Irene Kang ’11 has lived multiple lives. In her first she worked in the field of environmentalism and sustainability. In her second, she's the founder of Spark Collection—bilingual books for families to learn language in a fun and meaningful way. Throughout the course of these lives, the most important decisions she made were by trusting her intuition when something felt right: choosing Northwestern, pursuing environmentalism, and meeting her husband (and fellow alumni) Chris, and creating Spark Collection.

Kang shares how she realized during the pandemic that there were very few accessible resources for teaching Asian languages to children. And that this was issue many Asian and multicultural families struggled with themselves. Kang decided to create Spark Collection, and published her first book with the incredible community support of Kickstarter: My Favorite Gift. Available in Mandarin, Hindi, and recently, Korean. She previews the second book in the collection, My Beautiful Earth coming out in September of 2022, and her third book Pay It Forward, which we will see in 2023. Kang tells how the books in Spark Collection reflect the values that she wants to share with her child: the importance of family, environmentalism, kindness, and resilience. 

On this episode of Northwestern Intersections, Kang talks about the inspiration behind Spark Collection and the incredible impact of the first book, My Favorite Gift through feedback she's received from families. And how Spark Collection is contributing to increased Asian representation and access to Asian languages in children's literature. And finally, Kang shares her insights on making significant career transitions and asks us: what would we try if we couldn't fail? For her, the answer was Spark Collection.

Visit the website or follow them on Instagram to learn more and get the latest updates on Spark Collection!