Hi, I’m Tin!
I am ecstatic to join the Collective Results Team! I have worked as a program planner, evaluator, and researcher in the public health, social services, and high education sectors over the past 10 years. My work centres equity to ensure intentionality in engagements with people and programs. My understanding of equity, my equity-focused approach, and my desire to contribute to health for all life have been informed by my intersectional positionalities. As a gay/queer Asian immigrant, I have experienced various forms of discrimination – intentional, unintentional, and casual heterosexism and racism in mainstream society, as well as racism within queer spaces. Simultaneously, my unearned privileges of being a cisgender/cis-assumed man who is temporarily able-bodied and neurotypical have offered insight and lived experiences that have shaped who I am, my core values, my career interests and goals, as well as the ways in which I approach my work and engagements with people around me.
Beyond my career, I am an amateur gardener, tending to flowers and vegetables, in hopes of learning more about nurturing the land on which I live. I think about the many years that Indigenous people have cared for this land, and I want to share in their learnings and concern for Turtle Island. So far, I have had some bountiful harvests of tomatoes, green beans, peppers, eggplants, and raspberries. I hope to expand my garden and add a few more fruit trees to the lone pear tree in my backyard!
In addition to gardening, I have a great love for food. Good food. Flavourful food. Food that I was made to feel bad about in primary school – my “ethnic” food. In spite of that, the very same food now reminds me of home. In times of chaos in my life, these meals are like a homing device that I can always count on, Vietnamese dishes that my parents or I cooked, to help me feel grounded, calm, joy, and cared for.
I love all aspects of food because I believe that food helps us learn about people and communities. How? People’s personalities, his/stories, and values are embedded in their relationship with food. This includes the kind of food they eat or don’t eat, the way they prefer to consume their food, the regularity at which they eat, who they choose to eat with, their ability to and comfort in preparing food (or not), where they learned to prepare their food, the ways they prepare their food, the tools they use, the kinds of ingredients they use, where they obtain their food ingredients (e.g., purchase, grow, farm, food share), and their awareness of (or even concern about) where their food comes from. Food is a great way to break the ice with people and bring them together. It is through food that we can initiate and form meaningful relationships with people who share and don’t share similar lived experiences.
And with that, I close this post with excitement and optimism as I enter the next stage of my career with Collective Results. Perhaps one day we could share a meal together and talk about our love for food.