APEX Express – 3.26.26 – A Conversation with Lavender Phoenix: The Next Chapter

APEX Express is a weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. APEX Express and Lavender Phoenix are both members of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE). AACRE focuses on long-term movement building, capacity infrastructure, and leadership support for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders committed to social justice. Important Links: Lavender Phoenix Dragon Fruit Project – Podcast Series Transcript: Miata Tan: ​[00:00:00] Hello and welcome. You are tuning into Apex Express, a weekly radio show, uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. I’m your host Miata Tan. Tonight we have two incredible guests. From Lavender Phoenix. They’re a Bay area based organization supporting queer and transgender Asian American and Pacific Islander [00:01:00] youth. I really enjoyed my conversations with both of these folks, and I’m sure you will as well. This episode is a rerun from December, 2025 when Lavender Phoenix was at a transitional moment in their leadership. Tonight, you’ll hear from the outgoing executive director as she passes the torch along to the new director stepping into the role, uh, we’re bringing this episode back in honor of the transgender day of visibility. That’s just around the corner Tuesday, March 31st. It felt like the perfect time to revisit these conversations. A quick note throughout both interviews, you’ll hear us refer to the organization as both Lavender Phoenix and its very cute nickname. LavNix. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Yuan Wang, the outgoing executive director of Lavender Phoenix. Miata Tan: Yuan, thank you so much for joining us today. , Would you be able to share a little bit about yourself with [00:02:00] our listeners to get started? Yuan Wang: Yeah. I’m so excited to be here. , My name is Huan. My pronouns are she, and they, and I’m actually the outgoing executive director of Lavender Phoenix. You’re catching me on my second to last week in this role after about four years as the executive director, and more years on our staff team as an organizer and also as a part of our youth summer organizer program. So this is a really exciting and special time and I’m really excited to reflect about it with you. Miata Tan: Yay. I’m so excited. I’d love for you to give us an overview of Lavender Phoenix and the work that y’all do, what communities you support, Yuan Wang: Lavender Phoenix was founded about 21 years ago, and we are based in the Bay Area. We’re a grassroots organization that builds the power of transgender non-binary and queer Asian and Pacific Islander communities right here in the Bay. Right now our work focuses on three major [00:03:00] Areas. The first is around fighting for true community safety. There are so, so many ways that queer, trans, and more broadly, uh, working class communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Are needing ways to keep ourselves and each other safe, that don’t rely on things like policing, that don’t rely on things like incarceration that are actually taking people out of our communities and making us less safe. The second big pillar of our work is around healing justice. We know that a lot of folks in our community. Struggle with violence, struggle with trauma, struggle with isolation, and that a lot of the systems that exist aren’t actually really designed for queer and trans API people, to thrive and feel connected. And so, we’ve been leading programs and campaigns around healing justice. And the last thing is we’re trying to build a really principled, high integrity leaderful movement. So we do a ton of base building work, which just [00:04:00] means that, everyday queer and trans API people in our community can come to Lavender Phoenix, who want to be involved in organizing and political work. And we train folks to become organizers. Miata Tan: And you yourself came into Lavender Phoenix through one of those programs, is that right? Yuan Wang: Yeah. Um, that is so true. I came into Lavender Phoenix about seven or eight years ago through the Summer organizer program, which is kind of our flagship youth organizing fellowship. And I was super lucky to be a part of that. Miata Tan: How has that felt coming into Lavender Phoenix? Like as a participant of one of those programs? Yeah. And now, uh, over the past few years, being able to lead the organization? Yuan Wang: Yeah. It feels like the most incredible gift. I share this a lot, but you know, when I had come into Lavender Phoenix through the summer organizer program, I had already had some experience, doing [00:05:00] organizing work, you know, doing door knocking, working on campaigns. but I really wanted to be in a space where I felt like I could be all of myself, and that included being trans, ...