Ailsa Chang is NPR’s first-ever Asian American woman host who also understands what it’s like to grow up in the Asian diaspora, from navigating immigrant parents expectations to discovering what she loves to do. Cold Tea Collective had a chance to speak to Chang about how her cultural experiences growing up in the diaspora shaped her journey to finding a career she’s passionate about.
Expectations from growing up in the Asian diaspora
Chang’s parents immigrated from Taiwan to the US with limited resources, family, and friends. They viewed work as a means to achieve stability, raise a family, and own a house. Inspired by her love of public speaking, Chang joined speech and debate clubs in high school. She recalls, “My Taiwanese immigrant parents said, ‘If you like words so much, of course, you’re going to be a lawyer.’ I adopted that idea because I pictured myself in a courtroom and loved law school.”
Although she enjoyed her time at Stanford Law School and clerking on the Ninth Circuit, traditional law firm practice was unsatisfying experience. There wasn’t a single moment when Chang decided to transition from law to journalism, she says, “I was pretty unhappy as a lawyer and didn’t know what to do because I had always followed a set path.”
Like many children of immigrant parents, quitting wasn’t an option either. Earning their approval meant following a path to becoming an accomplished professional, as they had moved to a new country to provide better opportunities. Chang felt this deeply. “Giving up on their vision of success was very difficult for me,” she remembers. “My parents were so angry. They said I was throwing away my law degree. I told my mom, ‘If I love what I do, I plan to work well into my 70s. Do you want me to stick with a career that bores me and makes me unhappy? That’s unreasonable, right?’”
Chang also highlights the implicit agreement between children of immigrants and their parents: the next generation must move up in society through prestigious education, economics, and career – the opportunities immigrant parents sacrificed for. “Many immigrant parents never had the luxury of seeing work as a means of fulfillment or self-actualization,” Chang continues. “The gift they gave me was the ability to want those things. It took a while for my parents to understand that idea.”
Being the first Asian American NPR host
In 2018, Chang became the first Asian American woman host at NPR. Reflecting on this achievement, Chang felt it didn’t seem to be a big deal in her mind, comparing her achievement to journalist Lulu Garcia Navaro when she became the first Latina host in 2017. “There wasn’t any mention that I was the first Asian American woman host. I didn’t mention it [or] make a big deal out of it. I felt like it’s almost like I didn’t deserve to celebrate it as much… I think that happens to a lot of Asian Americans. You internalize this invisibility that is often imposed on us because we are the so-called assimilated minority.”
In retrospect, Chang wishes she had celebrated her achievement more. She notes, “A lot of media organizations have a long way to go in improving our coverage of Asian-American communities and fleshing out the nuances between all the different communities in this country. And so, I feel very lucky to be in a position where I can help at least NPR do that.”
Now, nearly two decades into her journalism career, Chang has won several awards, including the National Journalism Award from the Asian American Journalists Association and the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Silver Baton award.
More recently, in early 2024, Chang returned to Taiwan for the first time in 30 years to cover the Taiwan presidential elections. She shares, “The first two weeks were stressful, exciting, and exhilarating because of all the reporting and stories we were doing. The second weeks were also stressful and exhilarating, exciting because I was reconnecting with human beings I hadn’t seen for three decades.”
Although Chang says she speaks some Taiwanese, albeit at a grade school level, she leaned into the language if she couldn’t make a connection in English, hoping people would understand the Taiwanese phrase instead. “People seem to appreciate that, and that was surprising to me. I don’t know because I’ve always been a little bit ashamed of my language abilities. I’m also struck by how much more fashionable it is to speak Taiwanese [compared to Mandarin] openly in Taiwan than it was 30 years ago.”
How quitting a job paid off
After quitting law, Chang’s pivot into journalism at 31 wasn’t planned despite her plan-everything mentality. She credits being a casual public radio listener as what led her to sign up for an unpaid internship with an NPR member station in San Francisco. “I thought the people on the radio sounded intelligent, grounded, and curious. [They were] the people I would like to hang out with while trying to figure out my life,” Chang recalls.
Chang hasn’t looked back at her law career, nearly two decades later. Chang loves radio and the power of conversation, and she says, “I love what the human voice can reveal about people. A lot of people say that the eyes are the window into the soul, but I think the voice is… You learn a lot about somebody through their voice.”
What did Chang’s parents think about her working in radio? They would ask her, “Why don’t you want to be on TV like Connie Chung?” she shares with a laugh. “Because [she] was the most prominent Asian-American woman in the media [at the time]… They are very proud now, and they listen to NPR when they know I’m hosting, but it took a few years.”
Chang’s passion for her career is something many hope to achieve. When asked if she has any advice for people wanting to change careers or explore new opportunities, she says realistically, “Financial situations make an unpaid or a low-paid internship very hard… You need to figure out the financial part of taking risks because taking risks is vital to making a career change… You have to try it out to see if it fits you, as you would try on an outfit to see how it looks on you.”
“There isn’t an age where you can no longer learn with humility,” Chang shares at last.
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