Jessica Lee
My name is Jessica Lee and this is Korean American Perspectives, brought to you by the Council of Korean Americans. I’m here today with John Brougher in Los Angeles. John is a CKA member. He’s been a member since 2018 and he’s also a consultant and speaker at Brougher Strategies. I’m here to talk to John about his career path, his views on growing up in McLean, Virginia —which is actually near where I’m from— and his career here in Los Angeles and his views on current issues, including those pertaining to Korean adoptees like himself. So John, thank you so much for joining us today.

 

John Brougher
Jessica, thank you so much. It’s always a joy to talk to you. I’m glad we get a chance to do so in an official capacity.

 

Jessica Lee
So, John, for our listeners, I think it would be really helpful to hear a little bit about how you came to Los Angeles, given that you grew up in Virginia. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

 

John Brougher
Sure, of course. So as Jessica mentioned, I am a proud Korean American adoptee. I was adopted when I was six months old. I was a tiny, tiny baby born in Seoul and when I was six months old, my birth mother at the time gave me up for adoption and through an adoption agency my parents found me. I think they were like pointing to a page in the book and said like, “Hey, here’s your guy.” And thankfully they were good with it, and so I flew over, alone at the time, I think I was with a nurse but I flew over and arrived in Dulles airport. I was this tiny baby. I had no idea. Apparently I was looking all around like a complete newbie to the entire world. And I grew up in Virginia, in Mclean, Virginia, which is a suburb of DC and I kind of— it’s a long story and I’m sure we’ll get into it. But the way I got to Los Angeles is kind of a weird circuitous path. 

Basically growing up I had a lot of different passions, like we all do. For me, a lot of my passions were things like— a lot of nerdy stuff. So I was into band, I played the clarinet and love music, still do. I sang a little bit. I did Model UN and debate team because I love nerdy stuff and speaking. And one of the things that I also loved was theater and acting. I just loved everything from movies to musicals to watching plays and it was so fun to get a chance to participate in it. But it’s funny, even though my parents are both white, so they can’t claim any kind of strict Asian parents— although my mom sometimes loves to say that she’s like a strict Asian parent in her own way — both my mom and my dad said, “Hey, what are we thinking about career-wise?” They weren’t pushy, but they said, “Hey, let’s talk about where we’re thinking.” And I came to the decision with them. I was like, you know what, I do like politics, social change— this sort of fed into a lot of the stuff I did with Model UN and debate. And so I said, “I love debate and politics and social change and advocacy, but I also love acting. I’m going to focus on politics as a career path.” So for the last 10 years I’ve been working as a political campaigner. I’ve been doing different kinds of campaign work, mostly at the intersection of technology, digital and campaigning. Working with Democrats and progressives to make sure that all the online aspects, which is kind of a weird term, but it’s like your Facebook, your email, your Twitter, your website, your video, all those kind of amorphous things under digital. That’s been my path and so I did that for 10 years and then recently branched out into entertainment as well. And so that’s kind of a really short all over the place thing, but that’s how I managed to get to LA via the East Coast.

 

Jessica Lee
Tell us about what it was like growing up in McLean. Were you one of only a handful of Asian Americans? I know how diverse McLean can be, but also as an adoptee, were you treated any differently or did you feel like you really totally fit in?

 

John Brougher
That’s a great question. Growing up I think was — I was about to say growing up was hard for me. I think growing up is pretty tough for everybody. You’re learning a lot of new things. You’re finding out who you are. For me, I think McLean was, in a lot of ways, wonderful. I still go back home often and my parents live in the same house. I love it but it’s pretty obvious: there’s a lot of privilege there. It’s a very, very wealthy area. McLean is one of the wealthiest. It’s in Fairfax County, one of the wealthiest counties in America. And I think one of the things that I missed growing up —and I don’t blame anyone— but I don’t think I ever got a sense of the context that you really need, in my opinion, to be a well-rounded human being. You know? Because you want to grow up and say like, “Hey, I’m glad that I grew up without hunger without, in a lot of ways, without a want.” But I also needed to place it in a greater context. 

In terms of fitting in, I think for me the biggest thing was— I think a lot of folks, not just adoptees, but I know a lot of adoptees have this experience. This is weird, but I didn’t really feel like I considered myself Asian or realized I was in like a real full way until pretty late in life, like as an adult. As a kid, I obviously knew I was different because mirrors, right? But there was something in me and I think for me, there was a real sense that I think as an adoptee, the way that the adoption trauma meant for me is that I felt, “oh man, I want to fit in with my parents.” So actually for me it wasn’t just about fitting in at school. It was honestly, to be a little bit real for a second —but I’m happy to be— but for me the adoption was like, “Oh man, am I not enough?” What caused this to happen? And even as an adult, I know rationally that’s really mean to myself. 

Of course, birth parents aren’t trying to send a message to kids that they’re not enough. But there’s this unconscious part of me that still like, “John, were you lacking in some way?” So I think the way that translated was like, “Oh, make sure you’re not different than your parents.” And for me that meant how can I be more white? And so there’s already the pressure in America to sort of be as white as you can, to fit in. I think thankfully that that is changing with more and more folks of color leading the way in all industries. But at the time, especially growing up in a predominantly white area, I really felt that pressure. And I’ll be honest, even though it is a diverse area, a lot of the Asian American folks there were still trying to also blend in. So it was tough. I didn’t really have a guide. I think I needed someone to sort of say like, “Hey, like I’ll be your intro to Asian America and what that means and racial identity.” But it took me a lot longer to figure out what that meant because I know for me — and I’m embarrassed to say this now because it’s not something that I would do now — but I was the kid that tried to rebel against his own Asianess and say things like, I would talk to my white friends and say like, “Oh, look at those Asian kids. Why do they sit together at the lunch table?” Which is a really mean, really racist thing to say. It comes from a place of fear and anger and not feeling like I fit in. But of course I would never ask that of the white kids who were sitting together at lunch, right? And so it took a lot longer for me to sort of accept, “I am Korean American. I’m proud of who I am.” I have a different identity than a lot of folks. And I’ll be honest, I think I live —as all of us do— but I live in a weird intersection of identities that feels unique and kind of cut off sometimes, but it’s taken a while. But I feel a lot better now about saying no, this is who I am and thankfully I have a great support network of people that say this is who you should be proud of too.

 

Jessica Lee
Where did you go for your undergraduate and what was that experience like? So for example, some of the things that seemed to drive you and your work today are rooted in social justice like you said and progressive ideals. Was it during your college years where you became more politically aware?

 

John Brougher
That’s really a great question. I think that my deep interest in social justice, and sort of justice in general, I think definitely developed a lot during college. So honestly at Brown, I was really focused on my studies and a lot of different kinds of pursuits. Everything from— for a year I was in an a capella group, so I was one of those people trying to be rock-apella and the vocal percussion and everything. So that was really fun at Brown [University]. But also just lots of different activities. I kind of fell into politics actually, even though I had again been really interested in my whole life, I kind of wasn’t planning on getting into politics immediately. But around the 2007, 2008 years when Secretary Clinton and then Senator Obama were in the Democratic primary, I was so captivated by that race and by how it felt like so many more people were tuning in. That was really powerful to me, that not only was this, “oh, this is a big news thing,” but it felt like people were really invested in a way that was not true in 2004 or 2000. And again, I was still a kid at that point, but I still even felt like this is a different kind of election. And so at that point I felt I needed to get involved. So I literally just called up some friends— and this is where, again, that privilege comes in. But I had some friends from Brown who had graduated and gone on to work on campaigns. And I said, “Tell me, I don’t know a lot about campaigns. I just have studied it. What is a campaign job? How do I do it?” And one of my friends who was a deputy field director, which is the knocking on doors, calling, that stuff, the field component, he said, “Hey, come out to Indiana, come out and help us.” And I said, “Wait, what?” So over the course of a weekend, I went from not knowing about campaigns at all to maybe I should move from Providence, Rhode Island to Southeast Indiana, right next to Kentucky, for the last month of the election. It wasn’t even a whole year, it was just sort of that get out the vote period.

 

Jessica Lee
Where you still in school at that point?

 

John Brougher
I had just graduated. I was working for the college, so I was making a pretty good salary because, providing courage instead of volunteering on campaign, I said, “Let me choose the salary and benefits job that I can rely on.” But I decided to move out of nowhere. I had some savings and I said, “No, I want to do this.” And it was really, really hard. We were stationed out of a —I forget, I think it was like an old masonic lodge— that literally, I wish this were apocryphal, but there was a hole in the ceiling. And not only that, there was a hole above that one. It’s like a three floor masonic lodge with a hole in the ceiling and a hole on the second floor at the same spot. So when it rained, it would literally fall all the way to the floor because there were so many holes in it. I think the electric shed was permanently flooded, which seems to me to be problematic or maybe a mosquito situation, but I didn’t really ask. I was just there for the last month. So it was really a crash course in everything campaigning, but it was also just wonderful. It was a great chance to see — we lost by a thousand points. So it was unfortunate, was not close, but it was a great example to me of talking to voters of what campaigning is actually like on the ground. It was very, very hard work, but it taught me a lot about campaigning and that was sort of the springboard for all the rest of the jobs that I would do from there. I then went to DC and then the rest is history.

 

Jessica Lee
And amid all this campaign work, did you retain your theater and acting identity or was it much later that you reconnected with that part?

 

John Brougher
That’s a great question. I really didn’t. I sort of put theater off for a while and had done different kinds of more performative things and in a lot of ways, in politics even, I was drawn to a lot of the work that requires the same kind of skills. You know, being a surrogate, which in this case means —and I know you all know this— but for the sake of your group of listeners, is when you represent a candidate and they can’t be there maybe, but you’re giving a speech for them, all that kind of work, the sort of more— performative makes it sound like I’m faking it. I’m not. These are candidates I care about. But sort of the more public facing, the more communications based things, I was really drawn to those things. And so I tried to tap into it in my work, but I didn’t come back into acting again until— DC is a very vibrant theater scene. When I moved to DC after a pretty long hiatus of multiple years, I realize like, there are auditions for acting jobs all the time here. And DC was actually remarkably flexible with the idea of, “Hey, we know you probably have to have a job to sustain yourself. So our rehearsals are at 7:00 PM, they’re not at 2:00 PM when you’re at work or something.” I still think that DC is one of the most friendly welcoming theater environments I’ve ever been in. So I would just juggle political work and then sort of political and nonpolitical theater at night. And so that was sort of how I got back into acting and entertainment was on the side, but doing both things that I love: politics and acting.

 

Jessica Lee
So one of the folks that you and I know quite well is a former Public Service Intern of CKA named Peter Hwang. And I want to bring Peter to this picture because the world of campaigning and politics is a bit foreign, I would say, to most of us, particularly in the Korean American community. There are a lot of things that you have to sacrifice, as you noted. Comfort, personal finance and being able to relocate at a moment’s notice and not really being able to have a life and settle down, etc. And so Peter, who was our inaugural public service intern, he’s finishing up at Yale University this year, but he’s already started a nonprofit organization called Campaign for America that seeks to diversify campaign staff in part by giving more diverse candidates opportunities through financial and other mentoring and support. Really teeing them up for higher-profile positions that eventually become one of the key markers I would say of securing great jobs in the world of politics. So I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on Peter and his organization. Obviously you serve as an advisor I believe. So how did you hear about Campaign for America and what does that mean for you?

 

John Brougher
So Campaign for America. I met Peter through CKA actually. So at a CKA event, one of the amazing Los Angeles events that CKA put together. This was the one I believe was two years ago now, but talking about the LA uprisings and to me it was a really powerful introduction to CKA, because I’ll be plain. One thing that I do is approach a lot of new organizations, especially Asian American organizations with a little bit of wariness, and that’s not fair I think. But for me as someone that cares a lot about equality and justice, I have sometimes worried that some Asian American organizations I’ve worked with in the past have not always been as thoughtful about some of the issues that were brought up as we saw during that event, that was talking about the LA uprising. So for me, for that first event to be this really thoughtful exploration and introduction to a few different, one, CKA members and an introduction to a lot of different issues that I still don’t quite understand, but I’m really happy that CKA has a lot of resources focused on and different members working on different aspects of it. I thought it was wonderful they were able to put together that kind of event. 

And so I met Peter, and Peter and I sort of hit it off almost immediately. I think that a lot of it comes from the fact that it — it’s funny, Peter and I talked about this a lot — but we’re very different in our background from an on-paper perspective. I think Peter’s from Texas, Peter’s not adopted, but we see a lot of similarities in how we interact and grew up with the world. So a lot about us on paper is different, but when it comes to our experiences growing up in not predominantly people of color spaces, when it comes to our how we navigate college and then sort of the Ivy League, all the privilege there is there. And I think Brown and Yale both have done great things in terms of acknowledging and working with some issues of, “hey, let’s really push the envelope on equality on justice.” They’ve also had some real tough times as well. 

Peter sort of initially reached out to me and said like, “Hey, I want to hear some of your thoughts about this.” And I tried to be really real with him and say, “Here’s some things that come to mind when I think about a training program because I’ve done a lot of training and I believe very strongly in Peter’s mission, which is this sort of idea of diversifying campaigners, because campaigning unfortunately, like every industry is very, very white, very rich, favorite class, etc. You see the same kinds of systems of oppression at play in that workplace as in all of our workplaces, unfortunately. So Peter’s mission is really valuable. I think from that initial conversation he realized, “Hey, John’s deeply invested in this as much as I am.” Since then I’ve basically been partnering with him on CFA, Campaign for America, events. 

Basically what happens is a few times a year we put together a cohort of individuals who don’t in any way look or on paper are like the rest of the campaigners in our current system. But I think that adding them to it benefits the entire way that we run this country. I’m really proud of the work there. Right now I think that the main next step is how do we make sure that this great program that has done so much great work for now a few cohorts, how do we think about an even bigger thing? How do we make it so that this is baked in? 

And this is a mini rant — but I’m fascinated by and I’m obsessed with in a lot of ways the super un-sexy policy, I would say, which to me is like, yes, I do care a lot about the issues of the day and they are important. But I think a lot about how— gosh, this is so nerdy, but you know what, let’s do it. To me, I think a lot about how many people have tough retirement situations because they don’t have automatic deductions. Their employer has something that you opt into instead of you opt out of. To me that’s like a really simple change. And in a lot of ways, some people might say like, “Oh, well, if you don’t want to opt in, why would you? No it’s better to just have it. You choose if you want to do a retirement account or not.” But you think about it and you look at the actual outcomes and you see people have like a difference of $500,000 or $1 million because of a simple, “Oh yeah, we’re gonna opt you in for the minimum, whatever we match, 2% of your Roth IRA or whatever.” It’s wild. And to me, what kills me is that so many of the things that we need to solve are not built in and baked in, right? I care about the systems and so to me I’m thinking about hiring to me is so fraught and broken and campaigning, but just in general, it’s tough to hire and a lot of the ways we think about hiring are so problematic and questionable. 

So I’m obsessed with this idea of, “I know a lot of our solutions, but how do we take that and make it monomatic again?” How do we make it so that it’s just baked into LinkedIn and not just something that people proactively have to do? I’m ranting, but that’s where I’m at with CFA and how we make things better.

 

Jessica Lee
Right. I agree with you on the fact that organizations like CFA are really critical in bridging what is clearly a pretty big divide between those who want to work in campaign or explore that or experiment that option. But it’s just not something that their parents talk about. It’s not something that they’re even encouraged to pursue because of the risks and sort of the uncertainty that’s baked into political jobs in general. And so to have more Asian Americans and Hispanics and African Americans in there, in these positions that over time become increasingly influential as you’ve walked the ladder, I think is really important and that’s also a really valuable pipeline for future elected officials as well. And so I think on a number of levels, CFA’s mission is very important. 

I want to now shift gears a little bit and hear about your thoughts on the current debate. Now I’m mindful of the fact that you don’t pay very, very close attention to what’s happening in Washington on the adoptee issue and the Adoptee Citizenship Act, which some of our listeners may be familiar with. And we’re going to get into this and look at the numbers and look at why this issue gained the attention that it did. I have the New York Times article in front of me here about Phillip Clay in July 2017 who that year ended his life after being sent to South Korea and struggling with drug addictions and other issues. And so Phillip Clay really captured the imagination of the American public about this very not-well-understood community of about 32,000 adoptees without citizenship, of which there’s about 18,000 who are Korean-born. And so tell us about how you heard about this particular issue and what it means to you that there is a community that’s out there that, really through no fault of their own, are in this legal limbo and without citizenship.

 

John Brougher
When I heard about Philip and about so many other cases of adoptees in a lot of ways, very similar to my experience who have been in some cases deported, in other cases are facing deeply expensive and traumatic legal battles and things like that, it strikes a chord, right? It hurts a lot. I think for me, the thing that I focus on is: I really want folks to understand how important compassion for Philip and for our adoptees is. I want this to be part of the broader immigration debate as well. I think folks are realizing that, but one thing that kills me is, how do I put this? When I think about the Korean adoptee community, we’re such a wonderful and weird and varied and diverse community. Because I think just to Korean Americans in general, I think we’re very large, don’t get me wrong, but in the context of 300 million people in America, we are a small percentage, right? In some ways I feel like we feel like a small community, we come from a smaller country, right? In a lot of ways we have that kind of mentality, but Korean American adoptees is an even tinier subgroup. It’s maybe a 100-150 thousand folks, and it’s also really time-specific and that’s really interesting to me too where in a lot of ways I feel like — this sounds like I’m diminishing it and I don’t mean to — but I feel like Korean American adoptees are going to kind of become like record players or a discman or something where there will be a time. Like in 2015 I think there were like a few hundred Korean adoptees max, right? All across the world, not even just American Korean adoptees. 

So I think about this idea, that the idea of being a Korean adoptee is kind of going extinct, right? This idea of, “Oh, I’m Korean adopted,” is a very 80’s/90’s kind of concept. So yeah, I guess we’re like bell bottoms or something, right? We’re about to go back out. But I think about it because when I think about Philip, when I think about the adoptee advocacy, when I think about the justice stuff that we talked about before — I think this definitely applies here. I think about how can we as an adoptee community advocate for ourselves, but also think about ourselves in this broader immigration context, in this broader adoption context, right? Because there, to me, is a really big debate about adoption foster care in this country too, that I think Korean adoptees are a part of in some way too. And I don’t think that we should force ourselves in discussions. There’s a lot of different ways in which obviously I think an American family adopting a child born in America is going to be a different experience. And I don’t pretend to have my experience being born in Seoul has a very different story, but I’d like us to participate in those as well. And so don’t get me wrong, I very much believe that we need to make sure we protect adoptees as well. But part of the reason you hear me talking so much about broad strokes is that I worry a little bit that sometimes we think about Philip and other folks like me because we have white last names. Because we speak differently, because there’s a little bit more proximity to whiteness. 

So one thing that does concern me is something that I hear — not overtly — but it’s the tone of all of these articles is “Well, how could they deport, John Brougher— John’s almost white.” There’s this sort of incredulity that to me feels unintentionally but still pretty racial or racist. And I’d rather it be, “Look, this happens to John, it happens to Philip, it happens to a lot of folks, and we need talk about this and we need to talk about what’s happening to them and talk about what’s happening to frankly millions of folks and why is this happening and is it right and what can we do about it?”

 

Jessica Lee
I think that’s really interesting and I will just say that in Washington, in the last three and a half years that I’ve been with CKA, I’ve had a chance to meet with groups like National Korean American Service in Education Consortium, or NAKASEC, as well as the Adoptee Rights Campaign among others who have highlighted this very unusual situation that is affecting a disproportionate number of Korean adoptees in particular. And it’s been really heartbreaking to see that this is a legal loophole with bipartisan support to close, but unfortunately this seems to be caught in the broader immigration debate, which as we all know, is politically very tricky to navigate. And so it’s hard for me to know how bills and lawmakers and folks who care about this issue can work together in a bipartisan way to perhaps retroactively grant citizenship to the 32,000 people that we’re talking about. When you think about this issue, John, and obviously you’re not in DC, but you hear about what’s happening from a distance, do you feel like there’s more work that we should do to elevate the stories of Korean adoptees? What role can CKA play on this issue?

 

John Brougher
I definitely think that the stories of adoptees need to be raised up. I completely agree. I don’t just say that as a Korean adoptee, but I think that there are are so many stories of adoptees that aren’t told that we just make so many assumptions about adoption. And I think even that’s even broader than just Korean adoptees. I think that’s just true about adoption in general. We talk a lot about tricky vocabulary, like, “Oh, you’re not my real dad.” And I see that in TV all the time, right? And adoption usually is like a storyline. It’s usually sort of, “Oh, I don’t know who my parents are. I have to go search for them.” And I don’t mean to make fun of that. That’s something that I have thought about, thinking about searching for my birth parents and things like that. But it’s usually handled very poorly in not just media but also in journalism and in a lot of the other kinds of ways that we think about and learn about things. 

I definitely think that CKA has a role to play in raising up these issues. I also think that to me, this issue of belonging and identity is critical, too. I think that’s beyond just adoptees, but we think about Philip who, didn’t know Korea. So the idea of deporting him to Korea was not only wrong and seemingly just so silly in a lot of ways, it’s also just how does this even make sense? Phillip doesn’t speak the language, he doesn’t know any of the cultural touchstones whatsoever. And so I have to be honest, I think that the ways that.. Belonging is a lot less dire than some of the issues that Philip faced. Let’s be real here. 

But I do think a lot about how Korean adoptees and a lot of transracial adoptees, meeting folks who have parents who are a different race than they are. Like in my case, my parents are white and I’m Korean American. A lot of times I think that there is a sense of we don’t belong anywhere. I had actually heard this from a lot of biracial and multiracial friends as well. This sort of notion of — I think other scholars would call this sort of the borderlands. And this is true for everyone, right? We all kind of exist at like, who are we? Well, we’re kind of a bunch of different things and we’re never quite fully comfortable in one place. And I lift it up just because I think that for me as a Korean adoptee, I really feel that a lot. I love Korean spaces, but I also feel very out of place in a lot of them. I don’t speak Korean, but even beyond that, I don’t have touchstones. My parents don’t really know the culture and they’re not Korean at all. And so if folks talk about traditions or things that a lot of Koreans tend to share, not only is — there’s not a low chance that I shared that experience, it’s a 0% chance I shared the experience. 

But even more broadly, it’s things like I think sometimes about how I interface with other adoptees and other non Asian adoptees. There’s a lot of areas of intersection but also of exclusion. I think it’s really important for CKA as we think about how do we maintain a close-knit community, but also how do we welcome? I think it’s important to think about those two different priorities too with adoption.

 

Jessica Lee
Right. I think there’s certainly a lot more that organizations like CKA can do to inform and educate our ourselves and the American public about our unique experiences. And though we have a few adoptees in the membership, including yourself, of course, it doesn’t really represent, I think, the full spectrum of diversity that’s inherent in our community. And I think CKA’s strength will be a very diverse membership. It’s something that we’re going to be continuing to strive. Do you have any thoughts or advice on folks who might be interested in following your footsteps? You could maybe talk about your political work or in the creative space, entertainment. What sort of advice do you have for maybe some of our young listeners?

 

John Brougher
Sure. I love giving out advice. I’m not always sure it’s good advice, but I love giving out advice. I think for me, the biggest thing that I tell folks, which will sound a little bit surprising, I think, a lot of times is: I actually think a lot of my industries that I’ve worked in from entertainment to politics — and this is kind of a sidebar — but I actually think entertainment and politics have been way more similar than different, which is very interesting to me. I think there’s a kind of scary amount of similarity between those two industries. To me, they’re both very opaque and hard to understand and hard to get into. But then once you’re in there, it’s a very small town, kind of community feel. 

The advice that I give is not — I think people expect to hear, “oh, you got to use this website to find people,” or something more either technical or more work oriented. But I think honestly for me, the biggest hurdles that I have found to all of my work stuff have been about mental health, actually. And I’m lucky I don’t deal with a lot of the mental health issues many folks deal with, so I’m not trying to be dramatic. I think what I mean by that is that I deal with things like anxiety and a lot of self doubt and self worth. We talked about adoption and adoption as trauma. And so for me, I know that all the times where I’ve sort of struggled the most with work, I think it’s tempting to say, “Oh, I needed the right connection or something like that,” and don’t get me wrong, those are invaluable. And I am here and I’m easy to find, but also CKA and other groups are there to establish those connections. 

But to me, the thing that held me back most of the time was — I still do this sometimes — something as simple as I walk into a networking event and I know that I’m smart and capable even if I’m young and let’s say 10 years ago I was still meeting new people. But there’s that voice in my head saying, “None of these people want to talk to you, John.” Or there’s a voice in your head saying, “You’re in a meeting. If you speak up, they’re going to hate every word you say.” It’s sort of this idea that we’re often our own most uncharitable voice. And it might not be us, right? It could be a voice of a stern family member or it could be a voice of, maybe we hear society saying, “Oh, you need to look different. You need to be different.” I know it sounds easy for me to say sort of like believe in yourself, but it’s not even as simple as that. So what I would say is be open and honest with yourself about the struggles that we’re having. 

I know that for some of us it’s kind of the voices we talked about. For some of us it could be like, “I don’t feel great waking up every morning and going into this job. How do I find it in me to sort of keep going?” All this kind of things. To me, the thing is, be honest with yourself about that self awareness that we don’t talk about. How are you? I’m a super hippie dippy guy. I love crunchy granola stuff. But how are you actually feeling? Are you happy? I think we don’t ask ourselves are we happy enough. And if we say yes or no, I don’t think we interrogate that enough too, like okay, we don’t like our job. Let’s unpack that a little bit. What about it don’t we like? Is it that our boss is great but the work isn’t what we want to focus on? What’s really going on here? Because what — I need to follow this, my own advice sometimes too — I think we’re often just scared of our own agency, but we often ignore it, too. We have so much power and yes, there is so much set against us, but I think that if we can find a way to at least say, “hey, I’m dealing with these issues,” and then can seek help. Either that’s like maybe it’s a therapist, maybe it’s a friend, maybe it’s a good support network, a mentor or a boss. To me that’s often been been the key: saying not like, “Oh, I needed that listserv connection.” But it’s like, I need to get the bravery to say, “Hey boss, who always says that they love me. Do you mind being a reference?” And then 100% of the time they say, “Oh, of course Jessica, John, I love you. I would take a bullet for you. I’ve been waiting for you to ask me.” 

So to me it’s that self awareness of what’s in my way, what is in my head, what’s either dragging me down or on let’s be positive or what’s boosting me? What gives me fuel and pay attention to that. In the same way that we pay attention to our bodies about like, “Oh, I’m too stuffed,” or whatever. To me that’s the biggest advice. Lean on CKA and lean on me and others for that connection, sort of work, work, work stuff. But to me the biggest hurdles have usually been personal, mental, and often hard because they take vulnerability. We don’t like talking about like, “Oh, Jessica, I don’t know if I know how to do this.” It feels wrong to say, “I don’t know.” Or not even I’m not an expert. But maybe is this totally wrong. Like, can you look at this? But that vulnerability and with certain people at least to me has been the key to finding friendship, love, and then respect and moving forward in my career, not just in my personal life. So that’s what I would say.

 

Jessica Lee
That’s very helpful. Yes, mental health is something we don’t talk about. I think it’s something that we hide from public and yet having a really strong support network and, like you said, strong self esteem and self awareness, I mean those are so important for long-term sustainability. So yeah, I think your candor and your reflections are something we really need to insert more. When we talk about successful people and things they do, well, guess what? They all make mistakes. They all are humans. And this is not something where we want to put people on a pedestal and say, “Wow, isn’t it great that ‘so and so is X, Y and Z and CEO at age 28?” I mean, it’s about yes, celebrating your contributions and your Korean Americanness and of course all of that is important and that’s why we do this podcast. But also important is just being real and just talking about what were those true motivating factors and values that kept you going even when things didn’t work. So really appreciate your perspective on that. I guess the final question that I have is, when you think about the future, what kind of a world do you envision for Korean Americans?

 

John Brougher
Jessica, I love that question. One, the world that I envision for Korean Americans; this is kind of funny. So I’m really, this surprises a lot of people, but I actually am a really cynical person. I am. Having worked in a lot of different industries and all that kind of stuff, I ended up sort of coming off a little jaded sometimes. But my answer to this question actually is I think of future Korean America is bright. I am desperately excited for the future of Korean Americans because even my cynical, jaded self, even at my worst I think, “Oh gosh.” I think about a toxic workplaces or folks who don’t show up. Or a lot of the things that really, I’m getting my crawl or whatever. I think about folks like Peter, folks like our Public Service Interns, folks like — pretty much universally every time I meet a Korean American but also, you know Asian Americans, people of color, young folk activists, they completely, I mean one blow me away in terms of their ability, their passion, their dedication, the amount of accomplishment they’ve already done. 

But also they blow away from me any sense of doubt I have because sometimes I worry. I say like, “Oh my gosh, I see these trends. I’m worried. Is the next generation going to make the same mistakes that we did?” I think we’ve done some great stuff but oh man, I feel like we’ve dropped the ball on some big things. But overwhelmingly what I keep on seeing every time is, every time I get to work with, train, teach, mentor young folks, they always are smarter than me, more accomplished than me and get it, when at their age I was barely learning to talk and they’re like, “Oh let me talk to you about this, like how I went to this small town and saved it because I just decided to,” and I’m like, “Okay, okay great.” And you know at their facility with speaking about issues that are so complicated. 

And I’ll be honest, I only was able to articulate in my mid-thirties and they’re 19 and they’re just like, “Oh, I know how to speak about race and gender in a really complex way.” And I’m like, “oh, I just learned how to sort of really educate myself and speak to this in a way that wasn’t dehumanizing and wasn’t painful for folks.” But these folks in their DNA, they approach this work, with kindness, with love and with joy and hope. Which to me is always like, “Where do you get the joy and hope?” I see climate change and I see this guy in the White House and I’m like, “Where is your source of hope?” But these young folks — I mean they’re not that much younger than me I guess — but they inspire me. And I know that’s so easy to say, but I really mean it every single time. I think, “I don’t know, maybe not.” Then I go to a college event or something and I’m just, “How do these folks do it?” They’re really incredible. And I don’t say that lightly. 

So I really do think the future of Korean Americans is bright. I think what I love is the young Korean American activists, not just in politics, but the leaders in every industry. They’re doing great things and they’re doing them in really thoughtful ways. I think they will lead this next generation and they’re going to do so in a way that will make us proud. I have no doubt.

 

Jessica Lee
Well, thank you. This was John Brougher, a consultant and speaker at Brougher Strategies and a CKA member since 2018. My name is Jessica Lee and this is Korean American Perspectives. Thanks so much for joining us today John.

 

John Brougher
Thank you, Jessica. What a wonderful conversation.