This week, with Congresswoman Judy Chu’s Pasadena district office, I got the chance to work on material for the Congresswoman’s upcoming annual Congressional Leadership Awards ceremony. This was my first hands-on experience working with an event for the congresswoman, and I found it to be simultaneously both harder and more simple than I expected. Planning, managing, and preparing for an event for a distinguished elected official proved to be difficult in the precision that was demanded of us interns by the staff members in the office. On Tuesday I worked on the graphic design for the awards poster board, which ended up being a two-day ordeal that the office staff directed us to redo and edit several times. There were a lot of moving pieces, from the setup to the food to the literature, and those were the only things we interns were allowed to touch on. It wasn’t exactly complex, but it turned out to be a lot more than I expected of me going in. It was, however, very rewarding being able to learn about and meet the awardees of the event. Congresswoman Chu honored close to a dozen community members in California District 28 for their service to the people and institutions around them. From youth advocates to educators, businessmen, and organizations, stories were told and a lot of the work shared was truly inspiring. It was great to hear from established community advocates and learn more about the initiatives going on around my hometown district.
We were also lucky enough to be invited to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)’s annual congressional staff tour in La Cañada. Along with my fellow interns in Congresswoman Chu’s office and those of other local congresspeople, I toured JPL’s massive campus housing its many revolutionary projects in space. They went into great detail about the technical side of all their missions, but I was also grateful for all the conversations about policy that they brought into the tour. We learned about some of NASA’s groundbreaking work set to be pushed into action within the next couple of years, including the planned launch of the Europa Clipper and the EELS. We also learned about ongoing projects that NASA and JPL are actively managing, including Mars missions and surveyor satellites orbiting the Earth, and learning about our planet’s ecosystems and weather. Getting to talk to other interns while exploring JPL was awesome, and I hope to be able to go back sometime soon. It was a really fun morning and I learned a lot about what JPL is doing right now.
Back in the congresswoman’s office, I have continued to have a great experience helping constituents on the phone and slowly gaining exposure to different elements of government that the office oversees. It has been rewarding to help constituents directly, even when their problems are above my pay grade. Interacting with these people and exploring how the government fits into their picture is something I look forward to continuing.
The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of CAUSE or the CAUSE network.
Written by Liam Chia, Leadership Academy 2023 Intern.
The CAUSE Leadership Academy (CLA) for students is a nine-week, paid, internship program that prepares college undergraduates to lead and advocate for the Asian Pacific Islander community on their campuses and beyond.