Dr. Leana Wen is a practicing physician, healthcare executive, and op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. She previously served as President of Planned Parenthood, as well as Baltimore’s Health Commissioner, leading the nation’s oldest continuously operating health department to fight the opioid epidemic, address disparities and mental health access, and improve maternal and child health. 

Lily Qi represents the 15th legislative district in the Maryland House of Delegates. Born in Shanghai amidst the Cultural Revolution, she is the first Chinese-born state legislator in Maryland. Prior to entering elected politics, she worked under Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, becoming the first Asian American to serve as Assistant Chief Administrative Officer of Montgomery County. 

Vanna Howard serves in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, representing the 17th Middlesex District, which includes portions of Lowell and Tewksbury. She was born in Cambodia but in 1979 fled the Cambodian genocide and immigrated to the United States. She is the first Khmer woman to serve in the Massachusetts General Court.

Dr. Saud Anwar is a Connecticut State Senator representing the 3rd District. He was previously the Mayor of South Windsor from 2013-2015 and 2017-2019, when upon being elected, he became Connecticut’s first Muslim mayor. He is a pulmonary physician by training and has served as Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine with Manchester Memorial and Rockville General Hospitals. 

Chuen-Chin Bianca Chang is a member of the Maryland State Board of Education. Her record of public service has included serving as President of the National Council of Associations of Chinese Language Schools; serving as a member of the Howard County Human Rights Commission; and managing the Health Alliance Pediatric Clinic, a free clinic serving under-privileged children in Howard County.

Ganesh Sitaraman teaches and writes about constitutional law, the regulatory state, economic policy, democracy and foreign affairs. He joined the Vanderbilt Law faculty in 2011 and was named to the New York Alumni Chancellor's Chair in Law in 2021. He was a longtime adviser to Elizabeth Warren and has been profiled in The New York Times and Politico for his work at the nexus of politics and ideas.

Alex Wan is the District 6 member of the Atlanta City Council, where he chaired the Finance-Executive, Zoning, and Utilities committees, and served as Council President Pro Tempore in 2015. He also serves as the executive director of Horizons Atlanta, a nonprofit that provides tuition-free summer enrichment programs to K-8 students in the metro Atlanta area. He has served as Director of Development and Alumni Relations at Emory University, and before that as Director of Development at Jerusalem House, Atlanta’s largest HIV housing provider.

Annika Sharma is an agented and published writer of romcoms. Her first book, a women's fiction novel called The Arranged Life, was published in 2015. She is currently working on a three-book romcom series called The Chai Masala Club focused on a fictional group of friends and their travails in love. She is also the host of a podcast called That Desi Spark, which explores stigmatized social issues from a South Asian, first-generation, millennial lens.

Grace Huang is the Director of at the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, where she works to advocate on behalf policies that support APIA and immigrant survivors of domestic and sexual violence. She also serves as a Commissioner on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders for the Biden Administration and as a Commissioner on the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence.

Allie Cuerdo is an Emmy-nominated writer, director, producer and author. In 2019, their feature directorial debut ULAM: MAIN DISH became the first Filipino food documentary to achieve worldwide distribution on Hulu and Amazon Prime. Their first book AMBOY: Recipes From the Filipino-American Dream was named one of the 20 Best Books of the Year by Amazon. They were recently named one of the 100 Most Influential Filipina Women In the World by the Filipina Women's Network.

We were joined on this episode by special guest host Michelle Mao. Ms. Mao recently played the role of Lisa Randall in the Netflix movie Metal Lords, a musical comedy written by Game of Thrones co-creator D.B. Weiss. In 2021 Michelle Mao also played the series lead in the pilot episode of the series All I Want Is Everything, directed by Allie Cuerdo. In addition to film and television roles, Ms. Mao sang in the hit song Never Over by BEAUZ, which achieved viral success in China.