1st-ever New Jersey Asian American leadership summit kicks off at Princeton

By Ferlie Andong

The Asian American Leadership Summit, the first‑ever convening of its kind was held at Princeton University on July 17 – 18, 2026 and was made possible through AAPI NJ and the Asian American Coalition of New Jersey.

It brought together leaders from different sectors and offered topics that ranged from education, policy, advocacy, immigration, and language access, among many issues. 

According to Executive Director of AAPI NJ Amber Reed, “All our incredible Asian American leaders in the state are stepping up for their communities in different ways whether they work in education, policy, civic engagement, or being the person that others look up to in their communities.”   

The summit was a long time coming, a dream that took years to finally take off.

In 2021, AAPI NJ started out as AAPI Montclair to help local communities and to prepare kids about bullying as they go back to school after the pandemic. The goal was to join a larger organization in New Jersey that caters to Asian Americans, only to find out that none exists. By then, AAPI Montclair had already been advocating for major statewide issues such as AAPI Curriculum mandate in K-12 schools and language access. As they became the larger organization they reached out to smaller Asian American groups in the state serving specific communities such as Filipino, Korean, Asian Indian, and others.

This resulted in the creation of the Asian American Coalition of NJ bringing everyone together to learn from one other.

“We’ve been talking about doing some sort of summit for a while now. We’ve been doing Asian American coalition of NJ convenings regionally so there’s been a South, Central, and North Jersey convenings,” said Co-Executive Director of AAPI NJ Roslyne Shiao. “This has been a dream of ours to have one summit where everyone can come together under one roof.”

The Opening Plenary featured an engaging discussion as the panelists, Amol Sinha, executive director, ACLU; Sundeep Iyer executive assistant Attorney General; and Bethany Li, executive director, AALDEF, initiated a discussion on the topic of defending and advancing civil rights in New Jersey. This unlocked issues such as voting and immigration rights including birthright citizenship. A key takeaway from this session is that every issue in America impacts Asian Americans so it is important to advocate for each other not only when it directly impacts Asian Americans, the organizers said.

Among the speakers were Filipino Americans Tiffany Joy Argonza and Patty Deyleg.  Joy owns The Studio Ligaya in Metuchen and did a line dancing workshop where she said, “Leading a line dancing is relative to being a leader. Walking people through the steps mirrors how people go through their roles.”

She explained how a group has the goal to learn the steps together and move as one even if that means patiently waiting for every single individual to learn the steps.

Joy has been supporting AAPI NJ since the time she met them at an event in Bergen County three years ago.

As for Patty, she led a workshop on asset mapping which helps the community digs deep and comes up with answers to questions about “where we come from, where we want to go, and how we’re already prepared for the work ahead.”

Patty, the founder of Malaya Solutions, is a team coach, and a consultant for non-profit organizations. Patty, for almost a decade, was organizing as well as government and DEI work in NYC but didn’t have the chance to do so in NJ until she got connected with AAPI NJ.

“This is an opportunity to connect with the coalition, and the policy work they are doing is really important and so I want to support them, however I can,” she said.

At the summit’s conclusion, Amber Reed said this is only the beginning.  

“Hopefully people made connections, felt invited to take a step deeper with us, and to encourage people to take action with us. Specifically, on helping build local organizations, defending immigrant communities in these moments, and making sure that people go out to vote this November. There’s a lot more that we can be doing together.”