Eileen understands that if you never try to make change, you never know if it's possible.
With a new position as a nonprofit executive director and an evening job as a law student, Eileen Ma might sound more comfortable with paperwork than protest signs. But Eileen brings unparalleled street smarts to her executive role. And by bringing skills sharpened while organizing for economic justice to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) equality, Eileen is bringing her talents home to the service of her own community as executive director of API Equality-LA. It is L.A.'s only organization dedicated to building acceptance on behalf of the estimated 52,000 LGBTQ Asian/Pacific Islanders in L.A. County.
“The discrimination and oppression that happens towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people strips us of our humanity,” she says. “Most LGBT people, myself included share many different kinds of exepriences of injustice. When you walk into a bathroom and someone chases in after you and says 'You don't belong here' like you're in the wrong bathroom. That needs to change and it won’t change unless we come together and demand it.”
Eileen, an advisor on Liberty Hill’s Community Funding Board and a community collaborator for Liberty Hill’s Queer Youth Fund, has a background like a 21st-century Mother Jones. She spent the first part of her adult life traveling from New York to Minnesota to Florida to California doing the basic street-level work of an organizer, knocking on doors and meeting with people one-on-one. Over time, she trained other organizers and helped build alliances and organizations.
A graduate of Columbia University, she trained with the Steelworkers in Minnesota, organizing group home workers (e.g., people working in board and care homes). Then she was sent by the AFL to teach basic house-call skills all over the country, moving on after each three-week field internship. Later she settled into stints in L.A. for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Screen Actors Guild, in Miami at Power Youth for Change, and then back in L.A. for the Gay and Lesbian Center and then Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA).