Our Story
Hi, I’m Heang.
I started CHIC Community Engagement Consulting in June 2022. CHIC represents what I love doing and is grounded in twenty-five years of experience in the fields of urban planning, education, public health, and arts and culture. These offerings embody what I believe are needed in a world trying to heal from the pandemic and an intense period of racial trauma to move us towards renewal, reconciliation, and rebirth as a society.
Raised by two hard-working Chinese immigrant parents in an extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in San Francisco, I learned the value and importance of community and showing up for people early on in my life. Regular family gatherings and celebrations were early lessons about the importance of community building and the power of ritual to bring people together and hold us together in the happy and hard moments. This sense of community building undergirds all the work I have done over the last twenty-five years.
In 2019, after a twenty-year career in higher education, I decided to leave my stable job and forge a new path. Like others in the Great Resignation, the isolation of the pandemic gave me the time for deep reflection and inner inquiry about my life’s purpose. Social isolation and daily distractions minimized, I realized that I wasn’t in a profession and a work environment where I could be my best self. I realized there were other ways I wanted to serve, grow, and be in the world. It was a decision grounded in my sense of spirituality.
After I left my job,I had the blessing to volunteer on a beautiful farm and learn that transformation and shedding are part of the cycle of life and growth. I learned to be in tune with the cycles of nature and my own body’s rhythms.
I decided to take the leap of faith and started CHIC in June 2022. Seeds that I didn’t even know I had planted in my professional life were starting to take root and grow.
I love to work in the sphere of community engagement because it is about honoring people’s lived experiences, trying to address their needs, and amplifying the assets in a community. Some of my most treasured and gratifying moments are when people really open up to me and we have a soulful conversation about what they really care about. I hold those stories in my heart and that is what motivates me to drive for changes.
As both art and science, community engagement is not easy work. It is messy, painful, and frustrating sometimes. The type of community engagement work I do involves deep listening, learning how people understand their lives, leaning into new experiences, and believing that we can all be our best selves.
Project RISE, 2021
As a community builder I hold space as a teacher, advocate, and facilitator. I work intentionally and diligently to create spaces where people feel nurtured, cared for, and can be their authentic selves.
Because I am a natural community builder, I love to hold gatherings where people can share and connect. The desire for holding space for gatherings draws from a love of throwing parties and understanding the power and potential of rituals. From this pandemic, there is so much to grieve and celebrate, so much to repair and renew. Through ritual, ceremonies, and gatherings, we can connect to our humanity and to each other in new, deeper, and more necessary ways.
Chinatown HOPE, 2022
This pandemic showed us the beauty and the fractures in our society. CHIC wants to amplify the beauty of our community, help heal these fractures, and weave new narratives. Healing is a necessary part of this process as we re-make ourselves, our organizations, and our institutions.
Self-healing must be connected to our collective liberation.
Why healing? Twenty years ago, I developed a serious chronic illness. As hard, devastating, and painful as this time was in my life, I now know it was a gift. I learned how to live healthy and have a healthy work life. This time in my life also sowed the seeds of a slow, spiritual transformation in my life that has and will continue to bear fruit.
I want to share this gift of hope and healing with others on individual and organizational levels. My offerings in the creative healing space represent some of what has helped me in my healing journey that I want to share with individuals and organizations who are also on the path to healing, health, and wholeness.
Above: Mel Taing for CHIC Community Engagement Consulting
When I am asked why I pronounce CHIC the French way, I respond, “Aren’t our communities beautiful?”
Join me in amplifying the beauty and sacredness of our communities through compassion, healing, imagination, and celebration.
With love and appreciation,
Heang