What do you consider your specialty to be?

I’m the director of the Wallis Annenberg GenSpace, and it is one of Wallis Annenberg’s latest initiatives here to contribute to, support, energize, and honor older Angelenos. We are located in Koreatown, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Los Angeles, if not the country. It’s been ranked really high in terms of diversity, language, restaurants, and immigration. All of those things make Los Angeles and the United States so beautiful.

We are on the campus of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple and their new community building, the Audrey Irmas Pavilion, which was created as a way to bring a community space to Wilshire Boulevard Temple outside of the temple and the schools that they have here that are so wonderful. And so, at the bottom of the floor of the building that we are in, there is a grand ballroom, followed by wonderful meeting rooms and a chapel. We’re located on the third floor, and above us is a gorgeous rooftop garden where you can see the Hollywood sign, the [Griffith] Observatory, and all across Los Angeles. It’s a very striking place to have here. It just reminds me of what we’re here to do and how we’re here to assist, help, and bring life into this building that, without us, would be more of an event space. With us now, it can be an everyday space and I’m glad.

What is GenSpace?

GenSpace is a community space dedicated to older adults. We also have the Wallis Annenberg Leadership Initiative here. I have two wonderful fellows who are USC graduate students and are working with me on that. We are looking to open on January 9 to the public, like an open house for the public and members of Wilshire Boulevard, and then officially open on January 10. We’ll have programming for older adults, intergenerational programming, special events, lectures, and all these great kinds of educational and other types of enjoyable programming that are surrounded by a couple of key priority areas.

In terms of the space, it’s kind of arranged across four rooms, which are a fitness studio, a horticultural therapy space, an art room, and a tech bar. In addition to those things, we’re also interested in storytelling, financial security, and safety. I’d say those six things are program priorities. We’re waiting for the space [to be ready] so we can put on the finishing touches. We’re putting in sinks and water bottle filling stations, and we’re currently throwing some very intentional, beautiful art on the walls.

While we’re doing that, we’re looking for ways to engage the community. That’s what brought us into conversations with KYCC and other nonprofit organizations around Koreatown. One of my first events was back in March, when we had one of the first age-friendly vaccine sites in Los Angeles, including Koreatown. We partnered with the Karsh Center, which is a food pantry that has been around for 30 years here in Koreatown, to provide older adults, their caregivers, and family members with vaccines. Our oldest patron was 104 years old and was given the vaccine in the car, and then her two live-in caregivers also received the vaccine. We are delighted to be involved in these types of community outreach, doing more in terms of food distribution, partnering with the YMCA, and teaming up with nonprofits on Thanksgiving so we can learn more about community members. Then they can know about us and that we’re here. 

The other thing that we’ve been doing is virtual programming. We’ve been having intergenerational conversations between high school students at Loyola High and older Angelenos. Those ran all summer long while folks were off Zoom for the summer. Now, with some schools still hybrid, we’ve been moving toward doing old-school pen pals, called GenPals. So we’re looking forward to starting that this fall and have been recruiting both high school students and older adults for those programs — just trying to combat social isolation and ageism. It gives a chance for people to feel connected, tell their stories, and talk about their lives with a different generation.

Could you tell me about your family history? Where are your parents from, and do you have any extended heritage that you’d like to mention?

I know bits and pieces of my family’s immigration story and about coming to the U.S., but I don’t know it all. I’d love to know more. My parents are mostly from Los Angeles. My mom was adopted and lived in New York City for her first few years, across from Central Park, and then ended up moving with her adoptive parents to Los Angeles. They were English and German. They lived in Arcadia and owned a newspaper nearby. My mom went to school in Arcadia and then went to UCLA, where she got her undergraduate and graduate degrees. She worked in hospitals in Santa Monica and Westwood and then became a nursing professor at UCLA until I was in middle school or so. Then she started working for community colleges and ended her career at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College (LATTC). She is still heavily involved in health and public health and has a wonderful philanthropic arm in terms of being in the health ministry at our church and caretaking for lots of friends and family.

My dad also grew up in Los Angeles, around Chinatown and Venice. He is a 1.5-generation immigrant, as his parents immigrated here, and his mom was pregnant with him when she arrived by boat from China. He went to high school here at Los Angeles High — a real local — and then worked for a bike shop before working at JCPenney for nearly 40 years. He is currently post-retirement. He did a bunch of traveling, loved to come and visit me when I lived in other places, and did some great bike riding.

During the pandemic, when bike shops were struggling to build bikes, [my dad] actually went back to work at an empty bike shop on Tuesdays, where there were no people, so he could just sell bikes. He’s been working there ever since and has been enjoying being a part of the workforce. It’s a great second-career story during the pandemic. He just loves it and loves educating people. He rides his bike about 100 miles a week. He’s incredible. He beats me every time and is so fast! He is very passionate about the lifelong sport that is bike riding. It’s fun to watch him live that life and to be a part of it on smaller 20-mile bike rides.

My brother moved back in with them to help when my mom had two hip transplants in the last couple of years. He’s been such a great support. We are both half-Chinese and half-European, and we know a little about our family history. My grand­father owned a laundromat here in Los Angeles, and my grandmother was working. I know a little about their immigration story and the life that my grandfather led while he was still here, trying to get his family to come to join him in the United States.

What was your childhood like, and how did that inform your later career?

My childhood was probably typical of many others here. My parents, especially my mom, were very passionate about our education and being involved in the com­munity, such as Girl Scouts, church groups, and youth groups. I was involved with the YMCA so I could learn about the government and how it works. We played a lot of sports. I played soccer and softball year-round and swam. It was probably pretty typical that everybody else spent a lot of time at the beach. My mom was just always so passionate about health care. I would joke and say, “I’m not going to become a nurse. I will not do that. I’m so different from you, Mom.” I was like a child in rebellion.

I ended up, as with many semi-well-adjusted children, seeing a therapist early in high school during some transition and thinking that I would want to be a clinical psychologist. I lived that dream for a while. I had a [high school] assignment that said I was going to be a clinical psychologist. That’s what I was going to do. So I went to school to become a psychologist, and I am currently an experimental psychologist. Along my psychology journey, I realized that clinical psychology, one-on-one counseling, group counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, etc., are very impressive, well-researched, established, and tried-and-true methods with lots of innovation. It just wasn’t for me as a professional.

I had a difficult time leaving the hard stuff that I would hear at work and bringing it home. I found that I also struggled with the grace that is psychology, therapy, and patients. I found myself looking for patterns, loving the research side of clinical psychology, and looking at the case notes, trying to figure out what was going on or what systems could be changed to support someone rather than how someone might need to change. I took a very systems-level approach to a lot of my early involvement with being exposed to giving therapy.

I went through my undergraduate and master’s programs with a focus on clinical psychology. It wasn’t until almost the last year of my master’s program that my mentor was like, ‘Jennifer, you’re not a clinical psychologist.’ I was like, “What do you mean?” At that point, I’d been working on it for nearly six or seven years. I was like, “If I’m not a clinical psychologist, then who is? Because I am the most dedicated person out there.” He was just like, ‘It’s not for you.’ I ended up switching. [My mentor] was right. It was not for me. And it took a strong, amazing man, Dr. Larry Myers, to tell me that clinical psychology wasn’t for me.

I went on and learned more about experimental psychology, the study of systems, human behavior, animal behavior, and how we think and act. From there, I studied more about human well-being and health, and that led me to study rural health, which in turn led me to aging and disability in rural America. I was even frustrated with how slowly things moved in research. I pivoted and had a wonderful oppor­tunity to join some colleagues at Nadler under the Administration for Community Living at Columbia University, the Health and Aging Policy [Fellows Program], which is one of the only policy fellowships on the Hill in Washington, D.C. that brings aging experts there to be advisors in and around D.C., with the help of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

I totally pivoted and started my health policy journey. That is probably way more than you wanted to know. It really was a way there. Each of those pieces was so pivotal, and I figured out who I was before figuring out how I could give back to my community. My mom wanted us to write to my family and then ultimately aim to create a better world for those who are marginalized, whether it’s by immigration status or age. I’m really in a place where I feel like I’ve found that way.