Abe Kim:

Well welcome Vice Mayor, Tammy Kim. We are so happy to have you here as a part of our podcast today. We really appreciate your time.

 

Tammy Kim:

Thank you so much for inviting me here.

 

Abe Kim:

Tammy, let’s start from the very beginning. Could you tell us a little bit about your immigration experience? Were you born here in the United States or did you immigrate at a young age?

 

Tammy Kim:

Yeah, so my family came here when I was a year old, slightly under a year old. We came actually in 1971 where we settled in Michigan. Being in Michigan… We moved to an area of Flint, Michigan. That was actually considered even like the lowest of the low income areas of Flint, Michigan. Up until fourth grade, I was the only non-black student in my class. And when I was about four or five years old, actually my biological father left. So my mom with very little education, very little English was left, you know, taking care of, at the time, two children in Flint, Michigan in an area and in a place that she was not familiar with.

 

Tammy Kim:

She worked as a seamstress… There were very, very, very few Koreans at the time, but there were a very small handful of Koreans. So she actually worked as a seamstress for one of the Korean shop owners in Flint. And despite having very little of anything she sponsored my uncle and his family as well as her younger sister, my aunt, who at that time was in high school, as well as my grandmother to come to the United States. So this was, you know, back in the seventies where it was much easier to sponsor family. So it was clearly very tough growing up, but, you know, she managed to be one of the founders of the very first Korean church in Flint, Michigan at that time.

 

Abe Kim:

So your family members all moved to even your extended family?

 

Tammy Kim:

Yep. So they all moved to Flint, Michigan. So whatever Korean population existed, you know, at that time it was a result of our family. When I was in high school my mom met my dad who was in Baltimore. It was actually a very, very Korean style arrangement where they exchanged pictures. And one day, you know, my mom said, “I might meet someone and we might get married” and that’s what happened. So when I was in high school, my mom went away for the weekend and my grandmother was taking care of us and [she] came back engaged. He was also divorced as well in Baltimore. He also came here and was sponsored by his sister who was already here.

 

Tammy Kim:

His life was, obviously, a struggle for him as well, not being able to speak much English, and having to be a day laborer. Then eventually, you know, was able to scrape up enough money for a very small liquor store. He had two children, so those are also my brother and sister. He’s the only father that I know and he is who I consider my only father. I love him dearly. So they met, quickly married and have been married ever since and, you know, are still married today. But I was still in high school at the time, so I needed to finish high school before we moved to Baltimore. So that’s what happened and [we] moved to Baltimore but I was already accepted to Michigan State. So I went back to Michigan State and studied public policy. So that was sort of my very early, early, early experience.

 

Abe Kim:

So let’s talk a little bit about your college years. You studied public policy. So it sounded like at least the political bug had bitten you early in terms of your desire for public service. Was that the case?

 

Tammy Kim:

It was. So I was very active in high school when it came to student government and I was very involved with groups like Amnesty International and we’re talking about the 1980s here where there’s like no email or no social media where you’re literally doing letter writing campaigns. And I remember specifically this is during the height of the pro-democracy movement in South Korea in the late eighties and my mom was furious when she saw a letter going to South Korea addressed to the Blue House… She went nuts and absolutely forbad me from being involved in anything political, because keep in mind, when she left Korea, it was still a military dictatorship. You could go to jail for anything or nothing at all.

 

Tammy Kim:

So she was convinced in her mind that the police would come after me, the government would come after me and I would go to jail. So keeping in mind, that is the context in which she came from and was so scared and so upset that she wanted no involvement whatsoever of me being involved. So I’m not saying she squashed my dreams. It’s not that, but it really came out of, and it’s not to place blame, but it really kind of came out of the fear at that time that is all Koreans knew. And so any Korean that was here in the United States at that time also came from that type of environment, that sort of perpetuates and that’s the legacy that we have today among many, especially older generation Korean Americans who also raised their children to be very apolitical as well because of that fear of being in prison and being labeled as a communist and possibly dying.

 

Abe Kim:

Yeah, but did they have any expectations for you to pursue… Obviously politics was something that they wanted you to avoid. Were they trying to guide you into a certain career path like many Asian parents try to do with their [kids]?

 

Tammy Kim:

Yeah, so I wasn’t ever good at math and science. I was not that good. My brother was, but I was not that good in math and science. So being a doctor or an engineer was certainly out of the question. There was support for being an attorney and so I was looking at that, but honestly, my first law book that I received when I was studying international law was so thick, I just couldn’t even comprehend that and it was not really what I was interested in. I was really more interested in the advocacy piece as well. So again, going back to high school, I also attended many, pro-choice demonstrations as well and then when I was in college was really active, I know I’m really aging myself, but you know, the first Gulf war, I was really active in student protest against the invasion of Kuwait by U.S. Forces.

 

Tammy Kim:

So that was really on top of my radar at that time and so realizing that actually what I enjoyed was the grassroots advocacy piece in working towards justice issues and then also moving a little bit down later was the LA riots. And that is something that really deeply impacted me. So even though I was in Baltimore, I was working at my parents’ liquor store and the conditions that led up to his high school were the exact same conditions that me and my family were in at that exact same time. The fear that had existed within many Korean families in the East coast was, you know, whatever’s happening in the West coast would eventually find its way East. Really seeing the lack of voice and the lack of representation on top of already being in college and being made more cognizant of who I am as an Asian American and as a Korean American, I think many college students sort of experienced that first blossoming at that time, but that also happened right at the same time as the unrest in LA.

 

Tammy Kim:

So all of that combined really sort of helped shape my identity as a Korean American again and wanting to give sort of voice to that. But again I was from a family that didn’t have much money. So a lot of my time was spent, you know, if I wasn’t working at our store, I needed to have a job because I had to help put myself through college as well. My parents taking care of four children and me being the oldest of all the siblings, I had the responsibility to make sure that, I was always working, which sort of then leads me into being a daughter of immigrants, low income immigrants, on top of the hardworking, but low income immigrants who are just trying to survive themselves.

 

Tammy Kim:

I having to work really didn’t allow me… I was not in a position to take on internship opportunities to go to D.C. like a lot of my friends were doing because I had to spend my summers working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. And when I wasn’t working for my own paycheck, whatever capacity that was left was working at my parents’ store. So it was one or the other. I mean, when we talk about these opportunities for mentorship and for internships, it comes out, in some ways, there’s a line of privilege to that, which has kind of carried with me that thought, you know, for my whole life actually.

 

Abe Kim:

So it sounds like you were kind of in this, there’s this tug of war, obviously your family situation and the family obligations, the difficulties your families were facing, but you also have this passion to really serve the very community we’re living in as well, right? But it requires some level of investment by the community into you to continue that dream. But in college you were able to study it. But after you graduated, you chose a different type of career path.

 

Tammy Kim:

So it’s not that I chose a different career path. Everything happened by accident. So I also keep in mind, especially my mom, especially my halmeoni… So I come from a very religious family. So despite not having much, despite having to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, my family always made room for church. So the fervor and the commitment that my family had towards the church was very deep and very strong. And so that’s why I look at much of my life: 축복 많이 받았어.

 

Tammy Kim:

I received so many blessings and I think like really sort of as an extension of my mom and had the money. So I take nothing for granted. So after school, for someone like myself who only just worked part-time jobs, didn’t have an opportunity. You didn’t have the opportunities for like really meaningful things on my resume. And at that time there was like a recession and a job slump. So it was really a bad time in that like early nineties recession period. So I just worked for my parents, worked with my parents. It just so happened that my parents needed to get another store, so they transferred their liquor license over to me. So I was responsible for one of their businesses and created a business, a small business, which was actually, most people don’t know this was actually a nightclub.

 

Abe Kim:

You were a nightclub owner there, huh?

 

Tammy Kim:

For a little while there, for a hot second in Baltimore. So [I was] a little mini nightclub owner, because that’s all I had that I had nothing except a liquor license, a bar liquor license in the adjacent area, it was not a great area. There was a lot of police. That is all I had. And so as a, I don’t know, 21, 22 year old at the time, I needed to do something and make something. And so I did that for a hot second, but I learned a lot of valuable skills doing that. And from then on, I went into a business, kind of real estate… So I was renting out apartments. Okay. So this is where it gets really crazy.

 

Tammy Kim:

I actually became top producer and I was renting a lot of apartments. An apartment referral business is what it was in Baltimore and I wanted to move. I had a boyfriend at the time, I’m going to admit all of this. So everything’s out in the open right now. So I had a boyfriend at the time and he was going to medical school. So he was either going to go somewhere in New York or somewhere in LA. So I had already told my parents that I wanted to move to either New York or Los Angeles, that I was just tired of this small town stuff I needed to go to the big city. And it’s so happened that he received his residency in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles area at UCLA. So I told my parents, “mom, I’m going to move to LA”.

 

Tammy Kim:

And it just so happened that there were opportunities for where I was currently working, that they were going to open up corporate offices in Los Angeles. So here was my transfer opportunity. Here I am top producer of apartment referral. I’m going to move to Los Angeles. But the funny thing is, is that in California to do the exact same work, you needed a real estate license. And so I was waiting, the queue was long for real estate license to actually be tested for the real estate license here in California at that time, because just about anything, everything required a real estate license of any type of transactions, whether you’re giving mortgages or renting apartments. So I came to California with basically nothing except a friend who let me be his roommate and I had to find a job real quick. As I waited for to take the real estate license and because I was top producer in that I did have a friend in LA saying you would make a great recruiter. You would make a great head honor.

 

Tammy Kim:

That is how it happened. And what’s really funny is I would not… How I got my first recruiting job is because I was a business owner and that is why they gave me the opportunity. So that’s how everything sort of comes in full circle. I didn’t quite say, I said it was a deli. I didn’t say it was a nightclub.

 

Tammy Kim:

I said it was a food establishment, I didn’t want to quite say I was a club owner, but that’s what happened. And so I became a corporate recruiter, went through a couple of different firms and ended up at a pretty well-established executive search firm here in Los Angeles. And one of my clients happened to be PricewaterhouseCoopers at the time of the merger between PricewaterhouseCoopers and Lybrand. And I was actually one of their client or they were one of my clients. I had done a lot of deals with them, placing a lot of people, especially at that time. I was one of very, very few recruiters at the time that actually dealt in technology. So I found a niche for myself within the firm, and that’s how I became actually one of the top producers within the firm, because the firm itself had specialized in accounting and finance.

 

Tammy Kim:

And, um, I had an interest, a strong interest in technology even at that time and I was doing all the technical placements for the firm, the recruiting firm that I worked at. This was especially around Y2K around that time. So I was doing a lot of like COBOL programmers and anyone, anything related to Y2K, as well as, technology security. So anyway, PWC was one of my clients. They pretty much offered me a position on the spot, met with them downtown. They offered me a position on the spot. So pretty much the whole after that, the entire trajectory of my corporate career just changed immediately after that. Going into a big six firm at that time, I don’t know what it’s down to now, but at that time was something that I could have only dreamed of maybe 10 years down the road.

 

Tammy Kim:

And the fact that it happened so early in my career and the other sort of fluky part about it is because I was already doing deals with them, they had a very good understanding of where I was income wise. So I was already, this was in the nineties as a 20 some year old already making six figures. And so that’s more than what people make, so they had to bring me in as an associate director level in order to sort of come equal with the pipeline and the pending deals that I had. And so that really sort of catapulted and I was probably one of the, in the early nineties, I mean, sorry, not early nineties, but that mid, late nineties, I mean basically my generation is the first generation of second gen Korean Americans. So, we talk about second generation Korean Americans. They were all coming up around at the same time and so I was already very sort of well-positioned. You know, rolling around K-Town with, and there was like a very few of us at that time who were actually corporate professionals. We’re not even talking about executives or anything like that, but corporate professionals at that time, you know, Koreans in the area. Very, very few.

 

Abe Kim:

Let me ask, since you were in the kind of executive search space and working with other professionals, I imagine, I mean, even now, today, we don’t see a lot of Asian Americans in areas of leadership and a lot of professionals today, but I’m sure even less so in the nineties. And I’m wondering from your perspective, well, number one, what has anything changed from your perspective from what you’ve seen then and what you see now? Obviously you’re not in the business today but I’m sure you have a perspective on that. And two,

 

Abe Kim:

was it structural reasons why Asians, even today, you know, that there weren’t a lot of Asians in that space, or was it more than that? Was it just, we just lack the soft skills? What, what did you see where some of the issues?

 

Tammy Kim:

Oh yeah. So before we, before I answer this question, I think it’s important to note that, you know, how my career actually sort of evolved because, you know, once you sort of go corporate, you become part of like a greater talent acquisition, human resources arm. And, you know, really there, I developed my skills as a talent acquisition professional, so the scope of my position changed from just doing executive search, hiring people to really every facet of employment. And, you know, after PWC went to other places like Proxicom, but it all stuck within the technology sector. I became a Vice President of Talent Acquisition for CA Technologies, which at the time was a Fortune 500 technology company, being one of the only talent acquisition vice presidents in a fortune 500 company let alone a technology company.

 

Tammy Kim:

So there were very, very, very few of us. So as an Asian American, um, I don’t think there were any, I don’t even recall any Korean Americans. So, you know, I was responsible for hiring practices, recruitment practices, which included how we recruit, how we interview, how we move candidates through the process, and then everything related to employment law, which also includes how do we interview and how do we make determinations of who is a fit and who is not a fit. And bottom line is this: racism and discrimination is built within the fabric of many companies. And let me boil this down. So when we talk about things, this used to be a really big thing that people would talk about is “cultural fit.” So you hear words like cultural fit.

 

Tammy Kim:

You have programs such as employee referral programs. These are all perpetuating the same types of people. So you’re a white male who hires other white males who then promotes other white males. So it’s a system of perpetuating the status quo and that is the foundation that corporate America is built on. And really one of the things that I did was to challenge a lot of what seemed sort of like common sense things like employee referral program, what’s wrong with that? Challenging things about, how we interview and how we make selections. And an important note that I should add is while I worked in technology companies, my specific subject matter expertise was sales. So I was actually a subject expert when it came to sales hiring for technology company, specifically software sales. So we call it software sales recruitment, and why does this matter?

 

Tammy Kim:

And why am I bringing this up? Because it’s a completely different set of people than what you think of technology and what you think of as engineers and the irony is Asians were hired in mass for engineering positions. They are not hired for what we call revenue generating, customer facing positions. And in those positions, you have what looks like a fraternity and that is the culture of technology sales. And that still exists today. It’s changed, it’s improved, but when I was there and when I started, it was absolutely a boys club. It was a continuation of a fraternity where there were very few women in technology sales and virtually no Asian-Americans. And so that’s the context, a lot of that hasn’t changed all that much. While I am out of it, I do still serve in advisory capacities for several organizations.

 

Tammy Kim:

I kind of wanted just to lay that groundwork in, you know, there hasn’t been that much that has changed, especially in technology sales and why this is important is because technology sales earns the most money, way more than a double that of an engineer. When you can sell software, you can make on target earnings of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so everyone is content on the engineering side, because that’s just what we’re used to. That’s just what we know, but there’s this other world of the sales piece of it that is very critical and that has a lot more financial opportunities where we as Asian Americans are systematically shut out of because we are either not a cultural fit. We’re not aggressive enough. You name every reason why we’re not a good fit. There has been and always has been this limitation of where Asians can actually go within a technology organization. And again, there have been improvements over the years, but it is still something that any company that has made improvements it’s because it has been intentional and it has been well thought out.

 

Abe Kim:

So would you say that, I mean, aside from obviously trying to diversify this workforce within this space, what more can, I guess people who are interested in diversifying the workforce and leveling the playing field, so to speak, can do to help, let’s just say, Asian Americans, since we’re talking about Asian-Americans to get into these plum type positions within, in your case, we’re talking about technology firms, but I imagine there’s any sales workforce within any companies, like you said, they’re the revenue generators and I imagine a lot of the promotions come more rapidly in sales because it’s very performance driven, right? In terms of bringing in funds, right? And so I imagine a lot of the executive recruitments come from these types of people in this space as well, right? And so aside from, like you said, breaking up the structural aspect of this, the cultural aspect of this, what would you recommend a company to do to diversify?

 

Tammy Kim:

Well, I think it’s two fold. So it’s making sure that companies are very intentional in their hiring, making sure that companies have a really weighted system when they hire, making sure that we can quantify every type of soft skill, if you will, because it’s the soft skills that we have to challenge them at every moment of every point and every time, because that’s where they get us, is those “soft skills” by saying, ‘well, he didn’t look at me in the eye or he wasn’t aggressive enough’, or ‘he didn’t shake my hand firm enough’, all these things where we’re taught not to be certain ways in certain things. You know, people like myself, I was very aggressive, very forceful and I am what my family calls… Like my mom thinks I have personality flaws because of it.

 

Tammy Kim:

So in Korean, you know, these are personality flaws. But for me, they were survival mechanisms. How can you survive in this country? You know, you sort of have to mirror… How does a white man, like how does he carry himself? So it’s really about mirroring and mirroring what a white male does. I know that sounds like awful, but it’s just, that’s what it takes, you know. Oftentimes it takes for us to be successful. So that’s the flip side of the coin is, you know, what do we do again, not placing the blame on us because it’s not our fault. But you know, these are some of the different tips and tricks that we can use and that I’ve always coached candidates, especially Asian candidates that I’ve brought into the door on how to mirror, put on their inner white male, and wear that sort of game face at least just for the time being.

 

Tammy Kim:

But again, going back to what companies can do, it’s leveling the playing field and quantifying the soft skills. It is educating and providing cultural competency training to sales managers and anyone responsible or anyone involved in the hiring chain. These are things that I found to be effective and is the reason why any company that I was ever at, we significantly improved hiring especially for APIs within sales and giving them the opportunities, allowing them to start off in inside sales or pre-sales, which is more of the technology. Pre-sales they’re usually are also called pre-sales engineers. They’re doing the, the technical scoping. And so at any rate, I could probably go on. This could be like its own podcast.

 

Abe Kim:

It’s own podcast, right? This is wonderful. I wanna move forward, take a step forward. And you were a trailblazer in the executive search in the kind of human resource space, and then you had a career shift to the nonprofit world and co-founded the Korean American Center. Tell us about that and what precipitated that shift.

 

Tammy Kim:

Okay. So keeping in mind, I was, since college, in my corporate career, very cognizant of our role as Korean-Americans, as Asian Americans. So that never left me and being able to prioritize, being able to provide opportunities for Asian Americans, either in the form of mentorship or helping them getting their foot in the door by making connections within other software companies, if it wasn’t mine, it was others in technology companies. So that never ended, but one of the things that was made really clear to me and this, again, this all really started by accident is one of the things that I became like very conscious of was after I had my son. When I had my son and thinking about his role as a Korean American, as a third generation Korean American in this country and what I, my friends, what we’re able to pass on to our children, which is honestly very little. When we, ourselves don’t really know that much about where we came from, except that, in my case that you could go to jail or you could be imprisoned for saying or doing certain things and being labeled by gang, that’s kind of like what I knew, but I didn’t really know that much.

 

Tammy Kim:

And I have to sort of start off with this sort of funny thing… I always had Korean videos on growing up as soon as like the VCR was invented. There were Korean videos and paper bags and grocery bags full of like VHS cassettes all over the place. So, I was very used to that, but it wasn’t anything I necessarily watched on my own accord. And I just happened to watch by myself Korean drama and it was Korean historical dramas, sageuk. And I just like watched it in full by myself and it was like Queen Seon Deok and I watched that in full and then I realized, ‘oh my gosh, that’s a real person.’ That’s like equivalent of us watching a story about Henry VIII and not realizing that Henry VIII was an actual person. That really got me started in… Like I didn’t know anything. I knew nothing. I knew nothing about any of the references that any Korean kindergartner would know and realizing not only just myself, but also other people. So one of my side things, side projects that I was working on, even in corporate. So even as I was at VMware or CA Technologies, I actually started a blog it’s called KoreanHistoricalDramas.com.

 

Tammy Kim:

But really because I was studying Korean history by myself on my own and then teaching my child Korean history that doesn’t even begin with Korean American history. So it kind of started, I know it sounds crazy, but it really started with that. And just realizing I knew nothing and not only just me, but none of my friends, we just… We knew nothing. I mean, we couldn’t tell you what the three kingdoms period is, just nothing Eastern and you name it. We didn’t know. I think that’s like very common, but it really kind of got me thinking, what am I passing down? Then just accidentally, started a language meetup through meetup.com back in 2013 because there were no formalized Korean classes, nothing. There was like nothing in order to learn Korean, learn anything [Korean].

 

Tammy Kim:

So I started a meetup in 2013, it became like super popular and we actually formalized into Korean language lessons. So in order to formalize, we needed a place to meet. We were meeting at a library. They said, ‘you guys are too busy. You guys need to formalize, you guys have way too many people.’ So we formalized into an actual nonprofit organization, which I had offices at the time. So my office space became the start of Korean American center with funding and investment from me alone. We had other board members and volunteers, but that is what started it. And so this was just a side project as I was just doing normal work. But when you start a nonprofit and, here was the interesting part, when we formalized became an actual nonprofit organization, an actual 501(c)(3), and we were listed, we started getting calls and more calls for more social service programs.

 

Tammy Kim:

We started getting calls from government officials needing outreach to the community. We started getting calls from community members needing help with immigration work. That’s literally what happened. So it wasn’t that we formed to be anything more. The need was so there and there was not a Korean based nonprofit organization in Irvine at that time that was sort of dealing with these, I’ll call it more social services needs of the Korean American community. So that’s really the foundation of what had happened. So we partnered on an immigration project with another social service organization called Korean Community Services in Buena Park, which is North County and is originally where Koreans started. So when they migrated from LA down to Orange County, they kind of came to the Buena Park, Fullerton, North Orange County area.

 

Tammy Kim:

But then Koreans were starting to really populate here in South County, in the Irvine area. And so we worked on immigration project together and started making referrals because we worked really well together, the executive director, Ellen Ahn who is also a second generation Korean American, we just worked so well together. We were on the same page with everything. I actually took a break from corporate to focus on Korean American Center and what was funny is I said, ‘listen, I got to go back to work. Like I’ve been funding this. I’ve been self-funding. Not only am I funding this, but I’m not working and now I’m not generating like any income. So I need to go back to work.’ But I was really, really satisfied for the first time in my life, not for the first time in my life.

 

Tammy Kim:

It’s, at that time in my life, I just found so much fulfillment. And I felt like I was going back to what my passions were at the time, but that I had sort of put on the sideline because I was trying to raise the corporate ladder, rise up the corporate ladder myself in creating a comfortable life for my parents. So my parents no longer had to work at a liquor store that they had a fully paid house that they didn’t have to worry about anything ever again, which is what I was able to provide for my parents, but they were fine. They’re comfortable. My son was getting older, so I had enough savings. So it was definitely something that I could do. And so Ellen and I, we spoke and we decided in 2017 to merge the two organizations. And so then I became employee and instead of being executive director of Korean American Center. Everyone wants to be a hwaejangnim, right?

 

Tammy Kim:

That’s the other problem. It’s very rare that you’ve got Korean organizations merging, but I think because we were both second generation and that one of us, me, was willing to sort of give up, I never wanted to be executive director of a nonprofit organization. That wasn’t what I was aiming to be. I was never aiming to be a hwaejangnim or whatever it is. So it was a very easy choice for me. I just looked at it as just a regular merger like you would in the corporate world. So I took that approach and it’s worked out very well. We’re still merged. We still have slightly different branding because at the time of our merger, we actually received designation from the South Korean Government for our language programs, it became one of the best in the United States. A non collegiate, nonprofit language program. So the Korean Government was so blown away with the program that we were able to grow that they gave us the designation of King Sejong Institute. Then we also receive funding from the U.S. Government for teaching Korean as a critical security language from the national security agency. So this all happened at the time of our merger.

 

Tammy Kim:

Ellen’s like, ‘you can’t just leave! You can’t just walk away from this!’ Because it was really, I think my corporate-based experience that allowed us to grow so fast because a lot of nonprofits they grow because of… You have joh-eun, the nonprofit ma-eum, you have a good heart and you have the heart for service, but you have no understanding of the backend that it takes and the sort of rigor and discipline and setting up things like key performance indicators.

 

Tammy Kim:

The KPIs, like the songsaengnim there were like ‘what?’ and so setting up key metrics in order for growth, I just sort of operated it like I would have any department that I was responsible for and I think that’s what led to our growth. Plus the marketing expertise and to be able to market in English to attract this sort of demographic. As a second generation Korean American, as a Korean learner myself, understanding and empathizing with Korean learners on how to outreach, but I think it also just very coincidentally happened around the same time as…

 

Abe Kim:

The boom of K-Wave.

 

Tammy Kim:

Yeah, the K-Wave. So it wasn’t like we rode on the K-Wave. We just, we started as the K-Wave was starting, coincidentally,

 

Abe Kim:

You were in the right place at the right time.

 

Tammy Kim:

Yeah, it was the right place, right time. And so again, that’s where I go back. Everything is like… Just everything that’s happened has been just sort of a blessing. So that’s really how I became like an accidental nonprofit [leader].

 

Abe Kim:

But did you ever go back to corporate or did you remain and became a full-time employee?

 

Tammy Kim:

Yeah, so I became a full-time employee. So again, I still talk to my friends in corporate especially the ones who are now executives. I do serve an advisory capacity and as an advisor for a couple of startup organizations. So I still am in the loop on some things, but as far as my actual job income, that is not where I get that anyway.

 

Abe Kim:

Right. I do want to move into your political career and your transition to politics. But before I do that, I’m curious how the COVID-19 impacted the center and your work there. I imagine, as you said, the organization did a lot of social services and in addition to the educational aspect and could you give us a little bit of insight of how your organization pivoted, but also how the community around you was impacted by this?

 

Tammy Kim:

Yeah, at first, like for everyone else, it was extremely scary because, we had shut down, we didn’t know what was happening. We shut down just like everybody else, but we are a social service provider. We are a healthcare provider at the end of the day. We take care of the health needs of the uninsured, the underinsured and those receiving Medicaid especially within the Korean community. So us being shut for a while was really detrimental, not only to our team, but also the services that we’re able to provide for the community. But once we got through the confusion of everything that was happening at that time, we pivoted real quickly and became one of the main providers for COVID testing within the county and our organization, Korean Community Services piece, KCS piece was really the leaders when it came to leading what was called the API Task Force and making sure that the hardest to reach communities had access to COVID care and COVID testing.

 

Tammy Kim:

We received, obviously for the health services, you receive funding through the state from the county for a lot of those services. For our cultural programs, we also pivoted as well and moved everything to Zoom. As a matter of fact, it was very dark. It was very scary for a while there, but we have continued to grow our programming and what is actually more fascinating because we’ve moved to Zoom, we’re actually able to reach a lot more people through our programming and through our classes. And we’ve reached into huge, large swaths of Korean Americans that didn’t have an opportunity to learn Korean, including a large swath of Korean adoptees. So that has been like the real interesting part of all of this and I think we have grown stronger as a result.

 

Tammy Kim:

Our organization and our organizational capacity has grown because we were filling the voids and we’re filling the deep cracks that exist within the social safety network especially for Korean Americans, we’ve seen an uptick of domestic violence issues. We’ve seen an uptick of… You know, it’s just a never ending barrage. The undocumented, making sure that we’re one of the providers that are making sure that our undocumented and our DACA recipients are receiving access in the relief vouchers. For Orange County, we are the organization that’s doing all of that work. So that’s keeping us extremely busy, which the grant programming has allowed us to hire more people.

 

Abe Kim:

Hmm. And this is because of the state funding, the federal funding, and other that you’re receiving. Okay. In the midst of all of this craziness and shifts, you decided to run for office and…

 

Tammy Kim:

I decided to run for office before COVID happened. So, that’s like a different… So while I’m doing all of this, while I’m working, while I am doing nonprofit work, I’m also involved in a lot of political endeavors on the side. So that’s like my side-side-side work that I do is involved in democratic party politics, as well as working, helping with candidates. So I was already sort of doing that. Um, and so that’s sort of the side ancillary thing and working on, being involved with the party, I was never really, I never really envisioned myself as an actual candidate myself primarily because it just all the things that a candidate has to go through, it wasn’t really anything that I really wanted to do. I wanted to serve and I wanted to… I understood the importance of electing good people, but I just didn’t really think that that was me. I didn’t really think I was qualified. I didn’t really think much of anything and again, I was the kid that even couldn’t afford to do an internship in DC because I had to work. So that was kind of like the headspace that I was in and just looking at really amazing people and looking at, you know, Obama,

 

Tammy Kim:

Like that’s not me and not really, you know… So understanding that there’s different forms of leadership and different types of leadership. So I just never kind of saw myself in that capacity, but it was really me being told within the community, “you should run for city council, you should run for school board. You should, you know… Why aren’t you running for assembly? You’re doing all of this work. You’re representing our interests. You’re advocating for the community. Why aren’t you doing this?” But again, I just never really thought about it. And I thought, you know, I’m divorced, which I’m divorced by the way, single mom, that was the main thing. I don’t come from a rich family. My family didn’t go to Seoul Dae. I just, I thought of that. I didn’t go to Harvard, you know, I just always thought of these things of why I wasn’t good enough. I think that is what I’ve come to realize very common among women and especially among women of color is we’re not good enough. So that was always kind of like my mindset in many ways and I had, you know, someone just really sit me down and say to me, like, listen, you are the right kind of candidate and explained to me all the reasons why I was a good candidate and why I would be a good candidate, including all the work that I’ve done.

 

Tammy Kim:

I went to Emerge candidate training through an organization called Emerge and went, trained for six months at once, every other weekend, the entire weekend, did candidate training, intensive training, and really sort of formed my decision and really kind of like, I guess, very Korean of me, having a very concrete plan and rock solid plan. So I came out as a candidate and announced my candidacy August of 2019. So basically almost well over a year before the election, but then COVID hit. So I felt at that time I was prepared and I was very prepared. I think it’s that preparation that allowed me to win, but it’s not just the preparation. I think it’s the fact that all the advocacy work, all the community service work that I’ve done and just being in the community really demonstrated through my whole candidacy.

 

Abe Kim:

Yeah and the results were, I mean, you came up with record-breaking margins, you won your seat as well as… Even before the election, you had a wide number of very influential people endorse your candidacy too. So in a sense, you were wrong about yourself, right? And that in fact, you were qualified and not only qualified, but your constituents believe that you should lead the city, right? Then you became also Vice Mayor of Irvine and were there any surprises in your campaign that you’d never anticipated despite all the training that you’ve done? Were there surprises along the way?

 

Tammy Kim:

There was nothing that was surprising along the way. I mean, obviously the biggest shock was COVID and COVID happening and having to campaign through COVID while trying to figure out how our organizations are going to survive and then deliver services. So, you had that, but as far as like that normal candidacy thing, I mean, bottom line is this: racism still exists. So yes, I was told to go back to North Korea on many occasions. Yes. I was. It just happens and while that part wasn’t shocking, it was kind of shocking. It’s still like, really? Is this still, like, does this still exist today? Does it still exist? Even in California? Does this exist? You know, like really? North Korea? Kind of come up with something better, you know? I was told to go back to China.

 

Tammy Kim:

White candidates are not told the same thing. They’re not told, “oh, go back to England where you came from.” So it’s that perpetual foreigner. So that comes out. While that was shocking, it wasn’t. I think what was probably the most, most, most shocking for me as a first-time candidate was the fact that I had the most money spent against me in negative campaigns. And so I clearly ruffled whatever feathers I ruffled. I clearly came out extremely high in someone’s polling where there was a lot of negative hit mail pieces against me, again, some tinged with racist overtones where they showed every Asian elected official in the state of California that had supported me and basically said, “Tammy wants to make Irvine like Los Angeles and San Francisco” whatever that is.

 

Tammy Kim:

So that was probably the most surprising, but they captured me with a selfie of Bernie, with Bernie Sanders that is, but I think what ended up happening was this all kind of came out during Black Lives Matter. So they showed me at a Black Lives Matter rally and they want to tie me to defunding the police and then the campaign, the negative mail is also tying me to Antifa and so I think voters, some it might’ve resonated with them, but I think for the most part, I think voters kind of saw through that and I think it really helped elevate my profile, you know. And it made my son really proud. He was like, “Oh my God, that’s my mom.” So that was the one time my son thought I was actually kind of cool.

 

Abe Kim:

Cool. I want to be respectful of your time. I know we’re about five minutes over, but I have actually have one final question, which is: one if there are aspiring young Asians who would like to run for office, what would you advise them? And then secondly, is the final question, which is if you could speak to your 18, 20 year old self, what would you tell the young Tammy Kim? So the first question, what would you advise ambitious young, aspiring Asian Americans, if they’re thinking about politics running for office, what would you advise?

 

Tammy Kim:

I would advise them to start before they even think about running for office, work on a campaign, volunteer on a campaign, understand what the campaign pieces like first too often people want to run for office. Who’ve never even so much as volunteered for a campaign. That’s number one, number two, understand that a lot of campaigning is fundraising. It’s as simple as that, and if you’re not willing or able to fundraise it’s going to be very difficult to actually run and win. Anyone can run for office. It’s the winning part that is the difficult part. So I would say make sure you have a plan for fundraising. The plan for fundraising is not putting all of your money into it, but it’s actually being able to outreach into the community.

 

Tammy Kim:

So it’s not you putting your own money into a campaign, it’s you getting money from supporters for the campaign. And I would say three is making sure that if you have those things down packed that you attend the meetings, that you attend public sessions, that you are actually, well-versed in what it is that you’re running for. Because again, a lot of times, candidates want to run and they don’t actually know what they’re running for, or they’ve never so much, as for example, city council meeting never even spoke at the dais, never made a public comment in their life. I think having all those pieces will then put you in a much better position of actually winning. So that’s the sort of key points that we want to make sure that you run and win.

 

Tammy Kim:

And what I would tell my 18 year old self is, you know what, it’s okay. It is okay. And I finally learned that at 50. Don’t let things get to you. Don’t let people put you down, don’t let it affect you. Just move forward. Not letting others bring you down, not letting others sort of impact your self worth. I didn’t realize I was doing it at the time, but I think every like angsty teenage girl, maybe boy sort of goes through that, but just remember that it’s all good and everything that’s happening to you right now. It’s like not even going to matter in like five years, and you won’t even remember. You won’t. Whatever negative things I was crying about then, I don’t even remember what they were. You will get to that point.

 

Abe Kim:

Well, thank you, Tammy, for your time, your insights, and also sharing your life with us. We really appreciate you opening up and really teaching us so many different things. Not only about, uh, the professional life, but also, uh, serving in nonprofits and in public service. So thank you very much for your time, Tammy.

 

Tammy Kim:

Thank you so much.