Chizo and Evan spoke with Billy Lim, the former Senior Organizer for Code for America’s National Action Team. Billy touches on his childhood growing up in Milwaukee, his experience working as a teacher and organizer for AAPI Communities, details on the Reimagine 911 National Action Network, and his advice for those looking to make meaningful career pivots
Episode credits: Hosted by Chizo and Evan.
Cover art created by modifying Abstract Shapes © Nathan Covert (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
References mentioned in this episode:
All episodes include a transcript of the conversation for our newsletter subscribers. Please find the transcript of the interview below.
Evan
Hello and welcome to think civic, a podcast where we explore civic responsibility and tech, policy design and more. I'm Evan. And I'm delighted to be joined today by my co host Chizo. How are you doing today?
Chizo
Doing all right. So if you can't already tell a lot has obviously happened in the world since we released our last episode.
Evan
Yeah, on a personal note, Chizo, Ajay, and I have have been, and still are very busy. Ajay has been traveling the world, I've been juggling different work responsibilities between a grueling six month production cycle, at my place of work, my full time place of work at least and coaching and improving basketball team part time. And Chizo wrapped up work with the Aspen Tech Policy hub. You want to discuss a little bit, Chizo?
Chizo
Just finished the Aspen tech policy hubs winter policy primer. Great experience with 40 other participants, so excited to share more details about that in the show notes. On top of what you mentioned, I think our own with, you know, with our own hectic schedules, we've had to learn about how to plan interviews a lot better, you know, to actually have really good episodes. Overall. I mean, I think it's we'd all agree that it's been great to explore other things, breathe a little bit and figure out how we can continue to sustainably deliver the best content for you, our listeners.
Evan
You know, it's something that you discussed, right? We all work, we work full time jobs. And like this is an excellent opportunity for us to explore topics in this area. But you know, at the same time, you know, this isn't what we do full time. So we need to figure out ways to get this to fit into our schedule that doesn't result in us sleeping for three hours a night, although I'm already doing that
Chizo
someday, someday.
Evan
Someday! But speaking of contents and scheduling interviews, I had a bit of difficulty with this one. But we are absolutely stoked to share this episode with you. We spoke with Billy Lim, a former senior organizer for Code for America's National Action Team. Billy did amazing work with them spearheading their ongoing efforts related to data design and ethics driven work on a project called Reimagine911, our conversation with Billy covered how he started embracing pivots in his career, how teaching informed his approach to social justice, his work politically, organizing AAPI communities and his advice for people interested in pursuing a career that's meaningful and impactful for society.
Chizo
Yeah, even though it was a lot of work, like getting this episode together, I am so happy that we were really able to speak with him. I think really learning about how organizing is such a important part of building movements of sustaining movements of actually like getting policy or action done that benefits, you know, people, I think that's just something that I really could tell like exuded from Billy and like, was like a driving force for why he continues to do this work. But we'll talk more about the Reimagine911 project, which is where I remember meeting him at the kickoff and being like, wow, so much enthusiasm for what civic tech can look like outside of the context of just being a contractor. Like, there's such thing as grassroots movements in this work. And so, yeah, really excited to see what our listeners take away from this episode.
Evan
Really engaging interview, at least that I've participated in actively instead of having like maybe one line or even nothing, but um, you know, as an update going forward, we plan on releasing at least one episode per month, as long as our schedules allow, hopefully, we will be involving all of us more often, it will hear from us. And we'll also be producing more content. We really have exciting guests lined up. And we've been working on for the past few weeks, and we will be exploring deeper topics that we can't really like, oh, we can't wait to share with you all.
Chizo
Make sure if you weren't already to follow us on our new twitter handle at think civic pod to join in on the conversation after this episode. Like we mentioned in our season premiere, we've launched a new Substack newsletter to make sure that you never miss an episode. Every episode will be delivered with links for all streaming platforms, key takeaways, references mentioned and the full transcript for folks that prefer to read up on the conversation. So be sure to hit subscribe at thinkcivic.substack.com. Now without further ado, here's our conversation with Billy. Welcome Billy to think Civic. We are so happy to have you on.
Billy Lim
Thank you for having me.
Evan
It's great to be here. For some reason, just I think just by random chance we have been attracting Wisconsinites to the show, even despite the fact that one of our hosts is from Wisconsin. Give you an open ended question here, Billy. So staying along, you know, being from Wisconsin, can you give us a little background on yourself? What's your story, you have a superhero origin story out there that we're missing or enlighten us and our listeners,
Billy Lim
That kind of superhero story. I don't think I'd describe it that way. But I'm happy to tell you a little bit about myself. So my name is Billy Lim. I'm a senior organizer at Code for America for their national action team. I was born and raised in Wisconsin in the City of Milwaukee. Yeah, I spent all my childhood in Milwaukee grew up on the north side, went to school in a nearby suburb were committed in and yeah, I grew up in a family of five. My parents are refugees from Cambodia, you know, they're growing up was tough in some ways. So the result of that, but great in other ways. So you know, it's a little bit about me, Wisconsin was good to us. We love cheese. I'll just put a pin in that!
Evan
Yeah, if you want some stringy cheese, I can get you some from like a state fair or like a local cheese store.
Billy Lim
It has to be a state fair. Absolutely. I used to work at the State Fair.
Chizo
Really?
Billy Lim
Yeah! We have these root beer barrels at the State Fair, these giant root beer barrels that people sit in and they sell soda. And those were summer jobs or high school. So I have fond memories of I don't know if I call them fond memories of Wisconsin State Fair.
Chizo
That is awesome. I have to say the first time I ever went to the Midwest was in Minneapolis in 2017. And that was the first thing they told us they said the Wisconsin cheese heads is a thing. Cheese curds, they eat a lot of cheese curds?
Billy Lim
So good! So good!
Chizo
They're not to say that our whole conversation is going to be about cheese, though easily it could be. Could you walk us through like how your identity kind of growing up, guided your career choices? I know. For me, personally, at least my upbringing, living in my community in California, you know, a lot of people from Nigeria, that definitely shaped I think how I, you know, saw the world and growing up, but really curious how that manifested for yourself.
Billy Lim
I think that my upbringing, my family had a huge impact on my career trajectory. Growing up, as is the case with a lot of Asian American and immigrant and refugee families, education is incredibly important, super highly valued, not just from a cultural standpoint, but at least from you know, from a parent's standpoint. As a pragmatic matter, we were not rich, by any we're remotely close to rich and the effects of that every day are palpable, you know, we're a group, my family, you know, we subsisted on some food stamps, my dad was a pizza delivery driver. And that was not really the life that I think my parents, you know, wanted for their kids. So education is really important to me, I was really lucky in that I was able to go to public schools in this nearby suburb. The schools in Milwaukee and Milwaukee Public Schools are, they're not necessarily the schools that you would prefer to send your kids, at least when I was growing up, I was really lucky to be able to commute into a nearby suburb where the schools were excellent. I had like really fine awareness of how different my life could have turned out, even like by the age of 18, if I had not gone to the schools that I had gone to had the mentors that I did, the support system that I did, which, whether we like it or not, that's so often what our school systems provide all of that support that, especially when your family is struggling, they can't necessarily provide for you. So you know, I went off to college, and that's where I was really focused on education, advocacy, education policy. These are where my interests were, and after I graduated, you know, I became a teacher. And that wasn't what I was actually planning. I actually right after graduating from college, you know, a lot of people were had asked me, "What do you want to do? Are you going to teach?" I was like, No, I can't teach. never teach. I know how hard that probably is. But I did get a job at a school and I very naturally ended up interacting with the kids and the kids reminded me so much of myself, and their families reminded me of my family so much that, you know, spending a lot of time with them and seeing the learning that was happening in the classroom every day and I decided to become a teacher, I changed my mind. I taught for a few years second grade, then fourth grade, and fifth and sixth to elementary school to middle school. I taught history. That was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and unsurprisingly, probably one of the hardest jobs I will ever have. I did eventually find myself becoming unsatisfied with what I was able to do in my classroom. I think there's awareness, wider awareness of this today, but education cannot be the single panacea or problem solver for everything that my kids were going through. A lot of them were going through the foster care system, did not have consistent support at home, did not necessarily have food on the table do not have electricity. You know, we're surviving situations that are just tremendously difficult for anyone, much less children to be going through. And I felt really limited in what I could do in my classroom. And so when I thought about my skill sets, as a teacher, just in general, in terms of, you know, being able to speak to audiences, to really craft messages and make more complex topics and messages more translatable to everyday people, you know, those are skill sets that you've cultivated as a teacher and learning really what people need and putting that at the center of everything that you do. And so, you know, I took those skill sets, and I thought, how can I expand my reach? How can I do something that will affect things for my kids, or people like my kids, and I decided to go into political campaign work, thinking that the way to enact widespread change at scale across many issues would be by electing leaders who could provide those exact changes, or at least try to enact those changes. So I went into campaign work as an organizer. That's where my first career pivot sort of was, and put those skill sets to use, I was talking to people in my neighborhood, every day I organized the neighborhood in which I grew up, I was learning a lot about how campaigns work, how to inspire people, and how to build a sense of connection between people and issues that they may or may not feel close to. From there, I went on and did organizing at a national scale for an Asian American nonprofit voting and Civic Engagement nonprofit, through my, you know, into my time there, there was a tragedy in my family that necessitated me, moving back home to Milwaukee. I did that continued organizing, again, the 2020 election cycle. And you know, at that point, I was lucky enough through some of my other work with Asian American civic engagement, leadership development, I found out about my current role. That's at Code for America, which is really at the intersection of organizing civic engagement and the holistic application of technology. And it wasn't someone who was expert at understanding the systems that did support my family, my parents growing up. But when I was learning about Code for America's work, and what this role would entail, government service delivery is really important. And you know, I mentioned food stamps earlier, I mentioned, you know, there are ton of public services, public benefits that made it possible for my family to just like, live and survive. And I thought a lot about the intersection of Asian Americans and how there are barriers to access to public benefits to accessing quality service delivery from government. And so I'm really happy that I'm able to work every day now as an organizer, trying to do my part in helping connect people to those issues and those causes.
Chizo
Yeah, wow. Like, that's such an incredible, I think story of how you've kind of really made a thread like through each of the things that you found, like interesting things that you were passionate about, and actually kind of turn that into like the actual, you know, work that you do day to day, I'd like to kind of pivot back a bit, and actually kind of harken back on your time as a teacher. So at least from what you remember, right? What were some of the experiences or skills or things it really you held on to like, after you made that I think that transition into organizing that you learned as a teacher, man, like working with people directly trying to, you know, better their lives, help them do better in school, which is a really important thing, like how did that kind of translate into that next pivot?
Billy Lim
There are a lot of parallels, I think, between teaching and organizing, on a very basic level, it involves speaking to groups of people, it involves guiding them and connecting them to ideas that they might not have previously been engaged with. And it involves cultivating a sense of self and leadership and other people. You know, and I would say that even applies to my kids who are discovering every single day, more of who they were and who they wanted to be in their lives. I think it's part and parcel of the organizing work that most community organizers are doing, you're often meeting new people and your job is essentially to bring the best out of people, and to show people who may not necessarily arrive believing it like what they can do, and what their actual impact can be. If they, especially if they try something different. They might have the principles and values they probably do if they're open to say volunteering for an effort or participating in a political campaign. But I hear a lot. I've never done that before. You know, that's the phrase I hear a lot from volunteers. I've never done that before. But as an organizer, I think that it's your responsibility to inspire people to see what's possible. And I'd liken that to the same thing that I was doing as a teacher inspiring my kids if I could have on my best days inspiring them to see what's possible in their own lives.
Evan
Like, when we imagine, like the answers you'd give, like planning, and being able to speak and inspire people on why, like those skills as a teacher are transferable to organization like, that's what we're kind of figuring would be a part of your answer. But the thing I didn't realize, but also should have thought of as someone who's the son of a teacher, and who taught history for 20 years, like, instill school administrators, like you can be inspired and notice issues within your classroom related to poverty, food availability, mental health issues, and knowing that that is something that also inspired you to take action, hopefully, like, its teachers will inspire through that, too, whether or not they're gonna be allowed to buy their state legislatures, given the current political trends, we'll see if that actually happens. But it's good to see that you've been able to make that career jump from being a teacher to a political organizer. And and that has gone smoothly, I think, from what I can tell. But speaking of organization, we didn't want to talk about some of your work. So we wanted to start with just going through your political organization efforts in the AAPI communities, you've discussed why organizing is important to you. But can you discuss like, what have you learned about America as a whole? The communities you've organized? And I think you did some organization work in Wisconsin, and yourself since engaging in this work, especially in the midst of ongoing hate incidents against API folks across the country?
Billy Lim
Yeah, that's a great question. So start the beginning, I'll go through and, you know, I'll start by saying that organizing is important, because there's so much potential in people power and grassroots energy, and especially when you can bring communities together. We live in a democracy, we live in a country where so much decision making and change cannot happen unless you mobilize collectively, that's just a fact. Unless you're like, really wealthy, then you know, then you can make the argument we live in an oligarchy, in which case, you can make change provided you have in order to amounts of power, and that's probably unethical. But that said, if you're not that, organizing is one of the best ways that I've seen in my life, to directly participate in bringing communities together, in harnessing the energy and passions of everyday people toward causes that I believe in, you know, I wouldn't organize for just anything, I'm the things that I have chosen to organize around are things that are personally important to me, organizing is at the heart of every progressive movement that we've seen in this country, from the labor movement, to the civil rights movement, to the feminist movement. There are many movements within those movements. But you know, organizing all of those movements, and their attendant changes depended on people coming together and deciding that we like we are able to do something I know, it might sound trite or cheesy, but it's, it's true. That's literally how things have always gotten done. And I think that, as a country, what I fear, sometimes a little bit is that we're losing faith in our ability to make change, even if we come together. And maybe perhaps, because the idea of coming together is not something that even seems really feasible or viable or possible anymore. Because we are also we're so fragmented politically, culturally there that we, you know, we have these clashes, and there's a sense that, that there's not a togetherness to even strive for, or that we even have the same values about where our country should be headed. I think that we do, I think that we do, they might look different. And there's a lot of bridge building work to be done between communities. Because, you know, there's that mutual understanding, I think, in a lot of cases, but, you know, I think at the end of the day, there are really, at least what's proven to me, in my community organizing everyday, there are many beautiful things about what people bring to bear as individuals, and when they come together, on making change for their communities, themselves, their families, you name it, you know, I chose to organize around a NHPI issues, because I am an Asian American. And, you know, I think it was part of my own development of political consciousness as an Asian American, you know, starting in high school, but especially throughout college, and then afterwards, seeing, you know, what it was like to be an Asian American person in the real world, issues of identity. You know, you can't separate that from your everyday lived experience like that as your experience, that's your life. And I think it got to a point where I was like, how could I not organize around these issues? It's like life, these are real. They're not just like, separate issues for myself. You know, they're in three specific, it's like, you know, when I was working for this nonprofit in DC, the A NHPI, civic engagement voting nonprofit that was doing work around the 2020 decennial census. So literally the idea of being counted, like just just being counted in the country that you live. have been, in which, you know, the fear was that Asian Americans would not be counted, he would literally not be counted properly. And if you're not, then there are many policy implications of that billions of dollars of funding that our communities miss out on. So there are real policy implications. But I say all of this because, you know, that work of engaging a NHPI communities, by communities in the census in the civic engagement process, bringing them in and trying to instill a sense of like, these issues matter, the issues that you see in your life, and that your family is confronted with everyday has a direct connection to these external policy issues. And we have to do something we like literally don't have a choice. Because, you know, if we don't do as we like to say, corporate America, you know, no one is coming. When no one is coming to save us, it's up to us. And so I'd say that, that describes a lot of the impetus and motivation behind trying to do something within the HPI community, especially because I think there are leadership vacuums, they're not because of a lack of leadership potential, but because there's a lack of opportunity for leadership, structurally, and even culturally for Asian Americans. And so I really felt like I had a role to play and enacting those things for myself, and also trying to bring other Asian Americans into the fold in that way, showing who we could be as people.
Chizo
The point that even that you touched on at the end, like no one's coming to save us, remind me of a conversation I had with a friend, who also said something along the lines of just organizing being something that's really purpose, full, and the life giving. So at the same time of like, yes, no one's coming to save us, we have no choice but to do this work. So thank you for doing this work. Which leads us to a great transition for what we hope to talk to you about today, since we'd love to talk to you more about yourself, which is awesome. But you're working right now with the Code for America National Action Network. And we wanted to just provide our listeners with an opportunity to learn more about the Reimagine911 project, which to our understanding is a national volunteer effort (caveat for listeners, I am a volunteer!), to have you talk about this project, in your own words, the partners and the ultimate goals of what this national movement that your team is building is helping to usher.
Billy Lim
So thanks for opening up the space to talk about this current work that's both really exciting and challenging. And honestly, experimental, the National Action Team at Code for America is it's a new initiative, it's actually semi new, a lot of this experimentation in terms of how we can mobilize distributed people power at scale, connecting grassroots energy to an issue of national scope and importance that works or last year with get your refund, I was lucky enough to be organizing on this tax benefits team at Code for America connecting, you know, tax volunteers to direct client service work to our civic technologists volunteer network to help support the development of the get your refund product. That was where we really tried testing for the first time. Well, you know, our hypothesis was, you know, if we take this grassroots energy and redirect it in the right way, provide the right scaffolding and resources, you can apply people power in a scale distributed way to meet the needs of these issues. And so the national action team this year is really, I think, a natural progression of the work that organizing work we started last year. You know, to sum it up, the 911 system is really fragmented. And there are a lot of barriers to change in the system. Currently, it's a system that, you know, in many ways, it's more police first or law enforcement first over people first, in the sense that, you know, when you call 911, in 99% of cases, you're gonna get a police officer who shows up, regardless of the issue, you could be calling 911, because there's actually a situation transpiring that necessitate someone arriving with lethal force and ready to use it. That could be the case, you could also be calling 911. Because you're trying to get assistance to a homeless person, or a person experiencing homelessness. And it's like, of course, this is an emergency, of course, I'm going to call 911. Maybe they're sick, maybe there's some imminent need. In cases, that is just one example. But in cases like that, in cases of mental health, are there other responses that we believe could be useful? Outside of having someone show up with a gun, you know, to call a spade a spade, inequity that also that, you know, communities, every community should be able to rely on 911 but depending on the community you're from, you will not always get the support that you need, and you might not always get the response that you need. And so, our work in reimagining 911, as we like to say, is in seeing what past abilities are there for change? What are the levers of change? And how do we apply technology and people power in order to make those changes possible. Bain partner is the transform 911 group at the University of Chicago, they have been pioneering this work for a while now. They're made up researchers, advocates, people who have been in the 911 ecosystem and work in the field for decades, they come with such a, an incredible brain trust of knowledge about the 911 system, both the gaps in it and what potential solutions could be, they came out with really rigorous and smart's list of recommendations for ecosystem level change this past March. So last month, the plan is for a final draft of those recommendations to be published in June. And for that, to go out to the ecosystem, in hopes that individual 911 jurisdictions could adopt these recommendations and hopefully make some progressive change. And so you know, in terms of the National Action Team and our goals, we have an extremely talented, wonderful community of volunteers. She's thank you so much for everything that you do. We have a we have a really talented group of volunteers who are helping out every day every week, applying their skill sets their time and their energy to helping understand what is the problem space? And what can we do about it? The problem space that we've identified as our, you know, our area of focus is how can we eliminate barriers in terms of data systems, and access to data and the use of data in order to improve how 901 jurisdictions collaborate, in order to improve their ability to even make meaning of their own data? And how they organize it how whether or not they track it, whether or not they they have access to that. And so, you know, in our current work, we've just sourced open datasets for around 160 Priority cities. So we've identified whether or not they even have data that's publicly accessible. And we're in the second phase of this work where we're describing Well, what's actually in the dataset? Is it open source? Is it publicly licensed? What kind of call types are indicated in there? These are really important things to know. Because there are some jurisdictions that don't have any open data, there are some that seemingly don't track what kinds of calls are coming in. And when you don't know what kind of calls are coming in, how do you know what are the needs of your end user, which is the people who are calling in every day, trying to get help. And so we think that by improving access to data, by eliminating barriers, they're providing analysis of what the problems of the data sort of space is, with the 911, we can enable jurisdictions to make change for themselves, and improve the way that they leverage data to enhance their delivery of service to the people that depend on them.
Chizo
I can echo the experience of trying to actually dig through different cities, data's portals and like, whoa, everyone uses a very different version of Socrative, or at least not Socrative, at all, which is fine. But they have their own method of doing things and like, what does it mean to actually capture information that you can then like, make recommendations around I think, is really interesting. It amazes me how many people even in our data working group who, you know, yeah, carve out hours a week, or an hour a week, you know, to make, you know, any type of contribution to the work that's going on. So I would say really quick, I want to get your rundown of a few things. So first, how can folks get involved in this work? I know, I personally did join at the very beginning with a kickoff. But yeah, curious what the process is for someone to join now, what you know, their expected time commitment might be? And yeah, any big wins, that you can be able to talk about.
Billy Lim
Yeah. So in terms of how to join, this is something that I make it a point to tell to pretty much all new volunteers who join in a whole group setting. So I definitely mentioned this at info sessions. I definitely mentioned that, you know, most opportunities they get, but our national action team itself, and the processes and systems we use are really experimental, and they're in a pilot mode. Right now. We've been developing our onboarding process for a little while, we just rolled out, you know, how to actually get involved as a volunteer, if you want to, that is hosted on a notion page that I would love to give you the link to, but it is not a straightforward link.
Chizo
We can definitely link it in the show.
Billy Lim
That's awesome. So we use notion to house you know, all of our volunteer materials, in addition to a platform called discourse. If you you know, using the link that I'll provide to Chico and Evan, if you use that link bill, you'll see directly in there the onboarding guide, they're literally you know, four steps to being on boarded, submitting a map or National Action Team registration form, you know, maybe meeting with me so I can learn more about you and get do you match to teams and getting you the tools that you need technology wise. So that's how you would get involved, time commitment, whatever you can do. I would literally say that there is no upper or lower limit to participation here. There's an upper limit in the sense of like, I would want any volunteer to be taking care of themselves. And I want you to be able to dedicate the time that you want you to the cause, at the same time that, you know, we're all people, and you need to attend to things in your personal life, your professional life. And so balance is really important, for sure. But you know, like, here's I mentioned, if you have an hour a week greats, that would help us with a few datasets, like, you know that so much of this is not about looking at things at the individual level. At the same time, it's so much about the individual level, like, it's not about, like it is about everyone's like one to two hours a week, if he's able to do that, Evan, you should join team. But it's also weave that in there so that I could, that's more of also his one or two hours a week, combined with what everyone else is doing. And that is what impact is, you know, and so when you look at it in the aggregate time commitment will take whatever anyone can give. And it all adds up to a lot. Can you remind me I'm sorry, of the last part of the question. I'm not sure if I touched on everything, but I think it was somebody had been everything.
Chizo
I would say, Are there any big wins you want to celebrate that we can share? And maybe the last one being? Who can join? Right? Do you have to be part of a brigade, if folks don't know what a brigade is?
Billy Lim
So I'll start with, you know, I'll go start from the end and go and reverse. So pretty much anyone can join. I think that there that said, there probably considerations around a couple of things. One, you know, I think that we would need to think through like if minors could join, I don't, they're intuitively, I don't see why not. At the same time, you know, there might be sensitive content. And this goes for whether you're a minor, but it's like there could be triggering things that just inherently have to do with researching and understanding the 911 system. So there are considerations here. But on balance, the door is wide open for anyone, we will welcome you with open arms. And believe me, no matter what background experience, skill sets you have, there is something that you can bring to the table, we will support you in connecting what you can do and what you want to do to the goals of the team. You don't have to be a member of Code for America brigade, or an individual volunteer chapter to participate. We have around 70 to 80 Brigades across the country. And we're, I'm really thankful for the brigades volunteers that we have, because they're, you know, like down brigade volunteers, they're doing the work, and they're helping spread the word about the needs here and the volunteer opportunity. But you don't need to be a part of a brigade at all. And in terms of big wins, there are really a lot in the day to day, it's like there are seemingly small things like, wow, the learning and development working group on the team just came out with some new learning materials around 911. That's amazing. Like, we have like some foundational infrastructure content for new volunteers to learn from, you know, to break things like, wow, like the data team literally just went through 160 Priority cities and told us whether or not they have, you know, there's an open source data set for all of those like, that's a big win. And then really, the National Action Team, it's remarkable that we've made something from nothing. Like we have this team of close to 70 people who are doing this work who have partnered with transform 911, who have created you know, seven different working groups on this team are doing work every single day, building infrastructure for the team and thinking about how to make change in system. All this came together from literally nothing like we had nothing except for the energy and passion and convictions of people. And now we have a distributed team. That's tackling a really, really big problem. So those are some big wins in broad strokes. Yeah, I couldn't be more grateful or proud of everything that we've done.
Evan
Thanks for the very light, very public encouragement you've given me to join this project. Boy, if I can ever get my head out of the sand where I'm working, I would gladly join. It may take a few weeks, but I'll give it a look just as a wrap. Big picture career advice sort of session for you here. We wanted to start by asking as someone who's had to make a big career pivot, and has been empowered in his career changes by exploring progressive ideas. And while building a community of like minded people, we wanted to ask you looking back at your perhaps undergraduate self, just put yourself in that mindset. Did you think that you had it all figured out? Or you're gonna be you're gonna be a teacher working on educational policy on the side or is it life Oh boy, I don't know what the heck's going on here.
Billy Lim
You know what I think this applies to, like 99% of people, no one knows anything about anything. Like, like, you've no one knows, you think you know, but you probably don't know what you think is going to happen, but you think you're gonna be passionate about what you want to dedicate your energies to, you might have a really concrete idea of that in mind, chances are not out of 10, that's going to change in some way, in some way, that's not insignificant. I would say to anyone who's considering like a career change, whether it's transitioning into civic tech or not, or just generally making a career pivot, it's literally never too late. I think that the biggest barrier to taking the leap is it's really internal. It's about a lot of things. Like I'm not gonna lie and say that, you know, anyone can just drop their job tomorrow, and just go out and do something new. Some people will have really specific obligations, where, you know, they can't afford to take risks at that scale, at least not in the current moment. But if you are fortunate enough to do that, and even if you're not, if you're holding on to an idea of something that you would like to pivot to, I don't think it's ever too late. I think it's about, you know, not to sound trite. But it is about following your passions, and I hope thinking about, it's about seeing where you can do good in the world that is deeply imperfect. But remembering that there are near perfect things about the contributions that you and everyday people can make, when I don't know if you have other people at heart, and you know, you're invested in pursuing what's good for the world. So I would say, definitely consider career changes if you're not doing that. But yeah, I would never close the door on anything, I would never recommend that to anyone keep the doors open to change and possibility. You know,
Evan
I think you just hit on a key point of being in this era of the modern age and being like that still like to hit on one of my least favorite interview questions. Where do you see yourself in three to five years? Do you think you'll still be working with this company? It's like, answers like, I don't know, like, but especially when I was going through the job process of like, okay, like, during pandemic, I'm like, Okay, well, I wasn't expecting to be sitting at home, staring at a laptop for eight hours a day. So like, how can I say, I'm gonna be here and have this concrete idea of where I'm gonna be in that span of time? Like, I know, it's sort of a gauge of like, something I don't even know, I just never cared to learn to find out, which probably makes means. This is probably why I'm here, where I'm at right now. Well, you know, are these concrete ideas like you have to be fluid, you have to be open to like you said, you have to be open to potentially transitioning, and he opened doors, you can see that look attractive, take them, but I didn't want to kind of hit on it. But just want to ask you more concretely, what sort of advice do you have for people wanting to pursue work that they find meaningful and impactful?
Billy Lim
That's a great question, part of how I would answer this intuitively, and I think I'm speaking to people who have been in situations, like once that I found myself in where it's I said a little bit about my upbringing and the background that I come from. And I think that, especially for people who are coming from situations of both obligation, you know, to themselves and to their family, and might have more than typical levels of responsibility for a longer amount of time in their lives, to other people who don't have the same kind of mobility that were lucky enough to have, you don't always have the luxury of just transitioning to something without thinking about other people, you know, so part of what I want to say is, you know, it's not wrong to think about what you need. And I mean that on a couple of different level, that's like, what you need in terms of your passions and your convictions of what you want to do. But also, if you need to meet your obligations, then that's okay. And like, if that means like, because let's be real, we live in a world where unfortunately, like, if you pursue social change, work, nonprofit work, anything in that domain, you're probably going to make a little bit less than if you go into investment banking. And like, if you are someone who, because of your obligations, you're not able to dedicate your full self, to the causes that you might really believe in, it's okay to take care of yourself and your obligations and what you need to take care of, to enable better work and a better version of yourself later, when you're able to, you know, to do things that you really, really care about, you know, as part of why like, you know, my dad wasn't invested in being a pizza delivery driver his whole life, but his passion, but he did it because he needed to, you know, and that's okay, you know, so do what you need to do.
Chizo
I echo and plus one, all of that. Support of paying people, a living comfortable way absolutely take care of themselves, and be better contributors to society at their own. Anyways, thank you so much, Billy, for talking with us this afternoon. I know it's still coming in where you are right now. And so somehow Wi Fi has granted us the go ahead to make this interview happen. So, really again, glad that we were able to chat with you. I learned so much, Evan, I can imagine you also feel the same.
Evan
Absolutely. Probably most engaging conversation I've had in a while. So appreciate that. Billy, again, it's always a great day in Wisconsin to great people from Wisconsin can meet up and discuss stuff like this.
Chizo
Absolutely. Just pretend I'm not here. Or maybe I could be an honorary Wisconsinite.
Evan
Yes, just consume, like some string cheese or deep fried bacon or deep fried butter, like the next. Yeah, we sold that state fair at some point.
Chizo
Get on my training regimen. But yeah, thank you so much.
Billy Lim
Thank you both for having me. This was wonderful. And I want to say one more thing you can give it on this note. One of the best things about teaching and about organizing is that you get to participate in conversations with people who that remind you of why you do everything that you do every day. And you know, so thank you for helping me with another reminder. I really appreciate it.
Chizo
Thank you again for taking the time to tune into this episode. We hope you found this conversation with Billy as interesting as we did. Do share this with any friends, family, co workers or neighbors interested in organizing or social justice, or really anyone who might be interested in exploring any of our past episodes.
Evan
As always, please make sure you're following us on our new twitter handle at think civic pod to join in on the conversation after this episode. Be sure to hit subscribe at thinkcivic.substack.com
Chizo
Thank you and remember to think civic
billy lim: organizing AAPI and civic tech communities