May O. Lee to Receive Honorary Doctorate Degree from California State University
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The APIs RISE Fund proudly announces that our co-founder and community activist, May O. Lee, has been selected to receive an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from the Board of Trustees of the California State University. We are grateful to Sacramento State alumni and members of the broader Sacramento community who strongly supported the nomination of May O. Lee ’87 (MSW) for an honorary doctorate.
Below is the letter we wrote in support of the nomination.
May Lee’s five decades of transformative unifying leadership in and service to the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities and immigrant and refugee communities in the greater Sacramento region exemplify the California State University’s highest goals and aspirations for its diverse student body.
May is the embodiment of the word “dynamo,” yet leads with humility, always centering the people and communities for whom she works and advocates, rather than herself. She works in the trenches, most recently by distributing food to families devastated by COVID-19, staffing vaccine clinics in South Sacramento, speaking out against inhumane immigration policies, and organizing against anti-Asian hate and violence.
Her on-the-ground grassroots approach complements her visionary work and the long list of achievements foundational to the strength and empowerment of Sacramento’s community that continues to evolve and grow through her leadership and support. Her ability to do both with grace and authenticity is simply who she is.
After moving to Sacramento from Seattle in 1975 to join Asian Community Center Senior Services, where she worked to ensure that community elders received culturally relevant quality convalescent care. May was accepted in 1980 to Sacramento State’s program (funded by the National Institute of Mental Health) to support Asian American community leaders seeking a Master’s in Social Work. Through her MSW training and as one of the region’s young rising community activists, May recognized that Sacramento’s burgeoning Asian immigrant and refugee communities had critical, largely unmet needs for job assistance, English classes, youth and senior programs, and health education.
In response to these critical needs, evolved a new organization, Asian Resources, Inc. (ARI). May became the founding director of ARI in 1981. ARI was dedicated “to providing multiple social services needed in our community, empowering everyone we serve to become a vital part of our changing, diverse society.” May served as the Executive Director of ARI until 2006.
Her leadership helped grow ARI into the largest AAPI-serving community service provider in the Sacramento region. True to the organization’s motto, Where Opportunities Come Full Circle, coined by May as a professional and personal touchstone, ARI has helped hundreds of thousands of people across a broad swath of immigrant communities and communities of color secure jobs, gain language skills, and obtain critical health care and services.
May builds community leadership, incubates new community-based organizations, and fosters community-building. This is why her work is so far-reaching.
May was instrumental in founding My Sister’s House (MSH) in 2000 to serve AAPI and other underserved women and children impacted by domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking by providing a culturally appropriate and responsive safe haven, job training, and community services. MSH has expanded over its 21 years to include opening My Sister’s Cafe, a social enterprise that provides job training and employment for survivors, and MSH Housing First program to help survivors secure stable housing.
In 2014, May co-founded the APIs RISE Fund, a local giving circle of philanthropists and community leaders who aim to build and strengthen the next generation of AAPI leadership for the Sacramento Region. May recognized and educated the community on the fact that over 20% of the Sacramento population identify as Asian American and/or Pacific Islander, yet philanthropy and charitable donations lag far behind this growing population’s needs. Since its inception, APIs RISE Fund has raised and given over $150,000 in grants to community groups dedicated to AAPI civic engagement and leadership building. May also spearheaded APIs RISE Fund’s efforts toward fighting discrimination against and promoting pride and civic engagement around Sacramento’s AAPI LGBTQ community.
Working across communities and in coalition is in May’s DNA. She was ahead of her time when she began her activism and over five decades has been unwavering in her commitment toward a true and just multiracial and multicultural democracy.
May was one of the original coordinators of Sacramento’s annual Martin Luther King March and Diversity Expo. Leveraging these community-building efforts, she worked with other leaders and activists to rename Sacramento Boulevard as Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard in 1988. May’s work in this vein continues as reflected in the APIs RISE Fund’s current focus on funding organizations and work to address anti-Asian hate and violence, along with the difficult but essential work to confront and root out anti-Black racism within the AAPI community.
May’s work with the census to ensure that everyone is counted also spans decades. May has been actively involved in every census since 1990 to develop thoughtful outreach strategies to ensure hard-to-count populations are identified and meaningfully engaged in being counted. May is driven by the knowledge that for each person who goes uncounted, communities lose millions of dollars per year, translating to the needless loss or absence of federal support for health care, education, transportation, housing, civil rights enforcement, job training, public safety, legal services, and more. Most recently, May served in a pivotal role on theSacramento Complete Steering Committee for the 2020 Census.
As an anchor university, Sacramento State has a vested interest in the well-being of the Sacramento Region and all who live here. May O. Lee is an anchor individual who has committed her adult life to this ideal.
May’s lifetime achievements were the inspiration for the creation of the Full Circle Project (FCP) at Sacramento State. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, FCP is the premiere retention and graduation program created to address the diverse needs and interests of Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA), as well as other high-need students. Indeed, FCP’s name was drawn directly from May’s theme, Where Opportunities Come Full Circle.
Ever the generous person with her time, expertise, and resources, May and her late husband, Milt Yee (who was in the same Sacramento State MSW cohort with May) created an endowment at the University to provide scholarships to students who have demonstrated a history and further potential for community service in Sacramento.
One would be hard-pressed to think of an AAPI leader or active community member in the Sacramento region who has not been guided, advised, mentored, taught, or inspired by May’s body of work and her example.
