facilitation Techniques
▫ Leadership Skills
▫ Organization Development
Freedom Trainers
YK has been the Lead Trainer for Freedom Trainers since 1998. Freedom Trainers is a national network of consultant trainers who used political popular education to help organizations develop their analysis around anti-oppression and organization development. Much of their work is based on creating long term relationships with organizations and groups by working with staff, board and/or members. This type of organizational and board development has been a strong foundation for her work as a trainer for many years, as she believes in long term strategies for long term change from the roots of an organization.
YK continues her organizational development work independently under the same philosophies with 2 decades of experience. She conducts workshops and trainings, does strategic planning, culture audits, organization development and more.
TED Talk, Press and Writing
See past events and talks
YK Hong is a prominent and highly-acclaimed speaker on various topics relevant to her broad range of experiences. She sits on numerous panels, and gives lectures, keynotes and speeches around the country. She believes in sharing her own life's lessons as a means to empowerment for others.
Catch YK's TED Talk, entitled "How Having Nothing is Having Everything"here. There is also a collection of talks here.
A selection of published works
YK Hong writes articles and essays for several different publications, from nationally distributed print magazines to online publications.
Much like her speaking and training, her writing topics are broad and founded in her work around multi-issue organizing.
▫ Let's Say It Out Loud: Race How We Have to Say it to See It
▫ 365 Release: a self-created practice for non-attachment, letting go and change
▫ Being Present: Mindfulness Anti-Oppression
▫ Dismantling Racism Daily
▫ People's Education, Popular Education
▫ Chinaman in Brooklyn
- discussing YK Hong's experience with violence as a genderqueer Asian living in Brooklyn, NY.
pub. Azine Oct 2005
pub. Critical Moment Jan-Feb 2006
▫ Shoutout: Women of Color Respond to Violence" 2008.
Defining Our Own Sexual Liberation
- discussing people of color and alternative ways of viewing our bodies and sex.
pub. Colorlines Winter 04/05,
pub. Critical Moment Mar-Apr 2005
▫ MultiCulti Isn't Enough
▫ Found Family, Created Community
Culture Audit/Organizational Assessment
Find out where your organization stands
A comprehensive culture audit for your organization gives you insight into areas of your organization that are stellar, as well as areas that have room for transformation and support. This longer-term evaluation offers a multi-layered approach to all levels of your organization, beginning with insight from the individuals that make up your staff.
The audit evaluates the entire organization from an anti-oppression framework, including communication, human resources policies, conflict resolution, decision making, programming, development, onboarding, hiring, retention, professional development, digital platforms, mission and vision, efficiency and effectiveness, with qualitiative and quantitative evaluation. Using a lean and agile approach, YK makes use of her programming background to produce interactive data visualizations of results as well.
What sets YK apart is her unique problem-solving approach. It is not enough to simply identify problems; the most critical aspect of this work is to find effective solutions. Data-driven anti-oppression work with decades of experience with direct case-studies support this approach, but implementing transformation is the ultimate goal we reach through this process.
HR, PR and People Management
The Art of Managing Relationships and People
There has never been a time that relationships have been more critical within organizations. With changing political dynamics and more information on keeping an acute analysis around anti-oppression, diversity, inclusion, anti-bias and more, the tasks of interpersonal relationships, hiring and management are YK's strength and speciality. YK takes a nimble approach that enables your company or organization to adapt even long after the work.
This means examining ALL areas of your people relationships from the perspective of anti-oppression, not simply as an afterthought. YK thoroughly covers the hiring pipeline, position descriptions, how to go beyond traditional sources for finding talent, expectations, interview strategy, onboarding, ongoing staff happiness and retention, professional development strategy, and covering tangible policy implementation. Coaching is also available as a long-term strategy to ensure growth across time.
The Art of Responsible Advertising and Public Relations
YK also consults with advertising firms and media companies on their potential campaigns to ensure they do not lead to PR nightmares. Putting out an advertising campaign, or making a public gesture that is racist, sexist, classist, ableist, ageist, sizeist, homophobic, and oppressive can lead to a huge boycott by your customer base, and can even mean the end of your company or brand.
As a long-time expert in national and global anti-oppression messaging and imagery, YK's expertise can avert and avoid potential and permanent loss and damage to your company.
Projects
A gamut of projects that make up the foundation of YK's anti-oppression work.
In addition to coding and programming for two decades, YK holds certificates in Machine Learning and Cybersecurity. She supports her anti-oppression work with data-driven visualizations and metrics and also gives workshops on Code, Data, Cybersecurity, and Digital Innovation.
YK Hong is a U.S.-born, Korean raised artist. Her work draws from her multi-cultural and trans-global background to incorporate themes of liberation, oppression, mindfulness and community accountability.
Using traditional Korean artistic techniques paired with experimental methods, she works in multiple mediums, combining the inherent organic grit of the material with often jarring human-made elements, in a juxtaposition of the image of the Asian as perennial foreigner embodying hybrid and paradoxical impressions of ancient tradition beside cutting edge futurism.
Her pieces portray the possibility of revolution and change in everyday struggle. She frequently incorporates elements from her affinity for graphic and textual design into her work to communicate messages that are politically provocative, reflect mindfulness, cross-culturalism and multiple identities. She has exhibited in galleries around the country and internationally her TEDx talk addressing creative space can be found here.
You can view a dedicated artist site for YK Hong here.
365 Release is a project conceived and executed by YK to practice non-attachment, change and letting go by giving away one object a day. Find out more about the guidelines, insights into each object, and YK's TED Talk that covers the project.
Project Pennyluck is an ongoing and global photo project of leaving pennies around the world so more people find good luck.
