Stephanie Tom, longtime Sacramento AAPI advocate, joins California API Legislative Caucus

Stephanie Tom, a Sacramento native and longtime AAPI community worker, has been hired as the new chief consultant for the California Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, the APILC announced Wednesday.

Tom began her state service career as the deputy director for strategic planning, broadband and digital literacy at the California Department of Technology and has more than 20 years of experience working with local API organizations. She currently serves on the board of directors for Asian Resources, Inc., as an advisory board member for My Sister’s House and has worked with the California Asian Chamber of Commerce and on the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs steering committee.

“I’m really excited ... really honored to be part of something that will help us move the needle,” Tom said.

One of her first priorities will be to help APILC mobilize the heightened public awareness of anti-Asian racism into fuel to create legislative protections, such as AB 85 or AB 557. Recent months have seen a nationwide rise in anti-Asian violence and hate incidents, especially in the Bay Area.

“We are getting an influx of calls … from people in the community looking for guidance and support, and calls from organizations that want to give support,” Tom said. “(Anti-Asian racism is) real, it’s today, and we really want to make sure that we have the right legislative action and remedies.”

Tom said her parents exposed her to the possibility of AAPI political leadership from a young age, especially because of her mother, Maeley Tom, who became the first woman and first ethnic minority to serve as the California State Assembly’s chief administrative officer. Though working for AAPI community advocacy was something Tom had been interested in since middle school, she didn’t become formally involved in activism work until she attended California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Alongside her volunteer experience in Sacramento, Tom also co-founded the first AAPI employee resource group at Oracle Enterprises, where she worked for 19 years until 2018. The group swelled to 2,000 in just the first nine months and remains the fastest-growing group in the company, Tom said, evidence of how much AAPI employees needed such representation.

Growing up in a political family meant that it was easier for Tom to envision a path into politics, she said, something many young AAPIs aren’t always encouraged to pursue and are often underrepresented in.

“It really opened my eyes to what the API community can do if we truly understand it and embrace it,” Tom said.

Tom wants more young Asian Americans to have that same exposure, to understand the importance of political engagement and be able to visualize themselves working in politics. Building ties between the caucus and the AAPI community will be important for this, Tom said, to help encourage the growth of that pipeline.

“Ultimately, our overall goal is we want equal access and equal voice in California,” Tom said. “And I definitely want to emphasize that because of what’s going on today.”